Thurs. 8/29 LungShan Temple and Snake Alley

 

Gu Ma called to invite me to her weekly Thursday lunch with her women friends.  I was starving but it turned out to be a vegetarian restaurant—nice, elegant, and healthy.  Didn’t quite hit the spot.  There was brown rice, salad, bok choy, mushrooms, hot and cold noodles, and a green slushy drink that was like V8.  But green.  Dave would’ve hated it all.  He’d only eat the noodles.          

The women mostly chatted as I politely sat and smiled.  It’s been sort of difficult to explain what I’m doing here.  No one’s heard of the Fulbright, they think my studying Chinese here and my college Bio degree and my masters at Yale and this research are all part of the same thing somehow.  There was a little girl about six years old who kept coming up to me and saying random things, like I was very pretty and why did I wear nail polish and was my hair longer or hers?  Not shy at all.  Her grandmother kept scolding her to get back to her seat and stop bothering me.  She then lifted the entire front of her dress to show us her fake “tattoo” which covered her whole torso.  GuMa exclaimed, “Ai ya!”  Then the girl promptly fell asleep on her chair.  I envied her as I felt like doing that myself.

 

People here are very Type B.  They take lunch from 12-2, walk slowly, talk a looooong while after meals.  I feel edgy, fidgety.  When lunch was finally over I mentioned to GuMa that I wanted to find a book (on SAS programming for my project) and see if they had it at an NTU bookstore, and just wanted to know how to get there.  Immediately the women asked me the name of the book and insisted on taking me to a nearby bookstore on the street where I knew it wouldn’t be, trying to explain it was a special university textbook.  Then they took me to Butyl Corp so I could look it up on the Internet.  As we headed there one of them said to the other that if they do everything for me, I’ll never learn my way around or how to do things here.  I was a little annoyed.  Though grateful they were trying to help, I DID want to learn on my own, I just wanted to be pointed the way to NTU, not cause all this fuss. 

 

I couldn’t find it on NTU’s website anyway, so I just ordered it from bn.com to go to M&D’s.  It should arrive there in time for them to bring it over.  Then I got an email from my thesis advisor with two pages of comments she wanted addressed before I could submit it for a final grade.  Doh!  In a sullen mood now.  But then JuLing gave me my name chop (stamp engraved with your Chinese name that you sometimes need to sign official documents) that her secretary made for me which cheered me a little.  I can make out my name on it, but it looks weird, done in the old style script. 

 

Gu Ma told me to come have cake in the kitchen.  I sat down with them again and they put before me a piece of cake and cup of tea, the women telling me how much GuMa spoils me (but the word in Taiwanese , “Tiah”, has a positive connotation, like “loves you so much”).  It’s true, I have memories of her from my past visits, always insisting on helping me with things or giving me things and worrying about me, still like I’m a little girl.  Dad says she “Tiah” me so much because he’s her favorite brother. 

JuLing brought us cups of Starbucks to which so much milk was added, it was like coffee-flavored milk.  They drink coffee very light here.  I did more sitting and listening to them chatter.  GuMa has a very peaceful, calm, dignified, yet no-nonsense way about her—so does JuLing.  They both have the same warm eyes that slant downward at the corners.

 

I called Gary and all they were doing tonight was going to the ShiLin night market where Snake Alley was.  They’d spent the day at Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall and doing other touristy things.  I’ve done it all before and was kinda tired, but felt compelled to go out and see things—after all I’ll be sorry when they leave.

I had to meet them at LongShan Temple.  Gary said “Out of the MRT station, it’s right there” and of course I didn’t see it.  I had to ask a newspaper boy and didn’t know the word for temple, so I said, “[Excuse me, where is that Long Shan thing?]” forming a little temple roof with my hands. 

 

It was very big and HOT inside, although it was an open air temple.  The fires and candles and incense added to the heat that emanates from the streets at night from absorbing the sun all day.  Art is a serious Buddhist, he prays at each meal and when each dish comes out.  He complained once, “Why can’t restaurants bring out all the dishes at once?”

“Why don’t you do one big pre-emptive prayer at the beginning?” I asked.

Gary said, “Yeah, just say, ‘I pray for everything I am going to eat today.’”

 

So he bought incense sticks (“bai bai”) and offered me a few to try.  I said, “But I’m not Buddhist, is this disrespectful?”

“No, you just have to be sincere.”  Sincere about what?  My non-belief in Buddhism?  But I went and followed him.  Gary kept shaking his finger at me and tsk-tsking.  Art knelt on a cushion in front of the shrine but I couldn’t bring myself do that, so he said just bow three times.  Then we threw the bai bai sticks into an urn.  Art’s all stuck straight up, but mine all fell over.  I wondered if that meant I wasn’t sincere? 

 

There were different statues of gods that you prayed to for different purposes—one for your career, one for love, one for health, etc.  Art prayed in front of the one for good academics and instructed Gary to do the same (they’ve just taken the bar exam):  “I’m serious man, you better do it!”  Gary kept saying, “But I’m not Buddhist!” and Art kept insisting, so finally Gary shrugged and said to the statue, “Don’t give me a bad grade.”

 

There was a small store out front that sold snacks and things.  Gary said, “Hey, snacks!” and he and Kate bought some.  She opened a bag and started eating and offering us some.  Then I realized they were for people to leave on top of the shrines as food for the ancestors.  There were fruit, water, and bags of crackers and stuff all over the shrines.  Gary asked Kate if we were being disrespectful by eating it and she shrugged. 

 

None of us but Arthur was Buddhist, and I was dying of the heat that seemed to be trapped in the temple, so I waited outside where it wasn’t even that much cooler.  A white guy who looked very touristy had started chatting with Art and they talked for a long time. Gary thought he was hitting on Arthur, but I suspected the guy just asked a simple question about Buddhism and got Art started.

 

After that we went to the nearby night market, a.k.a. Snake Alley.  There were tons of cute, cheap things, but I didn’t want to buy anything since I had to move out of the hotel soon and my bags were full to busting as it was.  We came to the first snake place where the guy was alone and not talking yet.  One thing that’s changed since I was here last:  Not only are there snakes, but now each place has to have another, large animal to attract people.  At this one was an ostrich.  At another was a pig, and another was a goose.  The ostrich’s leg was crippled and it looked positively filthy.  I kept looking around the whole night market, with the openly grilled foods and raw oysters and sushi lying out and sausages hanging all exposed to the polluted air, and “tsk-tsk”ing about what a public health monstrocity (my new word) it all was.  Gary and Art made fun of me, protesting, “But this is all that we eat!  You can’t live in Taiwan without eating from these places.”    

 

Anyway, as we paused at this snake place, the man started talking and immediately a crowd formed around us.  He was talking in Taiwanese so I had to translate some for Gary, but mostly he was just putting on a big act about how dangerous the snake was and how his finger got bitten off once (showed us the stub), while trying to snag a snake from the cage with lots of flourish.  Then he sliced it down lengthwise and pulled out the digestive tract and heart, as I remembered, but this time when he plopped the heart on the table, it didn’t beat.  He prodded it, [“beat! beat!”]  but it was completely inanimate.  I still felt queasy, but more sorry for the snake, it really does look cruel.  Gary has tried the soup before but never the blood.

 

           We got to the end of the strip where Gary and Kate bought a dessert, and Art and I got a drink at another stand.  We turned back around and saw the same snake guy, this time talking in Mandarin.  Gary said, “What, does he just keep switching languages?  Next he’s gonna do English?”  I said “Maybe he does that so he doesn’t get bored.  Or it helps look like he’s doing something different each time.”

 

            They turned into another night market where Art looked at swords and considered getting one though, as with the guns, we kept asking how the hell he would get it home, or carry it around China.  He’s just obsessed with weapons (though it’s a distant 2^nd obsession to that of girls). 

 

            When it was almost 10 I told them I’d better get going since I had MTC orientation in the morning at 9 and was getting kinda tired.  They started to go too but I insisted just pointing me to the MRT and I’d get back myself.  Gary asked a few times, “Are you sure? Are you sure?”  And finally let me go.  I’m not sure if he was concerned about my safety or because of my terrible sense of direction.  Probably my sense of direction.