Some important news from Taiwan that I forgot to report.

There used to be gold and copper mining on the northern coast of Taiwan. You can still see some of the derelict works.

In the evening of September 22^nd of this year, two thieves bored a hole through a chimney in one of the deserted factories, because they had heard that there were metals left over that could be sold. They worked for two hours with hammers, drills, and other tools to make a hole large enough for an adult to crawl through; there is some concern for their health, because the site is contaminated with heavy metals. They went to all this effort in order to steal two lead plates, each weighing over sixty kilograms; each plate is valued at around NT$1,000, so for all their effort, they would have netted a haul worth about US$62.00. Don’t forget that they not only had to bore that hole through the chimney to get in, but they also had to haul 120 kilograms of lead out and make their getaway. Just as well for them that they got caught in the act.

上述文依2007/09/24 00:09 記者:記者呂國寶、秦蕙蘭／基隆報導

兩名竊賊22日傍晚跑到台北縣濱海公路附近的廢棄鍊銅場，拿著簡單的工具，鑿破廢棄煙囪，闖入偷鉛塊。價值不到兩千元，卻重超過六十公的鉛塊，讓他們耗盡體力，當場被巡邏員警逮個正著。

高聳的白色煙囪，底下竟然破了個洞，差不多可以容納一個成人鑽狗洞，原來這個洞是這兩名竊賊花了兩小時的傑作，鐵鎚、鑿子地上一整排工具都是竊賊的最佳幫手，他們先將煙囪牆壁打破一個大洞再鑽入行竊，60多公斤的金屬鉛竟然只價值一千多元，竊賊累個半死換來的代價，卻是被巡邏員警人贓俱獲。

員警說：「竊賊看上三支大煙囪，他們聽鄰居講裡面有廢棄的鉛片可以拿來換錢。」兩名竊賊因為聽聞廢棄工廠有寶物遺留，才會冒著被污染的危險前往探險，現在寶物沒有找到，倒是先要到牢裡好好反省一翻。

捷運詩 : 詠雲 ：李敬邦

不從塵世不從龍

渺渺乘風上九重

出岫無心歸去也

眾山頭上化奇峰

前不久往山裏走，徑旁有一隻死禽。沒外傷、沒腫，所以我猜是錦蛇、南蛇絞死；沒幾隻蒼蠅，所以我猜剛死不久，也許我與狗來，驚擾了蛇，棄禽藏草中。

我沒看過那麼美的鳥。顏色鮮艷：赤、橘、藍、金。大小如雞，但尾長六十餘公分。也不知從何而來，因為斯山林，我偶爾走走，無它人涉足，附近也沒人住，怎會有這隻奇美異鳥？鮮麗羽毛，光亮耀眼，雖哀其死，卻難轉目。憑弔，看禽屍暴列逕邊，實不忍；往草叢輕擲。可是我先恭敬默念，與異禽要幾跟尾羽，一則以留念、觀賞，一則以辨認，究竟屬何種鳥？

後來請教賞鳥專家賴鵬智先生，才知道這是紅腹錦雞。可是這不是臺灣鳥種，怎麼會在野山密林中遇上？不解。

我看到錦雞，又驚又喜，又悲其死；讓我想到鳳凰。我們現代生活，真是多采多色；除了彩色攝影、彩視、燈光、螢光色彩，我們的衣服化學染，顏色鮮明。古人衣服都是草染，他們平日看不到我們習以為常的印刷、攝影等鮮色。如果是古人在曠山中遇奇色錦鳥，震撼比現代人更強烈。難怪有鳳凰之說，見斯紅腹錦雞，真如目睹神鳥。

A few weeks ago, while I was walking through the jungle, I came across the dead body of an extraordinarily beautiful bird. It looked like it had just been killed by a snake, which my dogs and I probably scared away. I plucked a few tail feathers and deposited the bird into the grass where I figured the snake would be. Nobody but me ever goes into that part of the jungle, and there are no houses near. I cannot for the life of me figure out what that bird was doing there. I have asked around, but nobody raises such birds.

The noted bird watcher Bird Lai has identified this as a red golden pheasant, not native to Taiwan. To give you an idea of how beautiful the bird was, here is a photo of a red golden pheasant taken by Bobby Castlebury of Brookston, Texas. Many thanks to Bobby and Aileen Castlebury of www.castlebury.net for kindly allowing me to use this photo!

I wrote this on September 21, 2002.
I had forgotten about it,
but remembered it talking with Sabiy.
I thought I lost the file one of the times my computer crashed, but I was able to find a copy.

Earthquake Boy

Liquy is, in a word, a good boy. When he was grade school, his father died. Ever since, he has been a great comfort to his mother, and a hard worker who is always willing to help his grandparents with rough work on the mountainside.

When he graduated from junior high, his mother didn’t have enough money to send him to high school. Liquy worked to earn what money he could, and won a basketball scholarship to a school in central Taiwan for aborigines.

In the fall of 1999, four Tayal boys from our village went down to central Taiwan to begin their classes. Upperclassmen from the same tribe showed them all around the beautiful mountains surrounding their school, so by the time classes began, Liquy was familiar with all the paths nearby.

Just after 1 AM, September 21, 1999, the island was struck by powerful earthquakes, 7.3 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was practically right under Liquy’s school. The four Tayal boys from Wulai rushed out of their dormitory as it collapsed around them. They took to the hills. They ran through the shaking mountains all night. When the sun rose, they reached a Tayal village. The villagers told them, “Everything’s okay, stay here with us. We’ll take care of you. We’re all the same tribe, so don’t be shy.” The boys were spooked, though, and after a rest, kept running. They reached the ridge across from the village and stopped for a rest. Just then, without warning, an enormous landslide buried the entire village. If Liquy and his friends had stopped there, they would have been interred there too, with all the people in the village. They kept running. Eventually, an Army helicopter found them, still running through the mountains, and took them to safety.

Liquy returned to Wulai. After a rest, his mother told him he should go back to school. The aborigine school was destroyed, but they found a nice school for him further south, in Minhsiung, on the plain where few earthquakes hit.

Few, but not none. Several days after Liquy entered school in Minhsiung, the plain was wrenched by a 6.8 earthquake, and again, Liquy’s dormitory fell down around him.

No more school. He came back to Wulai. We didn’t see him. He never left the house. His mother said he slept all day, and would sit quietly all night long.

After a couple months of this, his grandmother came for him. “Liquy, I need to chop some bamboo to make runners for the bean vines in my vegetable patch, but your uncle Silan is off in the mountains hunting boar. I am too old to chop bamboo by myself. Will you come help me?” For the first time since he came back north, Liquy left his house. He came to the bamboo grove in back of my home with his grandmother, and they spent the morning chopping bamboo. I offered to help, but his grandmother told me very quietly, “Liquy and I can handle it today.” Liquy nodded to me in greeting, but kept working wordlessly. If he noticed that his grandmother was chopping bamboo just as fast as he was, he didn’t say anything.

A few days later, his grandfather came. “Liquy, I need to check the pipes that bring our water from the spring. Silan hurt his wrist when he was hunting boar. I need someone to help line up the pipes and join them together. Will you come help me?” I saw them out tracking the pipes. Liquy smiled weakly, but said little.

I asked Silan, “Did you get any boar when you hurt your wrist?” He smiled and showed me that both of his wrists were fine, and no, he had not been out poaching boar, but he admitted that he did go off to hide in the mountains when Liquy came to chop bamboo.

Several days after that, Silan went to his sister’s house with his right wrist wrapped in a huge bandage. “Liquy, I need to check my traps, but my wrist is hurt, so I can’t climb very well. Will you come help me?”

Tramping through the mountains, Liquy came back to himself. Now he races to and from work on the motorcycle his grandparents bought him, and his smile is back. We’ve had dozens of earthquakes this year, but now, they don’t shake him. But he has said nothing of going back to school.

2007,11,25 note: Liquy has a job in a bank now

and a beautiful girlfriend, a Tayal from the eastern coast.

But he still has no intention of going back to school.

duh

Am I misunderstanding something again? I read a headline on Yahoo, Sex Offenders Have Higher Rate of Mental Illness: Men convicted of rape or other sexual offenses have a much higher-than-average rate of serious mental illness and history of psychiatric hospitalization, a new study suggests.

Excuse me? I thought rape and sexual offense was mental illness.

從前從前一個小村子裏有個大美人，就是住在河邊柳樹旁杏樹下的梅霜。那梅霜呀，不僅是墮雁沉魚之貌，並是乖巧嫻雅的一個好姑娘，她的刺繡，連縣城裏的大爺們，看著無不咨嗟稱詠。甚至，縣裏父母官娶媳婦時，特定要梅霜為他兒子繡一件喜袍。從此，梅霜名聲大噪，遠近大家豪門搶著訂梅霜的刺繡。梅霜雖然年裁十七八，也未字人兒，但她的荷包，卻可一天比一天重。

有一日呢，城禮一位巨室老奶奶，央請梅霜到她那兒會會面，並教導一下老奶奶孫女的針技；梅霜雖禮讓推辭，老奶奶堅持，姑娘便不熬，大叔二叔陪同下，赴城與老奶奶會一會，甚是愜意。

可是梅霜畢竟是鄉下村姑，沒見過世面；在她老家，全是務農為業，所以每一個人頭上，就是一頂斗笠。信不信由你，可是梅霜進城之前，沒看過帽子耶！她一看，奇怪，再看不怪，三看就愛。她與老奶奶問起，老奶奶知道了居然有人只看過斗笠沒看過帽子，教丫頭翻翻箱子，搜了三頂帽子，送與梅霜，作為紀念。

話說那梅霜回鄉，頭上戴著帽子，全村的人出來看、觀賞、討論。每一個人贊同，梅霜頭上戴帽子，的確美上加美。沒幾日，開店的張老爺就派媒提親，梅霜應允了，從此過著幸福快樂的日子。

村子裏其它姑娘看著，自量貌不得與梅霜比，可是帽子總可以比。所以村子裏所有姑娘，將斗笠往薪火扔，再也不戴，日夜絞盡腦汁設計帽子、製造帽子。一下子全村未婚姑娘，每一個頭尚戴的，是精緻巧妙的帽子。很快，選媳婦的要點，移到帽子。帽子不精巧的姑娘，沒人要娶。

就在茲時氛下，姑娘全心投入帽子，家務丟到後腦，不肯掃地、不肯起火、不肯顧竈、不肯澆菜，只肯為帽子。

另一方面，選媳婦的要求，只求帽子，慢慢造成很多不快樂的婚事，因為只看帽子不看人。

家家戶戶新婚夫妻，大多鬥嘴摔碗過日子。村子的爺們愈看，愈覺不妥。因此他們決定禁戴帽子，一概要戴斗笠；也強調，帽子再也不許可作為婚姻繩墨。他們說，

再也

不許

以帽娶人。

………

筆者說：看官，我已經給女主角取名梅霜，本就該心裡有數，很冷很冷。

筆者歎：很難想像，我竟花了我生命寶貴的三十分鐘編纂這麼無聊的故事。

現在臺灣政策，鼓勵生三個小孩，因為怕人口老化，三十年後一個納稅人養幾個退休人等。

我常覺得執政黨沒有遠見、缺乏想像，這點可為證。三十年前，沒有人猜想到電腦、網路等等對社會的影響；三十年前，全世界有幾個人開業賣行動電話？三十年後的經濟型態，沒人能預測，但可以保證兩點：

一，不是我們現在能想像的。美國教育部預計，二0一0年最強勢的十種職業，在二00四年根本不存在：六年科技變化太快，十年內需要利用現在仍不存在的科技解決我們現在尚未認出的嚴重問題。其中一項已經看出端倪了：快則十年慢則二十年，石油抽空了。對社會、對經濟的影響一定弘遠龐大，多生寶寶能解決嗎？

二，三十年後，人口多為患。三十年前油輪需要的人員大約幾十個；現在超大油輪大到三十年前無法想像，船員七八個就夠了：自動化。

自動化、電腦化，生那麼多孩子幹麼？等他們來收我們的爛攤子嗎？可憐他們吧！

政要思想仍囿于丁多族旺的農家觀念；畢竟臺灣社會裏重男輕女，大有人在。有問題的話，丟給女人：經濟問題也用子宮緩和，反正女人生來就是要為男人多生貴子，勞苦一下嘛！又不是沒有給妳房子住！我如果是女性的話，我看政府鼓勵多生，我會問，誰要幫你生那麼多孩子？有本事，男人自己生生看！

擔心納稅人不夠養退休人，不如減少不必要的浪費：少開路、簽約時已落伍的昂貴武器少買、抽煙或酗酒或吃檳榔的人喪失健保、不要浪費納稅員辛苦賺的錢強迫推行沒有意義的公投、大官少ㄟ錢、不要花巨款與些許無法舉足輕重的小國玩「外交」遊戲、減少沒有實用的工程等等，其實有很多方法可以減輕納稅人的負擔。

希望執政黨不要一直用農業社會的習性來看現狀。鼓勵多生孩子，可能合農村阿公阿媽的想法，而不可否認，執政黨欠他們的人情很大，因為不是農村阿公阿媽有耐心坐遊覽車，還有誰會參加執政黨的街頭秀？

可是我深深感到，臺灣民主必須突破黨爭的僵局。為民造福，不在于用爭權手段，更不在于不何時需的老舊思想。

Translation Exercise: Pearls of Chinese Wisdom

原文：心有靈犀一點通

英譯：In our hearts, we have a spiritual rhinoceros coming through at one o’clock.

Years ago, it was generally believed that the only reason a Westerner would come to Taiwan was an insatiable craving for Opera Masks, and that the Westerner would be incapable of procuring these unassisted, but had to have his craving satisfied by his local hosts, friends, and acquaintances.

If you have never seen opera masks, allow me to explain that roles in Chinese opera are depicted by brightly colored faces. Traditionally, artists have painted all the faces for the various roles on paper and circulated what are called Face Directories 臉譜. All well and good, until some miserable wretch got the idea of making little masks, about the size of a pigeon egg, and painting them like Face Directories, half a dozen mounted on a board and framed, suitable for hanging. Hanging is the word! Too good for the mutt who started this. 始作臉譜板者，其無後乎! If you’ve seen one, they’re ok, but when you’ve seen sixty or seventy, they start to look tacky, and by the time you’ve been presented with a hundred, you understand why I say hanging is too good for the mutt who first placed little opera masks on a board.

Those were the days when it was still okay to be proud of your Chinese cultural heritage, but even still, no local home I ever visited ever displayed these things.

Actually, though, the opera masks were not so bad, at least not before overkill. At least they were colorful. What really repulsed me was the bronzes. Two, three thousand years ago, China produced spectacular bronze ritual vessels, many of which now grace the Palace Art Museum, where they serve as a silent embarrassment to the Bean regime, as reminders of the glory of Chinese art. The bronzes are pieces of dignity, beauty, and endless attraction.

Some benighted soul got the idea of making one inch high copies in ugly green metal and pasting them on a board for the torment of unlucky foreigners. The ratio usually ran about 5:2. For every five Face Directories you got, you’d get about two sets of ugly little green plastic bronzes. I appreciate the generosity of kind hosts who wasted money on these monstrosities, but am quite happy that they have disappeared.

Well, not entirely. There are still sets lurking around various closets against the day that old Chen or Lin stops in for a visit. What can you do with them?

Mail them to Aunt Harriet in Iowa City hoping she might be able to raffle them off at a church benefit. That might work.

But please, allow us a little bit of dignity. First scrape off the part that says MADE IN TAIWAN.

童謠

一群十歲左右的快樂小男生走在館前路，邊猜拳邊大聲唱：

明‧天‧早‧上‧吃‧很‧多‧‧牛糞！

A group of cheerful ten year old boys walking near the Taipei Main Station, playing Paper Scissors Stone and chanting:

Tomorrow ‧morning‧ eat‧ a lot of ~~~ cowshit!

Today I came across the tiniest snail I have ever seen.

Sraran ga, musa mgaga na Tayal, lukus toyah:

In the old days, when Tayal went headhunting, they wore a special toyah / stomacher, or rather, chest bib. They were brightly colored and decorated with buttons and beads.

On July 23, 2007, I posted a photo of the obeja charm. To quote myself, I said, “Inside the gourd on the top of the obeja was secured a small version of a tokan/pack, woven out of cloth instead of naku (ggi/ramie thread), with pom-poms and locks of hair on each corner.” I think the small pack inside the gourd could be the same thing as this ceremonial toyah, partly because they look alike, partly because in Uta/南澳, the toyah is called obeja.

Much as the Tayal culture interests me, much as I wish the Tayal thrive, I have to confess that I consider it just as well that headhunting is a thing of the past. In the 70s, I saw a lot of old Tayal men with tattooed faces, but it has been a couple years since I last saw one. As the Old Time Religion fades into the past, details are forgotten. I cannot say with surety that the headhunting toyah were stored in the obeja, but to me it seems likely.

The two photos above are taken from old photographs.

The other one is me with Meilu the weaver, modeling a toyah she made.

有人喜歡故弄玄虛，把任督二脈說的好神，其實要通這兩脈很簡單。有點修行基礎、吃素的人，要通，幾分鐘就可以了。嘴巴不淨的人，肚裏有死屍，比較難，要多一點功夫才通；抽煙的人想要通就很難。

通任督二脈不是很難的事；通了固然好，可是也不必想的太神奇。重要的是中脈吧。

Taiwan doesn’t have much in the way of cold weather, and since it’s an island, the temperature bobs up and down like a cork on waves.

This may be why I have seen snakes every month of the year, and down to 12 degrees centigrade. This morning my careful calculations about whether I should get out of bed or sleep a bit longer were disturbed, as usual, by Yumin’s barking. However, it quickly became apparent that he was barking at a snake, so I grabbed my camera and rushed down for the photo op.

This is a 青蛇, smooth green snake, cyclophiops major, non-venomous. Yumin barked at it, Tlahuy glowered at it, and Byajing stayed by my side to protect me from it. After I got some shots, I took a stick and prodded it off into the grass. It disappeared instantly.

Mormons are good people. Two of the men I esteem most highly – my teachers Mr Ed Parker and Mr Tom Garriga – are Mormons. That said, when I spy Mormon missionaries, I bend my head and rush my way, lest I be entangled in the dread dull Book of Mormon.

All due respect, you can’t help wondering how anybody can believe that gobbledygook, if indeed anybody reads it. Mark Twain did, and Roughing It has a hilarious account of his trip to visit the Mormons on the way to the silver mines.

And it came to pass that Twain discussed The Book of Mormon, which he called ‘chloroform in print.’ And it came to pass that I noticed something in his quotation from The Book of Nephi, out on the ocean in the middle of a mutiny:

And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, did cease to work…. And it came to pass that after they had loosed me, behold, I took the compass and it did work whither I desired it.

Now everybody knows the compass was invented by the Chinese, and certainly not used at sea much before 1000AD. Behold, is it not miraculous that Nephi, supposedly crossing the ocean thousands of years before that, did have a compass?

No wonder it did come to pass: compass…

It's hardly surprising to see Bush using his veto powers to protect the tobacco industry. He may feel he hasn't killed enough people in Iraq, so he needs help from cigarets.

Congress’s plan to raise the tax on cigarets to discourage smoking is being thwarted by moneyed interests. The Philip Morris website says, “Taxing smokers in unfair.” I disagree. Taxing normal people to support smokers is unfair. Everybody knows smoking causes heart disease, lung cancer, bad teeth, bad breath, and too many other diseases to go into, without providing a single benefit. Normal people even have to help pay for the 12kg of litter the average smoker produces annually!

Every single smoker burdens the public health care system. There is a problem with taxing cigarets, because if cigarets are expensive, smokers smoke way down to the filter, where all the carcinogens are, thereby removing themselves from polite society even more quickly. Whether or not this is a bad thing, I do see the point that taxing cigarets more heavily may not be ideal.

I have a better solution. I propose that all smokers forfeit their public health care benefits. If you smoke, you lose all your rights to any health care supported by taxes. Why should the rest of us have to pay to keep them alive when they’re working daily to trash their own bodies?

this showed up on www.overheardinnewyork.com shortly after I posted the above:
Customer: I need cigarettes.
Cashier, pleasantly: How would you like to kill yourself?
Customer, expressionless: Newports.
Cashier: Here you go.

--CVS, 25th & 6th

Did you hear about the stuffed cat somebody made? The seams were flawed so the stuffings leaked, until finally the cat was empty, nothing inside.

This is the origin

of the

famous

Hollow Kitty.

我常跟學生講，寫作be concrete, be specific。任何敘述該如斯。

計程車上聽報導，一位善心女士為偏遠貧窮地區孩子收二手文具：我從新生南路上車聽到南門市場下車，還不知道偏遠貧窮地區在哪裡！

“那裡很窮，小孩子沒錢買文具，所以我們要幫他們送。他們那裡買東西也不方便，因為很偏僻，他們經濟狀況實在不好，可是我認為，如果他們可以受教育，生活可以改善。可是他們很窮，他們真的很貧困，所以需要大家幫忙，所以我們想幫助他們。他們那裡非常缺乏文具，所以我們想送二手文具給他們，大家如果有二手文具可以交給我們，我們當郵差，送到那裡，給那邊的小孩…”

聽了老半天，還是不知道『那裡』到底是哪裡？？完全不知道是在臺灣、非洲、南美洲─好像是她的秘密。也沒交代，需要的是哪一種二手文具：寫完、沒水的原子筆要送嗎？

On his latest tape, Osama bin Laden said, “A happy man is one who dies for his religion.” Jay Leno said, “Do you ever notice the one who is giving the advice is never the one blowing himself up?”

In my understanding of these matters, anybody who dies violently for his religion, kills for his religion, or exhorts others to do so, places himself directly in hell. However, saying or thinking bad things about other religions is a very serious wrongdoing in Buddhism, so I wish to state my very sincere wish that Osama makes himself a happy man! The sooner the better.

Have you smiled today?

It has long been my belief that every one of us has the duty to reduce our waste and pollution. Reducing pollution means not only actively choosing a bus over a car, or a non-polluting car over a polluting car, but other less obvious ways. Reduce your use of products that are produced in environmentally harmful ways. In other words, if Product A is made in a factory which pollutes and Product B is made in a clean factory, of course you should support Product B.

By the same token, you cannot say you are serious about protecting the environment if you eat meat or fish, because the production of meat or the catching of fish are the among the most environmentally destructive acts there are, short of nuclear explosions. As the Mad Cowboy, Howard Lyman said, “To be an environmentalist who happens to eat meat is like being a philanthropist who doesn’t happen to give to charity.” Any serious environmentalist is a vegetarian. Period.

But what else can be done? Recently Taipei garbage trucks are collecting clean plastic bags for recycling. Unfortunately, this hasn’t reached Wulai yet, but I have been trying to cut down my use of plastic bags. Aside from reusing them, what else can be done?

I hit upon a great solution: abaw ngayaw /芋頭葉/ taro leaves. These grow wild all around Taiwan; years ago, before the cheap production of plastic bags, produce in markets was wrapped in taro leaves. Unrefrigerated, they last five or six days; refrigerated, well over a week. My groceries are delivered weekly in big canvas bags. I wrap them in taro leaves, bind them with rubber bands (still working on that), and pop them in the fridge.

As far as I can see, the only drawback to this is that taro leaves are inedible, so you don’t want to mix any scraps in with your vegetables.

Taro grows like crazy, at least in this climate. Dream: rooftops all over Taiwan covered with pots of taro growing for the residents to use. The taro on the rooftops would lower the temperature indoors, and the need for air conditioning, as well as providing fresh air. Possible?

If anyone would like a starter taro plant, please let me know.

PS: I have been using 月桃葉、筋 various vines and natural strings instead of rubber bands. It’s working pretty well.

Ask not what the planet can do for you; ask rather what you can do for the planet.

One of those fascinating observations that take up so much of my attention:

In The Crow Indians (1935), Robert H Lowie notes ”When a person died from natural causes …members of his family cut their hair, chopped off finger joints, and gashed themselves…. In 1907, many of the old and middle-aged Crow lacked a finger joint….. Old women… had lost the tip of each finger, and some even had cut off farther; the men were careful to spare the two first fingers of the right hand, which were used in bending the bow.”

Under the Mountain Wall by Peter Matthiessen is a record of first observations, in 1961, of a previously unknown mountain tribe deep in New Guinea.

After the funeral of a tribesman named Ekitamalek, “there took place a mutilation. Though a few older men cut fingers in time of grief, it is usually the smallest girls who are selected for this ceremony, and a woman in the valley whose left hand is not a stump is very rare. On this same day the first two joints of the outside fingers were hacked from the left hands of Ekitamalek’s small sisters, in sign of mourning.”

Strange that societies so widely removed as the inland Crow and the island Dani, on the other side of the world, should both mourn by the same method, of chopping off finger joints.

Isn’t that fascinating?

No?

Well, if you ask me, I think it proves that aliens from outer space made the pyramids.

After afternoon class yesterday I took the subway to the 南門市場South Market to see if the long overdue shipment of Middle Eastern figs had arrived. No figs for me, so I bought dates instead, and had dinner at a nearby vegetarian cafeteria.

I had time before my evening class and the weather was nice, so I decided to walk back by way of the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. As usual, there were a lot of people enjoying the early evening: a large number of students, lovers, young parents with their kids, old folks out for a walk. A large, happy crowd gathered on the steps of the theater and on the plaza to watch a slapstick skit. Two masked costume actors pretended to be video game heroes while their movements were ‘controlled’ by two guys sitting on the side lines. Even though it was blatantly advertising a video game joystick, and they were really hamming it up, the skit was very well done. Everybody laughed and clapped and shouted replies to the MC. There was some noise coming from outside the Memorial, but nobody paid it any attention.

I couldn’t stay too long. On leaving the Memorial, I saw a long line of tour buses on 中山南路 the street. The Regime is doing a hard sell on a referendum for Taiwan Independence, thinly disguised as a question whether Taiwan should join the UN: as if the UN would allow Taiwan to join. The street in front of the President’s Office was blocked off, and performers on a temporary stage were blasting out a heavy metal version of 燒肉粽/Hot Rice Balls. It’s always either Hot Rice Balls or The Ragpicker; you’d think Taiwan had only two songs. Let me tell you, a maudlin song is not improved by being blasted out heavy metal.

As usual with the DPP’s spontaneous demonstrations, the demonstrators were all old folks bussed in from the country by the Party. Aside from the singers onstage and a couple young people pedaling Taiwan tee shirts, I was the youngest person around, and I’m over 50. (not counting the police directing traffic.) I observed that all of the “demonstrators” I saw were the typical old folks of the most extreme conservative bent, the kind who are still resisting assimilating to the 20^th century. They are lost in the big city, so they rarely come, and at home they don’t have anything better to do with their time: if you come to a demonstration, you get a free ride to the city in a nice tour bus, a free boxed dinner, caps, and flags to wave, you can take those flags home and stick them in the field to use as scarecrows.

The people onstage were working hard to try to get the audience to sing along or to shout slogans, but the old-timers were all busy shoveling down their boxed dinners. Nobody sang along, nobody shouted slogans. The mood among the demonstrators was grim. I saw no smiles, no happy chatter, just old folks determined to get the demonstration done with and go home. They didn’t even seem to be enjoying their free dinners.

I saw a line of old folks marching down the street with their flags and banners held askew. It looked more like a funeral procession. Dour looks on every aged face as they trudged along in silence, following a party regular shouting through a megaphone like relatives following a professional mourner.

When I got to work, I asked arriving students if there were crowds on the MRT (subway). The students seemed surprised at my question; they didn’t even know there was a demonstration going on overhead as they came to class. I think this goes to show that, as usual, the demonstrators did not come from Greater Taipei, but were bussed in on those busses lined up outside.

The demonstration was a great contrast to the buoyant crowd watching the video skit, and not much larger. It was depressing, to say the least. Somebody I work with, who has studied in the US, said, “I wish the government would stop pressuring us about this stupid referendum. Also, they should stop torturing those old folks!(不要再折磨阿公阿媽!).”

看今天的blog之前，請大家把毛衣、外套先穿好，慎防感冒

張三丰六十歲拋家訪道，七十歲師父授訣得真傳，而張三丰的師父，是火龍真人。

有人問，張三丰的師父火龍真人真的有修成嗎？

我很肯定地說：有！

何以知之？

有圖

為證，

火

龍

真

人

真

的

修

到

果

位

。

↓

我話已經講在前頭，感冒的話休怪我。

Remember that old song, Give me that old time religion? Yeah! Let’s hear it for Old Time Religion!

The Old Time Religion had spunk and spirit! No whimpering or whining, but real brass knuckle sermons! Take Jonathan Edwards, the famous Massachusetts revivalist in the 18^th century. Let’s hark back to the preaching of this renowned pastor. Here’s a sample of the REAL old time religion, quoted from a typical sermon:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over a fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; His wrath towards you burns like fire: He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in His eyes than the most hateful and venomous serpent is in ours…. You sit here in the house of God, provoking His pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending His solemn worship.

Amen! That’s real preaching, now! Okay, everybody, sing along with me!!

Give me that old time religion it's good enough for me,
Well it was good enough for mother, it was good enough for papa,
It was good enough for sister, and it's good enough for me
Give me that old time religion...