Alishan, where you can kiss the clouds

Alishan was a place we had been interested in visiting for a long time but had never really gotten around to. The occasion of Erin's (Andrea's sister) stay with us mandated for getting up into the mountains. We live very close to the coast and so showing Erin the beach here was easy. But we couldn't let Erin leave the country without experiencing Taiwan at elevations greater than 100 metres above sea level, especially not when mountains are so central to the character of Taiwanese geography and at the heart of conceptions of Taiwan in general.

I've circled Alishan on the map above. To say that we went to Alishan is actually pretty vague and requires a bit of clarification. Alishan could refer to: A) The Alishan mountain range ("Alishan" in Chinese literally means "Ali Mountain"); B) The Alishan National Scenic Area, which is like a national park; or C) The township of Alishan. We caught a bus from Chiayi to Alishan township up in the mountains. The scenery on the way up was a wonderful reprieve from the flatness of Tainan.

And when we got to the top we found beautiful mountain vistas, cool fresh air, a different range of flora and fauna, and ... Starbucks. And a giant car park. Oh well, it wasn't a great surprise, just a disappointing inclusion within a beautiful setting.

We had booked our accommodation before we left Tainan and after a couple of queries we managed to locate our hotel down the hill from the main car park. Our room was fresh and light and didn't smell of stale cigarette smoke. Incredibly, the temperature was cool enough that we could lie under heavy quilts and feel very comfortable. Back in Tainan we would have been sleeping on top of our beds with the fan blowing on us all night. The temperature up here in the mountains had the effect of rapidly energizing us, or so I found.

We left our hotel room to do a bit of scouting about before the day's end but first we needed some nourishment, and what better place to find nutritious nourishment than the local 7-11. We consumed some nourishing drinks, pumpkin seeds, and baked snacks which fortified us against the demanding ramble that was to follow.

I think the wall upon which this mosaic resides is part of the wall that defines the boundary between the township and the National Scenic Area proper. We had passed through a checkpoint and paid an entry fee for the national park on the way up in the bus. Erin and Andrea could be sisters in this photo. I guess that's not as surprising as the implication that they might not be sisters in other photos.

We found our way to one of the two Giant Trees Trails within the park. These trails take the pedestrian sightseer through some magnificent stands of very tall trees, the cypress being notable among these. During the Japanese occupation of Taiwan from 1895-1945 the Japanese constructed a railway line from Chiayi up to the Alishan range to make logging of the cypress here feasible. Today the same railway line is famous as the Alishan Forest Railway, the red engine of which has become synonymous with Alishan and appears on all manner of related advertising and paraphernalia. The walk trail was fantastic. It was so refreshing to be among such tall trees and the air smelled of living things.

Erin and I stand in a shaft of sunlight that cuts its way through the blanket of shadow covering almost everything at ground level. This felt like a real forest.

On our walk-about we took a path through a grove of cherry blossoms and found this view of the clouds smothering the mountains at the end of the day. It was a beautiful evening, a world away from Tainan.

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The following morning we took the famous Alishan Forest Railway down the mountains to Chiayi. You pass through three climatic zones (some sources claim four zones) on the way down and there was a noticeable change in vegetation as the train descended. However, there was also a noticeable change in our opinion of the forest railway as we realised that it was quite loud, clunky, and not too comfortable. The whole journey from Alishan to Chiayi took some four hours (including the short hike from one rail line to another halfway down the mountain) and we were more than happy to alight at the end of the journey.

Inspiring views on the way down compensate for some of the discomfort of the old train.

The end of the line in Chiayi and relief for us all as we are able to experience the joy of walking again. You can see that famous engine behind us.

Our trip to Alishan really broke up our routines, both practical and psychological, and allowed us to exist in a very different space for a weekend. Andrea and I want to return to the area and hike the Fenqihu trail but there's no word yet on when the Forest Railway or the Fenqihu trail will reopen after being damaged by Typhoon Morakot.

A few links: Forestry Bureau site, really nice National Scenic Area site, the Wikipedia site.

The World Games in Kaohsiung: Sumo

The sumo competition was probably my favorite event, of those that I saw anyway. It was surprising in as much as the spectacle at hand differed markedly from what I can not but help imagine sumo to be. Not all the competitors were male and not all of them were Japanese or Asian. Some of them didn't even look heavy. I remember the indignation (we imagine) suffered by one of the smaller competitors when, after the match was started by the referee, his opponent simply picked him up without a great deal of effort and placed him down outside the ring, winning the match; that got quite a reaction from the crowd.

The spectators: (from left) Tim & Lei, me, Andrea, Andrea's sister Erin, Lee, and Dan.

Before the bouts could begin there was an opening performance of sorts involving Chinese dragons and a whole lot of drumming and cymbal-smashing. Note the sumo ring or dohyo, built to specifications laid down during centuries of sumo wrestling in Japan.
(for a link to a decent site with loads of information (more than you want) about the dohyo and other aspects of sumo, try this one): http://www.tangoll.com.hk/Sumodohyo.html


Traditionally, women weren't allowed into the dohyo for any reason at any time. Apparently, women's sumo isn't considered authentic by most Japanese and women are prohibited from competing beyond amateur events. However, the World Games includes a full men's and a full women's competition and so would be seen as an amateur competition by those closer to the traditions and legacy of sumo wrestling in Japan. For more information you can check the Wikipedia page and follow the relevant links within.

Note in this photo the referees and the other contestants. The role of the sumo referee (or gyoji) is critical and bound up with the history of the sport. From the sample of female sumo wrestlers in this photo you can get an idea of how the contestants in this competition might differ from those that the word sumo tends to conjure up. You can see representatives from Taiwan (TPE), Hungary (HUN), Australia (AUS), and Italy (ITA).


The usual roles are reversed here as a diminutive Russia takes on a Ukrainian behemoth. This just seems a bit unfair.


Australian sumo wrestlers? What would Australian sumo wrestlers look like if they existed? Well, they do exist. Two male and two female sumo wrestlers appeared at the tournament. Sadly, they were all knocked out in the first round of eliminations. This guy actually looks like what I imagine an Australian sumo wrestler would look like if I could imagine it. It's kind of weird. Sitting behind him on the right is a wrestler from New Zealand (NZL). I noticed that the Australians and New Zealanders were pretty comfortable with each other. The guy about to wrestle in this shot ended up out of the ring and must have hurt his foot because he had trouble getting back up the small set of stairs into the ring again to finish the bout with the obligatory bow. I got emotional when the New Zealander helped him up. All those jokes about New Zealanders having sex with sheep were just jokes.

A classic bout between one of the Egyptians (I think) and the guy from Taiwan (I think). This bout lasts longer than most. I love the way that one helps the other at the end. I'm getting emotional again, but we're talking about men fighting each other so it's okay for me to get emotional, being a man and all.

The World Games in Kaohsiung: Ultimate Frisbee

Apparently the Frisbie Pie Company of Connecticut sold their pies (in tins) to a lot of university campuses in New England and the students started throwing the tins around, and from this beginning we would eventually add the noun "frisbee" to our collective lexicon for describing a round plastic disc designed to be thrown through the air from person to person. Of course, "Frisbee" itself is now a trademarked brand name and the Wham-O company who own the trademark and sell the genuine Frisbee have long begrudged the use of their name without any input or return. The flying-disc game played as part of the World Games is generally called Ultimate Frisbee in informal settings. However, the calculated wrath of the Wham-O company has seen the trademarked appellation dropped from the title of the sport leaving the official title as "Ultimate".

Erin, Andrea, John, and Dan survey the scene just after we arrived at the Flying Dragon stadium.
I'm not sure which teams these are. Let's call them the red team and the white team.

The stadium continued to fill up as the Ultimate matches went on. Interestingly, the seats seemed to be filled by a wave of new spectators that slowly swept from the seats nearest to the entry gates to those at the far end of the stadium. We were sitting in an area all by ourselves for a while and then suddenly... we were surrounded. Are there cultural differences in stadium seat choice?

Almost nobody wanted to sit on the other side of the stadium near the sunlight. In fact, later as the sun crept around to the near side of the stadium, people got up and left to relocate themselves in the shade. That's normal I guess, but just a little more exaggerated in some Asian cultures.

Part of the backbone of the Flying Dragon above the main entry gates.

Wow. Stadium games like Ultimate Frisbee sure make interesting material for blogging about [sarcastic]. The red and white teams again. Unless these are two different red and white teams. I don't know.

In the distance the scoreboard hangs suspended in mid-air and time is distended by the space, the light, and the spectacle. To be honest, Ultimate Frisbee is something I'd rather play than watch. I think I spent a good deal of time reading the newspaper and listening to my mp3 player. I'm just not excited by a lot of spectator sports but it was nice to be out in a different city with friends. By the way, Edward "Steady Ed" Headrick, the "father of the modern frisbee", apparently wanted to be cremated and "to have his ashes molded into memorial flying discs and given to family and close friends" according to the San Francisco Chronicle. You might be tempted to think of his desire as a bit pie in the sky.

The World Games in Kaohsiung: Acrobatic Gymnastics

Acrobatic Gymnastics is something of a marriage between gymnastics and dance and there is an emphasis on continuous movement. I feel like such a philistine. It is obvious that there is an incredible amount of skill in these Acrobatic Gymnastics routines and the timing of the individuals in each team is amazing when you consider that there may be six of them, synchronized almost perfectly. However, I just can't seem to be moved much by any of it. Anyway, here's a quick tour of a few random aspects of Acrobatic Gymnastics. If you wanted to know more then you could click here.

The team from Great Britain create an impressive human tower. This stuff must be hard on the joints. How much force or weight does it take to dislocate someone's knee from its socket? How much pressure will a femur take before it breaks? The photographers seem to be impressed. What does it take to become an aerobic gymnast?

Well, you've got to have a team outfit. No one goes for plain blues or subdued reds; it's about flames and swirls and whorls.

And now the Ukrainian team will demonstrate a method for getting the forth man to the top of the tower to perform a one-handed hand-stand:

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3. Simple!

This video shows the Chinese team's kung-fu-inspired routine and is actually kind of cool. Did I say I was unmoved by this sport? Well, perhaps I am moved after all. But only a little bit.

I have chosen to end this commentary on aerobic gymnastics ends with this photo for which I have no comment other than a vague exclamation of bemusement, something like, "Uh?".

The World Games in Kaohsiung 2009: Introduction

After Taipei, Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan and this year the city hosted the 2009 World Games. Beijing may have won the right to host the Olympic Games in 2008 but Kaohsiung won the bid for the World Games. Never heard of the World Games? Well, the World Games are held quadrennially in the years following the Olympic Games. These World Games are really a showcase for a variety of sports and athletic pursuits that aren't as popular as those that make up the Olympic Games. In some cases sports have migrated from one to the other Games over the years. In other cases some of the sports on the agenda of the 2009 World Games were included for the first time in either the Olympics or World Games. And what kind of lesser-known sports are we talking about? Here is a list I found at The International World Games Association website:

• Aikido
• Air Sports
• Archery
• Billiards
• Body-Building
• Boules Sports
• Bowling
• Canoe
• Casting Sport
• Climbing
• Dance Sport
• Fistball
• Flying Disc
• Gymnastics
• Handball
• Hockey
• Ju-Jitsu
• Karate
• Korfball
• Life Saving
• Netball
• Orienteering
• Powerlifting
• Racquetball
• Roller Sports
• Rugby
• Squash
• Sumo
• Surfing
• Tug of War
• Underwater Sports
• Water Ski

The majority of these titles are the names of the events although some are categories which can be further expanded upon. For example, Gymnastics is an umbrella term for five individual events: Acrobatic Gymnastics, Aerobic Gymnastics, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Trampoline Gymnastics, and Tumbling Gymnastics. If you've never heard of Tumbling Gymnastics, that's okay. Most people have probably never heard of the World Games. I only know of it because there was a Commodore 64 computer game based on it (although that computer game was more of a parody, including events like pillow-fighting and pogo-sticking).

While the World Games are relatively unknown compared with the behemoth that is the Olympic Games, they are gaining in popularity with every rendition enacted. Here is a table with a few pertinent statistics demonstrating the growth of the World Games since their inception:

The World Games in the Past

Year	City	Total Sports	Total Nations	Total Participants
1981	Santa Clara (USA)	18	n/a	1265
1985	London (GBR)	23	n/a	1550
1989	Karlsruhe (GER)	19	n/a	1965
1993	The Hague (NED)	25	69	2275
1997	Lahti (FIN)	30	78	2600
2001	Akita (JPN)	31	93	3200
2005	Duisburg (GER)	38	89	3400
2009	Kaohsiung (TPE)	31	105	4800

I found those statistics at the official World Games Kaohsiung 2009 website. Speaking of Kaohsiung, here's a picture of a Kaohsiung landmark:

At 347.5 metres the Tuntex Sky Tower is currently the second-tallest building in Taiwan after the Taipei 101. Interestingly the pronged design (there is a gap between the two bottom sections) was inspired by the Chinese character for 'tall' ['gao']. Personally, the idea of basing the shape of a skyscraper on a letter or a symbol seems like something straight out of a fictional movie or cartoon; for example, the evil overlord Zorg would live in a structure with the shape of a giant 'Z'. But the Tuntex Sky Tower certainly is distinctive.

The view of the 'Flying Dragon' - the World Games Main Stadium from the World Games MRT station (MRT stands for Mass Rapid Transit or Metropolitan Rapid Transit). Lots of trees here. Nice.

From the World Games MRT station you walk up the street toward the main stadium and in the centre of this photo is the tail end of the skeletal 'Flying Dragon'. I have no idea what that red twisty thing is. It could be an architectural rendering of an impression of flames, or a structure based on the triple-helic DNA structure that dragons might have. Or perhaps the organising comittee liked someone's architectural impression of a red twisty thing and so they had it constructed and stuck in the ground near the flying dragon. Maybe.

Nothing special about this photo. It's just a cool image. If I was feeling more pretentious I might tell you that this photo represents the other crucial aspect of the games - the 'they' in "If you build it they will come". But I had oatmeal for breakfast and so I'm not feeling particularly pretentious today.

A Day out at the 2009 Tainan International Boat Fair & Oceanic Culture Exhibition

Hoist the main brace, scrub the poop deck, and winch the yard arm into a satisfactorily-compliant-with-the-relevant-marine-statutes position! The 2009 Tainan International Boat Fair & Oceanic Culture Exhibition was held last month and brought together a whole lot of stuff that had a whole lot to do with water - especially the salty, briny kind. The purpose of the 2009 Tainan International Boat Fair & Oceanic Culture Exhibition is officially to:

"... create new values for the city, expand maritime industries and create economic values, while starting from static and dynamic displays to encourage all citizens to participate. At the end, we hope to promote Tainan City through integrated marketing and establish quality images of the country."

Yes, yes. I couldn't have put it better myself. I took that quote from the 2009 Tainan International Boat Fair & Oceanic Culture Exhibition website which can be found here .

I don't know about you but I find that a title like 2009 Tainan International Boat Fair & Oceanic Culture Exhibition is a little too long and cumbersome and by the time I get most of the way through saying it I've lost my cognitive grasp on the start of it. Perhaps, from now on, I'll just refer to it as the TIBFOCE2009. Ah yes, that's much better. And now I beg your indulgence as I continue to quote from the very quotable TIBFOCE2009 website regarding the government's hopes for the exhibition's effect on people:

"The City Government hopes to bring in the vision of development, natural landscaping, historic and cultural edges and the population yacht building industry to encourage people to get close to the sea, love the sea and do good deeds to the seas while improving their knowledge and experience about the cultural and historic monuments."

You have to be careful not to injure yourself on those 'cultural edges'. There is one more quote I will take from the website - the best quote by far. Right at the end of the Mayor of Tainan's speech found this gem:

"And may the event harbor great success."

I like that mayor. And that's in a second language too.


You can see a lot of TIBFOCE activity on the other side of the river. In the foreground (but behind my head) are the piers where fishermen tie up their boats.

Down in the water you can see a pier from which kayaks and canoes were being rented. For a while we toyed with the idea of buying our own kayak in Taiwan and plying the rivers of the city at dusk. But dusk is the best time for mosquitoes so we won't be doing that.

Andrea's sister comes to Taiwan

In July Andrea's sister, Erin, came to visit and stayed with us for over two weeks. It really is great to have someone from home come to visit so that you can share your home away from home with them, although when you come from places like Canada and Australia, Taiwan is more like a world away from home. When we get the opportunity to share someone else's first experience of Taiwan it prompts us to see things anew again and consider our environment from an outside perspective, something that we wouldn't usually do due to the amount of time we've spent living here and our habituation to the environment. All of the amazing and interesting things here in Taiwan have become normal for us but of course for someone like Erin, visiting for the first time, things are... just... similar but different. Anyway, we had a great time having her here and I'm sure it was a great experience for her.

Erin paid a visit to Andrea's school and talked to the children in Andrea's class. Not having been there, I can only assume that Erin was talking to them about her work with the Emergency Services in Canada and not teaching them about the differences between North American and Taiwanese fashion.

I wasn't present when the girls got their massage either but I'm sure it was a very positive aspect of the cultural experience.

Here we are at a local night market. I've just purchased a mixed-fruit juice from the juice stall next to us. You can buy all sorts of night-market snacks in these places and you can also find cheap clothes, shoes, and accessories besides other knick-knacks and random things. Taiwanese people seem to love to be where everyone else is so these places can get very crowded and sometimes a little overwhelming when you're shuffling along behind the person in front of you trying to get from point A to point B without being jostled about too much.

Here's Erin on the grounds of one of Tainan's many multifarious temples. This one is very famous and very old; it's called the Confucius Temple (that should probably be Confucian Temple but who am I to argue with what they call their important places of worship). I think I remember that this place was also a school for Confucian scholars. I don't know whether to capitalise Confucian or not but I think I might err on the side of caution and give it a big C.

And here's a temple roof. Temple roofs are works of art and some are covered in highly detailed and intricate decorations. Going by what I've seen they often portray the deity or entity being honored, usually in the process of doing whatever it is that they are renowned for doing.

Erin returned to Canada after a busy couple of weeks with us. I'm sure she now misses Taiwanese style ice teas and being able to go to the beach. Taiwan sure is an interesting and challenging place.

Typhoon Marakot

On Friday August 7th typhoon Morakot slammed into Taiwan. The centre of the typhoon passed directly over the north-east coast of the island while the south of the island was blown and battered the whole time. The wind and rain didn't really die down until Sunday. According to this website a location in Pingtung County received 1,403mm of rain on Saturday; that's almost a metre and a half of water in 24 hours! Over a few days, from Friday to Sunday, rainfall reached proportions of between 2,500 and 2,900 mm.

Let's compare this to a couple of statistics drawn from the climate of my hometown, Collie, in Western Australia. The average annual rainfall in Collie is about 749mm (according to this page). So that one location I mentioned in Pingtung County received almost twice as much rain in 24 hours as Collie does in two years! Many locations recorded as much rain in three days as Collie receives in four years. Moving to Perth, the capital of Western Australia, the highest rainfall ever recorded in a single 24-hour period was 120mm in 1992 (according to this site). Compare that with the 1,403mm Pingtung received in the same amount of time.

So how did we fare? Well, it did eventually get boring holed up in our apartment for almost three days waiting for the storm to pass. Our water, electricity, gas, and internet were uninterrupted the whole time. We didn't suffer any flooding: we do live on the 10th floor of a large apartment building. The wind howled at any cracks and gaps it could find around our windows and doors but we were fine. Some of our friends suffered a bit of water in their apartments and my school is going to have to replace some large panes of glass on the third floor. A couple of months ago I tied some of my class' work up in one of the stairwells at our school and when I looked for it today it had all been torn away by the wind apart from one rather sad-looking clump of paper.

You may have seen the footage of a hotel falling into a surging river on TV or on the internet. That happened in Taitung County on the south-east side of Taiwan but not really that far from Tainan. Here is a link to a video of the event on Utube. I think I remember hearing on TV that all of the people were evacuated from the building before it collapsed.

Anyway, on Sunday it was still pretty gusty, blustery, tempestuous, and inclement but by then we were so desperate to get out of our apartment that we decided to take the scooter for a ride around to survey the changes that Morakot had wrought upon our city.

Happy to be out of the apartment. You get really sick of being in your apartment after a couple of days.

This statue of a bird is situated in the peace park by the canal close to our place. The wind has managed to tear away sections of the outer covering leaving holes in the statue. I guess it's hard to appreciate the damage if you have never seen the statue complete and undamaged. Note the trees in the foreground.

Corrugated iron fencing catches the wind very effectively and so corrugated iron fencing all over Taiwan was either blown down or sent on its own journey of discovery to new environs.

Going to the beach has never been as interesting and never accompanied by such a sense of apprehension as I apprehended what we might find as we approached one of the local stretches of coastline. For a start, all that water shouldn't be there; there is a small inland sea between us and the beach proper. And I'm sure there were more trees with more leaves here before the typhoon.

Standing on the beach we looked out at the sea, choppy as the man with the cleaver at the chicken-rice restaurant down the street. This picture doesn't capture the breakers still erupting over the breakwater in the background, sending water exploding into the air.

Down the beach at the mouth of the river. The place is covered with debris. I realized, being here, that an event like a typhoon creates an enormous amount of extra pollution and waste: a lot of stuff that was previously useful is either broken (becoming garbage) or moved from where it belongs (often becoming garbage). A lot of garbage gets washed down rivers into the sea along with a lot of other more insidious pollutants and a lot of new things have to be replaced which means a lot of extra manufacturing which creates a lot of extra pollution. I also saw here a lot of nice wood from what might have been some kind of boardwalk. We found out later that the typhoon had completely destroyed a nice, long raised wooden walking path along the river. I watched it being built over the course of many months as my journey to work takes me along the river on my bicycle. What a shame.

This road among the fish farms north of the city was cordoned off. Note the house in the background that is flooded. The road ahead was also flooded.

Hoardings on buildings also caught the wind effectively. A large part of this hoarding was torn down and we saw it being removed from the site.

We don't have any water right now and won't for a few more days. But it is remarkable that after such a violent and destructive event people are so calm and get straight down to business or making business possible again. Apart from the lack of water, life was almost back to normal by the start of the week when we went back to work. We have been told to expect a rise in the price of some foods such as fruit and vegetables. My school's graduation show was also postponed due to the typhoon. Some people have said that it's just nature and there have been suggestions that it's nature's way of trying to tell us something. I think it's just sad, wasteful, and unlucky.