It’s been a bleak and miserable week here in Taipei, in large part due to shocking weather and the general malaise that often seems to accompany such dreary days. To say it has been unseasonably cold is a massive understatement: some 20 year veterans prepared to say it is the coldest winter they have experienced. We have had our little fan heater working overtime, the kittens running from their room in the mornings and afternoons when released from captivity to bathe in the little ceramic glow of heat it valiantly tries to blow around the room. Taiwan’s high humidity adds just that extra bit of zip to the single figure temperatures, gusts of wind whipping through the hardiest of jackets and piercing leg coverings like a thousand little needles, chilling to the bone.
These most frigid conditions did not preclude us from making our usual weekend pilgrimage to the beach, however! Leaving Cass tucked up inside nursing her two little balls of heat, I picked Ross up from his last class at school for his current Master’s course, met Carl in his car and headed off to our new-found secret spot at the southern end of the Green Bay beach. Anathema to we Antipodeans, the beach is actually privately owned by the Howard Plaza resort which flanks its outer edges, but undeterred by such strange happenings we flagrantly disregard the private beach signs (we can’t read them, we’re foreign), park in their overflow car park and trot along their pathways to the water. We may find some more resistance from the guards in summer but, at the moment, I’m pretty certain we are just providing the greatest amusement for anyone who sees us!
The waves were very poor quality even by our latest standards and we found it quite difficult to latch onto anything approaching a decent rideable wave. Wetsuits must be removed at some point and it is this moment that starts the real teeth chattering, tongue-tying chill that doesn’t stop till a long, very hot shower back home.
Cass and I were keen to see a movie today, but scanning the paper’s movie listings did not inspire us. We decided instead to treat ourselves to a delicious German lunch of sausage, bread, mash and sauerkraut bookended with a warming bowl of soup and a lovely piece of home made cake and coffee. We then braved the conditions to get a few supplies at the Carrefour, including a whole stack of downlights, as ours had all decided to extinguish roughly at the same time in the last week.
During the week, I was mesmerised by a very strange sight. As I stood on our verandah in the early evening, I watched some strange orange glowing lights drifting across the park opposite, light flickering as they rose higher and higher. They stayed alight as I strained to see them as they turned to fiery pinpricks far away. A succession of these lights passed by before I realized they were lanterns for the Chinese New Year, set aloft, the embers inside providing the lift to keep the paper in the air. This was just a precursor to even stranger sights and sounds. A caravan of small open trucks each with a cargo of fervent drum bashing youths onboard wended their way down our tiny lane, accompanied by the constant strident bleating of an unknown instrument sending shivers of displeasure down our spines. A woman’s voice from the temple across the river, amplified at what seemed a ludicrously high level, seemed to call the faithful to the various proceedings about to start. Later, with a hypnotic jungle beat of drums as background, constant volleys of fireworks were sent skyward, cymbals clashed, people sang and shouted, as children’s screams of delight drifted across to us, the start of some great celebration. Taking stock for a moment, it once again amazed us that we live and work in this great melting pot of strange and wondrous events, trying to appreciate and understand it just a bit: we don’t want to become blasé, or I wouldn’t have anything else to write about!
