field trips

gaoshu elementary school does many kind things for me. they feed me what may be taiwan's best vegetarian lunch. they invite me to pitch for faculty-student baseball games. they allow me to stage elaborate, lengthy productions during all-school assemblies, no questions asked. they ensure full press coverage when i do interesting things such as perform crossing guard duty. they also strive to help me make the most of my time in taiwan, and so they have been asking me along on recent class trips. in theory, i'm invited along as a chaperone. in reality, the kids don't listen to me AND i generally have no idea what's going on anyways. thank you, GES!

#1: the 6th grade graduation trip

we rode tour buses all over taiwan for 3 days, led by a super cool real chaperone named shao pin. she was no-nonsense, bossy, and a great singer. kind of like a taiwanese mary poppins. here we are visiting the 9.21 earthquake museum that commemorates the magnitude 7.6 earthquake of 1999. the high school where the museum is housed has been preserved in its original condition. we saw a buckled race track, a gashed rice paddy, and a mesmerizing 3D movie about earthquakes and tsunamis.

my delightful supervisor mr. soo also "chaperoned" the 6th grade class trip. he is somehow always in rare form, and this trip was no exception. he demonstrated t'ai chi at the juming sculpture museum, alongside juming's incredibly graceful bronze taichi series. he explained his love for lions by saying that he, too, longs for a life centered purely around sleeping and eating. during our 3 days, we visited the taichung museum of natural science, the earthquake museum, the juming sculpture garden, taipei 101, the taipei zoo, and leofoo village amusement park. my favorite parts were juming's sculptures, the lil rattler roller coaster, and the teacher-student mealtime segregation.

#2: 4th grade swimming lessons

taiwan is an island, yet many taiwanese can't swim. GES is doing its part to combat this problem by sending the kids to the pool for swimming lessons. for 3 hours one fine morning, the 4th graders took to cishan's municipal pool. they had an hour of swim lessons, wherein they learned to kick their legs and lunge for the edge. the rest of the time, they were free to enjoy the water slides, jumbo jacuzzi, wave river, and splash beds (?). i was brave enough to be the lone teacher running in GES's 4K fun run, but i was not brave enough to be the lone teacher in a bathing suit.

#3: the orchid expo in jiouru

this was actually not a class trip, persay, but i went with mr. chung the younger, and he's a teacher at GES, so it was a teachers-only field trip. astonishingly gorgeous orchids can be seen all over taiwan, but the jiouru exp is special: it happens only once a year, it is enclosed in a tent, and some of the orchids are adorned with prize ribbons. the range of colors, shapes, sizes, and direction of growth were mind-boggling. edward preferred the delicate pinks and creams; i loved them all but especially the bold pinks and oranges.

#4: the 3rd grade trip to the amusement park (coming soon)

photos: bronze taichi by juming; an oviraptor a.k.a. "dinosaur with a weird head" at the taichung science museum; baboon hitchhiker aboard the african safari bus at leofoo amusement park; 3D & track damage at nantou's earthquake museum; mr. soo & juming have a moment; mr. soo & the lions at leofoo; zane; sarah's girls; 4A at the pool; splash beds; belle; jiouru epiphytes

tomb travel

taiwan's tomb sweeping day provided the 3rd 3-day weekend of the year. mitsy and i fantasized for months... visions of bamboo 林 and soaring 山 danced in our heads. in the end, the south cross island highway was the only option. and what a heavenly option it was.

to the left, our fearless heroines. to the right, a flower of guanshan and symbol of our trip's purest essence. in short, we traveled by train to taiwan's southeast coast, and the beautiful mountain-sandwiched town of guanshan. from there, we rode and hiked our way to wulu, lidao, and lisong.












the first stop on our trip, guanshan, is known as the home of taiwan's very first bike path. we rode it twice, and the legfuls of nastily itchy bugbites were worth it for the views of glowing rice paddies, aromatic strawberry patches, and water buffalo. we entered the south cross island highway via mountain mini-bus, and got out at wulu so that we could walk the rest of the 8 km to lidao. mountains of splintering shale surrounded us and amplified the stream's trickle, so that at times it seemed as though we were surrounded by gushing waterfalls. streaks of sulfur-yellow and iron-red splashed the canyon walls, and steam leaked from the earth. lidao, a bunun village, was pure plateau, down to the cliff bordering its southern face. traces of the region's sea of clouds hung in the air.













lisong hot springs are one of the most beautiful sights i have ever seen. they are about 2 kilometers straight down a mountain, and 2.5 days later, my muscles are still vividly aware of the effort. at the bottom of the mountain is a canyon-enclosed riverbed. just around the boulders, a series of colorful waterfalls. the springs tumble from the canyon walls, and they paint the rock with their mineral shades and textures. they are exquisite, wild, and deeply satisfying.












along the way, we made some friends: puppy friend on the left and her 2 sisters had just eaten rice for lunch. sika deer in the cave deserves an apology for being so thoroughly cornered. goose partners honk along from their tea plantation home. bunun pig takes a slop break from a cliff-side sty in lidao.

georgeous

"don't i know that blurry back from somewhere?" you ask yourself. "i do, i do... from a peaceful place, a frameable place, a... lions gate place." and you are absolutely right. you do know that blurry back-- from peaceful warrior, the film adaptation of the way of the peaceful warrior, released by lionsgate films. my friend george was the back model for the movie poster. and my friend george just passed through taiwan, on a fabulous cruise of east asia. george and i met as teachers in the french caribbean, so it was only fitting that we spend our day together in one of taiwan's most tropical, lush, jungly environs. this is wulai:













wulai is less than an hour from taipei. it is a beautiful landscape of tropical mountains, blue green waters, and sulphur carbonate hot springs. in just one overcast yet sparkling afternoon, george, karin and i took in an abundance of wulai pleasures. among them:










a petite yet provocative miniature train. we waved, we screamed, we faux-conducted, we befriended the actual conductors. there was also:












the street food. a whole roasted pig! a father-and-son candy-pulling team, so glossy, sleek, and long! fist-sized balls of mashed fish and squished taro, chopped and fried! and for our wulai nightcap, we had:

a private hot spring soak at the landis. overlooking the nanshih river's turquoise waters, and a small waterfall set into the mountainside just across the valley. our tub's waterfall mirrored its twin in wild and unpredictable torrents of toasty spring water. it was so good, it was worth missing my train... and the next one... and the next one.

bon voyage, boug mwen!





BONUS: the following clip has nothing to do with wulai, or george, or karin. it illustrates a rock-glowstick phenomenon that captivated me the night before wulai, throughout amei's entire 3.5 hour performance at kaohsiung arena. the glowsticks were there before amei, and they lasted well beyond the extended "on-ko." *amei is taiwan's #1 pop diva, equivalent to kylie minogue or madonna in pop appeal and fan frenzy quotient*

vision quest

my beautiful and adventurous mother is at an interesting point in her life. she is really probably most likely about to retire, she may possibly be ready to sell the family house, she has just reached the ripe and respectable age of 65 (what what senior dis-counts!), and her only daughter is midway through a roots quest of her own (in search of cantonese heritage by way of taiwan). mom janet, as she prefers to be called, was looking for answers to her life's big questions. so she came to taiwan for a 5 week vision quest.

vision #1: people are medicine for people. life's big questions don't seem so troubling when you have 3 generations of liangs ushering you into their chinese new year family portrait, and gaoshu elementary school's staff and student body cheering uproariously whenever you pass by.












vision #2: make new friends and keep the old. whether they were squatting and chatting inside a screened-in jujube farm, oiling their chests and doing hunky rukai stretches in between performances, or chilling out buddhist monk-style on an old red wagon-wheeled bench, mom found ways to reach the masses. she squatted right down, squeezed right in, and zenned right out. and the whole time, her heart was singing with love for new friends like shushu, gugu, & mr. soo, and old friends like mary harrison, liv, & riley.

vision #3: when in taiwan... that's right-- grab a fork (or chopstick, or oversized toothpick, or spoon) and dig in. pork stuffed glutinous rice dumplings on the left, pork filled potstickers on the right. when everyone around you is consuming delectable mass quantities of pork, seize the pig.












vision #4: make art everywhere, with everyone, all the time. it would not be a vision quest without a glorious cross-cultural art exchange. mom brought glue sticks, wish sticks, and a great big rainbow peace flag across the pacific so that she could bless gaoshu guoxiao with a message of peace and love, all the way from milwaukee, wisconsin. little alice paid mom the ultimate compliment when she said, "you look like all of our mothers."












vision #5: go with the flow. if you're surrounded by hakka and aboriginal taiwanese cultures, then learn/eat everything you can about them (from fatty pork to pork fat to seed-bead embroidery). if life gives you jujube trees, then pick with all your heart (and go for the faintly yellowish ones). and if an all-school assembly is convened on your behalf, then grab a pen, write a song in chinese, and own that mic with your nearest and dearest family members:

to the tune of "row, row, row your boat:"
gaoshu guoxiao, gaoshu guoxiao,
xie xie ni, xie xie ni, gaoshu guoxiao!
eileen: wo shi ke ai-lin, ingwen laoshi,
ting bu dong, kan bu dong, xie xie ni!
jp: wo xihuan hao chi, wo xihuan hao chi,
niu rou mian, niu rou mian, xie xie ni!
mom: i don't speak chinese, i don't speak chinese,
ni men hen hao, ni men hen hao, xie xie ni!

vision #6: don't sweat the small stuff. this large chunk of cement may just have fallen on jonathan's foot during a 6.4 earthquake, but he is really crying over the departure of his adoptive chinese-american grandmother. jonathan and all of taiwan's children will miss mom janet.

photos: jlc & et celebrate kaohsiung's lantern festival + meinong's hakka pride during chinese new year; the liang family celebrating chinese new year; gaoshu elementary school & the carrs; jujube picking; strapping "abs" (aboriginal dudes); taking a senior breather; liouhe night market's tasty delights; art therapy in the english room (that's a PEACE PRIDE flag by the way); jujube/hakka/ lantern-loving mom janet; jonathan's lamentation