New Year's Day   2005-01-07

Never one to let an opportunity pass her by, Marlene seized upon a comment made by Brian during Christmas dinner that his parent's owned a house in Hualien, and promptly invited us to spend New Year's there.


Friday, December 31

We both finished work at 9:00 on Friday night. Not a moment too soon for me.

I've just started a new class on Friday nights. It's a big class - close to 30 students packed into a classroom that seats twenty comfortably. It's on Friday nights after the students (ages 10 - 15) have had a long school week, and by and large it's the last place they feel like being. They have me from 7:00 - 9:00 and a Chinese teacher from 9:00 - 10:00. Who can blame them for alternating between fidgeting, sleeping, or speaking Chinese? No one. It's understandable, but not tolerable.

My latest punishment for students who speak Chinese is push-ups in front of the class. I start at a modest 15 push-ups for the first infraction, and every subsequent infraction of Rule Number One adds two push-ups to the total. During some particularly restless classes I've had students doing 40 - 50 push-ups. Sure, there's a lot of complaining and entreating, but I've learned, the hard way, that "follow through" is crucial; empty threats only encourage.

In Kojen, the students are seated along the side and back walls of every classroom. There's a whiteboard at the front, and the centre of the rooms is left open to encourage mingling, games, speaking (English), or whatever - in my case, push-ups. When the push-ups reach a sufficiently high number and it becomes quite difficult for a student to finish a complete set of them, the mostly reserved students transform into bloodthirsty spectators at a gladiator match. They start heckling, baying for blood, and demand either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If I'm in a good mood it's a thumbs up and I'll let the perpetrator collapse on the floor and then copy a page out of the dictionary. If I'm in a bad mood it's a thumbs down and I'll make them finish the set.

My class was trying. Perhaps they sensed my desire to be on a train hurtling south towards Hualien. Whatever the reason, they were obnoxious and I was stern. But, we all pulled together and made it to 9:00.

Brian had booked us three seats on the 11:43 milk run from Taipei to Hualien. It was the only departing train with seats still available. It seemed most people weren't keen on ushering in the New Year on a train. After a limpid countdown in Chinese, we rang in the new year a few kilometres south of Taipei with some water and penny candy. 2005 was upon us and we'd turned the corner on our stay in Taiwan. Good times.

We arrived in Hualien at 3:30 in the morning. It was cool and quiet in the mostly deserted train station. After handing our tickets to the taciturn ticket taker, Brian flagged down a taxi on the concourse outside and we sped away towards his house on the outskirts of town. Hualien is significantly smaller than Taipei. With a population of about 250,000 people it's about the same size as Victoria. Arriving from the permanently congested streets of Taipei, it was refreshing to slide through the streets without having to jostle for position on the road.

We arrived at Brian's house ten minutes later only to find ourselves locked out. Brian fiddled with the key to the back door for fifteen minutes with no luck. The door wouldn't budge. It was cold. It was dark. We laughed. Surely, after coming all this way and it being the middle of the night, we couldn't be locked out!

"Brian, are you sure you're using the right key?"

"Uh huh."

More fiddling.

The house is three stories plus a roof top patio. As his parents only use it for a few weeks each year (their permanent house is in Taichung), every window on the first floor is covered by thick, iron grills. I made a quick, JTF reconnaissance of the house and concluded there was no way in besides through the back door. Scaling the sheer, brick wall to the second floor balcony could have been an option, but the chickens in the coop next to the house were getting restless. We didn't want to rouse the neighbours' interest in our activities. Brian didn't know them all that well and falling from the wall onto the chicken coop, well, breaking in wasn't an option.




"Brian, you're sure you have the right key?"

"Uh huh."

More fiddling.

"Scheise."

"Okay, no problem. I'm sure this is the right key."

"Are you turning it the right way?"

"Uh huh."

"Can I try it?"

"Sure, no problem."

I took the key and slipped it into the lock. I turned it to the right and tugged on the door. Nothing. Okay. I turned it all the way to the left and tugged on the door. Open sesame.

"My parents put the lock on backwards?"

"Uh huh."

We opened the back door and crept inside. Brian fumbled for the light switch and a few seconds later the stubborn fluorescent lights flickered overhead. A pale, bluish light lit up a cramped kitchen. No one had been to the house for months and it was freezing inside; the tile floor was frigid. Brian fished some wooden slippers out of a cabinet for us and we clomped our way up to the second floor. Our wooden slippers made terrible echoing sounds throughout the house.

In terms of decoration, the house was very unlike any other house I've been in. Quite simply, there was no decoration. There were no pictures hanging on the soaring, fifteen foot walls, and almost no furniture in the cavernous, tiled rooms. Save for the ping-pong table standing in the middle of the room occupying the entire fourth floor, it was completely inhospitable.

Brian showed us to our room - spacious and cold. We dragged some bedding, which reeked of mothballs, out of one of the five other bedrooms on the second floor and quickly made up our beds. We laid a wooden lattice on the rock-hard mattress, covered that with a hair filled sleeping pad, and threw a heavy, woollen quilt on top. Perfect. Even though it was after four o'clock in the morning we decided we'd get up at eight o'clock. The chickens were starting to cluck as we drifted off to sleep.


Saturday, January 01

Marlene and I awoke at 8:10. The tip of my nose was almost blue. Brian had woken up a few minutes earlier and gone out to buy some breakfast for us. He'd returned with some hot soymilk, steamed rice buns stuffed with vegetables and chilli sauce, and a few loaves of some slightly sweet flat bread. The loaves were about eight inches in diameter, an inch thick, and still warm from the oven. One of the loaves was filled with a red bean paste, one with a sweet taro paste, and the other had no filling. They were delicious. That early in the morning, however, the dumplings were a challenge.

We sat around the lazy Susan equipped round table made for twelve under the fluorescent lights in the dining room and munched on our breakfast. From out of a small shrine against the wall of the room a low, rhythmic chanting issued from a speaker behind waxy, green Buddha. Brian laid out our itinerary for the day. The cornerstone of our trip to Hualien was to be a visit to the natural hot springs at Wen Shan in Taroko Gorge National Park. So, we finished our breakfast, packed our bathing suits, some snacks, some playing cards, and hit the road.

After a ten minute bus ride from Brian's house to the bus terminal in town, we bought our $1.50 tickets for the trip into Taroko Gorge. The bus ride from Hualien to the entrance of Taroko Gorge National Park was uneventful. Things changed when we entered the park, however. The four lane highway narrowed dramatically into two very narrow lanes at the park entrance. The winding road clung to the side of the gorge hundreds of metres above the riverbed below and hundreds of metres below the lip of the gorge above. There were many blind corners, single lane tunnels, and noticeably absent safety measures; the drop off was steep and severe. The bus driver barely touched the brakes.

Our bus hurtled along the side of the gorge at breakneck speed. We took corners far too wide. We rocketed up and down hills far too fast. We ploughed into tunnels at full speed with the horn blaring and high beams flashing. We were buffeted around in our seats like cotton candy at the midway. It was a great ride!






After thirty minutes glorious minutes we arrived at our drop off point. The driver, probably reluctantly, eased up on the gas and then slammed on the brakes. We lurched to a stop and alighted on unsteady legs. We must have gained some altitude because the air was crisp and biting when we stepped off the bus. Pulling on our jackets, toques, and packs we headed up the path beside the road towards Wen Shan. The path followed the road for a short while and then dipped down the side of gorge. Where the path ended, hundreds of wooden stairs leading to the hot springs at the bottom of the gorge began.




There's a cluster of three small hot springs at Wen Shan. They're natural, free, and open to the public twenty-four hours a day year round. If you're willing to navigate the slick, wooden stairs in the middle of the night, you're welcome to relax in the hot springs. The pools, each about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide, have been carved into the base of the gorge wall next to a fast moving, glacially cold river. Some rough, stone steps run between each pool.




The pool closest to the mouth of the hot spring was astonishingly hot. The middle pool only slightly less so, and the pool furthest from the mouth - barely tolerable. After dipping a toe in each hot spring, we decided to start at the furthest pool. Standing in our swimming suits in the freezing mountain air we drew a few laughs from those already soaking in the pools as we gingerly eased ourselves into the scalding water. Once in and acclimatized, however, it was pure heaven. We sat with our backs against the rock face and looked out at the rushing river and opposing wall of the gorge.






After twenty minutes of soaking we hauled our torpid bodies out of the water and into the fresh air. Sitting on the edge of the pool we noticed some bathers splashing cold water on themselves on the gravely riverbank. It looked delicious and worth a try. We tiptoed over the slippery stone steps down to the river. Sure enough, the water was freezing! As you only live once, and not being content with merely splashing, I hurled myself headlong into the river.

The river was moving much faster than I anticipated. Shock. Cardiac arrest. I was immediately picked up and flipped onto my back. I went careening down the river until I hit a rapid and was spun upside down. Fully submerged by the rapid's undertow, I gulped down a big mouthful of water before fighting my way to the surface. I bobbed to the surface and spinning like a top I was swept further downstream. I distinctly recall saying to myself, "This is it. I'm going to drown." My feet eventually scraped the riverbed and thrusting myself towards the riverbank I staggered numbly out of the river.

In the few seconds it took this to happen most of the bathers had collected along the edge of the hot springs to watch me drown. Many Taiwanese can't or don't swim and had things gone on much longer chances are I would've been drowning solo. Fair enough. I didn't have my glasses on or contacts in so I couldn't make out anyone's face, but I could distinctly hear Marlene laughing.

Somewhat embarrassed I climbed back up to the hot springs. Marlene and Brian were waiting for me. I suggested they give it a try. Never one to let an opportunity pass her by, Marlene grabbed a reluctant Brian and waded into the river. More prudently, however, they contented themselves with only submersing themselves with a quick squat into the water.

Now completely numb, we all moved to the second hot spring and eased ourselves into the water. After a few minutes the numbness wore off and we were once again cooking like lobsters. We exited the pool and braved the river once again. This time in a more restrained fashion. We sat in the water for a couple of minutes until we couldn't feel ourselves and then climbed back up the bank and into the third hot spring. The water was so hot it felt cold. By this time our skin had turned an alarming shade of pink so we decided to call it quits. After struggling back into our frozen clothes we climbed back up the stairs to the lip of the gorge.






Upon reaching the lip of the gorge we promptly hitched a ride with a couple from Kaoshung heading towards the Formosa Hotel deep in Taroko Gorge. The Formosa is similar to the Hotel Kananaskis in Alberta. It's the kind of place you can lounge in the lobby, listen to live jazz, drink coffee, and play cards while soaking up the amazing scenery. After they dropped us off we flopped into a small food stand for a quick lunch of spicy tofu, dried fish, fried rice, and pork noodles before heading over to the hotel to while away a few hours in the lobby drinking coffee and playing cards.

We caught the 4:15 white-knuckle express from the hotel and rode it to the entrance of the park. Near the entrance is a warren of caves (Swallow Caves) carved into the sides of the gorge. In the spring the caves are filled with the whirring of thousands of swallows as they build their nests among the ledges and outcroppings in the caves. We got off the bus and spent an hour wandering through the caves. The occasional shaft of milky light from the setting sun filtered in from cracks in the cave walls. It was just enough to light our way through the caves.

After an hour or so in the caves we walked back to the road and waited for the last bus out of the park. After a few minutes of standing on what turned out to be the wrong side of the road, we watched as the bus we should have caught roared past us in a cloud of diesel. We were now stranded in the park. It was quite dark, quite cold, and we were quite far from Hualien. We briefly debated walking out of the park, but thought better of it due to the lack of any kind of shoulder along the road. The chance of getting mowed down by a speeding vehicle in the pitch-black was higher than we were willing to risk. So, we did the only thing we could do, we stuck out our thumbs.

Car after car raced by us. I asked Brian if hitchhiking was common in Taiwan. He said he'd never done it and he'd never seen or heard of anyone doing it. Great. We stood at a small T intersection in the road to maximize our chances of being picked up. Within ten minutes a car pulled up behind us. Brian raced up to the car and explained our situation. After a spirited exchange Brian motioned us over and we climbed in. The driver spoke no English, so after some translated small talk we just settled back in the seats and coasted towards Hualien in comfortable silence.

By the time we reached Hualien it had been hours since we'd eaten and we were starving. Marlene and I had a hunger on for something besides Chinese food. As much as we like it, we weren't in the mood for steamed or boiled anything. We decided on barbecue. We wandered the streets in vain for half an hour until we spotted a Japanese barbecue restaurant. After a round of high fives we marched in, ordered up a storm, and feasted for a couple of hours on grilled everything. It was a perfect way to end a perfect New Year's Day.

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