Things that grow out of the soil...: A day of research

Today my host sent me with two of her assistants to an indigenous cultures center. Graciously, she called ahead of time and told the center not to charge an admission price because I was a researcher and a scholar and not a tourist (it's nice to have someone say that so resolutely about me, since the lines seem quite blurry to me). Here are several pictures from my day of scholarly research.

It was an hour's drive to get to the park. And this is a pic from along the way.

We were getting close.

I wasn't a tourist, but I could see many tourists had taken buses to enter the park.

As I arrived, I could tell that the stonework showcased at the park was an important aspect of what was on display.

In spite of my hosts suggestion that I ought to get a picture in front of the sign, I refrained (for the present) since I had not been billed as a tourist.

One interesting thing about Taiwan is that public pay phones still seem to be fairly common, even though cell/mobile phones seem just as common as anywhere. The guy I sat next to on the high speed rail used two different cell phones during the trip. I though of the film Back to the Future, when Michael J. Fox goes back to the 1950s and meets his mother, who asks him if his family has a television. And he responds and says yes in fact they have two TVs. And his mom responds in amazement but her dad (MJF's grandfather) says the boy is joking and what would be the use of having two TVs. I'm sure there's a use in having two cell phones, but I don't know what it is.

What was the meaning of the stonework, I wondered.

Our guide, who by special arrangement was assigned to escort us.

Our guide was concerned that the tourist buses were too full, and he didn't want us to miss the upcoming performance, so he offered that we would ride on a motorcycle. I told him I could do that just so long as I wasn't the one driving. So I got on the back, and he delivered me to the performance, and then he made another trip to pick up my two hosts.

Here are a few pics of some introductory remarks. if you want to see a video of one of the several dances, scroll down to the bottom of this post.

A fire was burning outside the performance building.

Carvings outside the performance building.

Here are some of the tourists.

And here are some others. My hosts asked if I wanted a photograph with the performer. I said I preferred not to, but I didn't mind taking pictures of other people having their pictures taken.

While we waited for our guide after the performance, I saw this tree with little citrus fruits growing on it. I tried peeling one but the skin was thin, so I just broke it in half and ate some of it. It was sour.

Our guide instructed us to get onto the bus, and then had the tourists get onto the bus.

He talked to the tourists as we drove down the road.

Then, the bus stopped and we (my two hosts and myself) were instructed to get off the bus. But then the tourists started getting off the bus two. When he saw this, our guide was candid with the tourists. As my hosts translated for me, he told them: "Get back on the bus! You are just tourists and need to stay on the bus. But we four are going to get off the bus and have a deep discussion." The tourists got back on the bus. And we got off.

(In case I'm being too subtle about this, in marking up this "tourist/non-tourist distinction," I'm doing some self-mockery. I'm certainly not mocking anyone else.)

The path down to the model village, away from the tourists.

In the model village, there were shelves with model skulls on them. As the guide explained, back when villagers kept actual skulls, these were skulls of enemy tribes, but the skulls themselves became friends with the village and part of village life.

The guide talked with us a bit about the stone work and explained that there was "male" and "female" stone, with the male stone being harder and smoother and the female stone being rougher and more prone to crumble (if I understood right). But even with this explanation, as I tried to distinguish between male and female stone, I was very seldom right (as the guide let me know).

I've read that the indigenous people of Taiwan are the originary ancestors of the Polynesians, an explanation that is based both on genetic and linguistic analysis. And I know that some of the Polynesian languages are mutually intelligible, so I asked the guide if I could speak some Hawaiian to him and if he could listen to see if he understood any of it. I recited some Hawaiian (the lyrics to "Maika'i Kaua'i") but he didn't recognize any of the words. We agree that it was a big distance between Taiwan and Hawai'i, and a long time that the languages had been developing independently of each other.

He explained to us that traditionally, when a young woman and a young man were courting, one would sit at one end of the table and the other at the other end, and that everyone in the family would watch (if I understood right). The couple could date, but they couldn't marry without the approval of the family. And the man needed to make himself useful, during the courting process, around the home of the woman, making fires, going hunting, etc. He had to work hard. After this explanation, the guide said, but that was a long time ago. Now that we watch American movies, we know courtship isn't that complicated and we can do anything we want.

He pointed to this carving and said that in the old times, there weren't cameras, so they needed to carve their ancestors.

Fireplace and a pot.

He pointed at the ground and said that in the old times, people would be buried under the stone floor. The house was a metaphorical womb, and so when you died, you were brought back to the house of your mother, back metaphorically to her womb, so that sibling were all buried together back in the womb from which they originated.

The village was empty except for one man and one woman. The man was carving a goat and the barrel of a gun.

The woman was cooking on a fire. I wondered but didn't ask how they became the sole occupants of the model village.

I looked at these carvings, particularly the ones on the right, and saw what I thought were iconographic analogues of Maui's fish hook. But when I asked about them, it turned out they were supposed to be snakes.

More snakes

After the tour of the village, we asked the guide where there was a good indigenous food restaurant. He pulled out his iphone and started to make us reservations. But then it turned out that we were standing right next to a restaurant, which was empty besides the attendant, since buses didn't bring tourists to this area.

I looked around the restaurant while the meal cooked.

I recognized these pieces of wood as coming from the same tree as the petrified flamingo or crane that I found on the beach the other day.

The park seemed to run along the side of a fantastic canyon of gray stone. The canyon was wide, and the river was just a ribbon of water.

There was a cactus in the restaurant.

And the food arrived. I found it interesting that the whole time we were at the restaurant in this abandoned part of the park, the attendant at the restaurant was blasting music by Eminem and other rap artists, but mostly by Eminem. If you want to hear some of the music while looking at this plate of food, scroll down and watch the brief video.

We opened the bamboo to get to the cooked rice.

Again, the snakes that looked like Maui's fish hook.

Fake pigs

Visiting another village

We watched some bamboo firecrackers, traditionally used to scare away enemies and birds. Scroll down to watch a video.

I acquiesced to having my picture taken in front of the sign.

Leaving, we stopped by an art gallery and I liked these plates.

This seemed like a cool bench with whale themes.

The snake shows up on Converse All-Stars.

Before we left, one of my hosts said that at first she had thought these carvings on the bench were of whales, but then she realized they were of seeds. When she said that, I doubted the seed theory at first because I was so inclined to think of the indigenous people as ocean-oriented, but then I looked more closely at several of the carvings and they were seeds not whales.

Some pictures of the canyon and river

Taken from a bridge

We walked around the nearby town.

On the side of the road, this scene.

I liked that these characters were made of of sticks

Food cooking on the side of the road. These stalls hardly seemed like they would have needed reservations made with an iphone.

We went to a bead factory/store. Beads seem to be a big item of production in the town.

Sign at the entrance.

Beads embedded in the pavement

After the bead store, we walked.

We found another building that had bead production going on, it was also a dance studio.

One of the exterior walls of the dance studio

Figure hanging on a fence along the way.

After we left the craft village, one of my hosts was interested in buying an indigenous cooking rock for her mother, so we asked around and were pointed further up the mountain. The man who had the rocks was working on building a model house in the traditional style.

My host considers her options in terms of cooking rocks.

And I look around the premises.

I slept for half of the hour drive back, and I woke up at this building.

I saw some carved coral

I saw what was apparently a Japan-Taiwan event

Further from the building I saw an amphibious vehicle.

A park

Looking back at the building we had just left. It was pointed out to me that the original German investors and designers of the building had experienced hard times because of the building's lack of feng shui.

This city receives more shipping containers than it ships out, so it has an excess.

Back to the building we had left. I'm not good at spotting these things, so I wondered about the feng shui on the inside.

It was time for dinner. Unfortunately, it was only the vegetables that didn't turn out blurry. (Well, maybe fortunately. I'm sure that if anyone actually looks at all of these pictures, they won't wish there were any more pictures than I've posted.)