Best laid plans sometimes come unstuck and despite my last
minute planning of addresses in Mandarin, the taxi driver seemed to be totally
perplexed. The characters were correct, it was just that the specific address
of building, lane and alley was unknown. In dribbling rain and through a foggy
windscreen, he just needed to be directed all the way up to the lower slopes of
“Section 7”, the leafy and glitzy area of our suburb on the way up to
Yangminshan, one street at a time!
Cass and I were on our way up to Shaun and Katie’s place for
a party to celebrate the end of his doctoral studies. He’s been at it for a
good few years now so felt a sense of sweet relief when it was all done and
dusted. He’s just finishing his first year as principal of the middle school as
well, so it’s been a big year all round. We’ve had a lot to do with these two
over the past 16 years and were pleased to get an invite to help celebrate
another milestone. I worked team teaching with Katie for years, Shaun is one of
our good Aussie mates who we share a beer with down at Uli’s from time to time
and years back we headed down to Tasmania for their wedding. It was a good show
and we had fun for a few hours at their place on an otherwise dreary Friday
night. We even met another couple from Newcastle with a couple of kids at the
school….small world isn’t it?!
We had our Saturday sleep-in interrupted by a mild cacophony,
discordant trumpets blaring and drums ‘a beatin’. We’d been warily eyeing off
the preparations in our local temple and park for a few weeks as we walked to
and from school, but today was the day when things would really “light up”.
There was a traffic jam of marching groups on the river road which skirts the
pocket park and tennis court just opposite our place. After an initial pile-up,
all seemed to get sorted pretty quickly, but as we were to ascertain shortly
afterwards, this was the eye of the storm.
We wandered over to do the grocery shopping in the early
afternoon only to be amazed at the scenes in the park behind the temple and
tennis courts. Stages were being constructed, as well as tables and chairsbeing set up under huge tents for hundreds and hundreds of diners. There were
gas bottles linked with snaking hoses to gargantuan cooking pots boiling awayvast quantities of vegetables and unidentified meats. An army of cooks and
preparers were bustling under the canvas and seemed slightly bemused at the
foreigners in their midst taking photos!
When dusk fell to early evening, however we were amazed when
we returned from the cinema. Alien
Covenant had nothing on the other-worldly scenes and sounds which greeted
us in our little alley. Hordes of ample-stomached and scantily clad young men
were chewing betel nut and chugging beers in the little pagoda opposite, with their
souped up cars idling in the lane-way making further jams. The procession of
floats and tributes flowed and eddied down the river road, all the while
accompanied either by the strident traditional wailing or in-congruent beating rhythms
of modern doof doof blasting out of strategically located speakers through the
park.
The diners were being entertained by a woman shouting at
ear-splitting volume into a mic who was extolling various men to get up and
dance with her bikini clad partners, who were wandering up and down the table
rows shaking ample bosom at various victims (none seemed game to do so at this
early stage of the night). Wandering over to the temple proper and past the
long lines of waiting deities and their attendants, each float was being
welcomed into the courtyard with blasting music and raucous cheers. Dance
troupes of young girls performed various set routines on yet another stage
gracing the entrance to the temple proper, and each presentation was met with a
further firing of crackers and a corresponding release of coloured ticker-tape,
which showered down like confetti on the rapturous crowd.
I wandered out and around the back entrance and re-entered
our alley for the stroll back home. All the excitement was miraculously over by
about 10 p.m. and there was an orderly withdrawal of thousands of delirious worshipers. I just wonder what might have happened at a similar celebration
elsewhere in the world: I’m certain it wouldn’t have been as calm as this!
As I mentioned, we did see the latest Alien movie on
Saturday night, yet life was putting on its own even more amazing show for us
when we returned! We ate a delicious meal at Thai Town with all our favourites
and a really lazy day on Sunday, winding down from all the previous night’s
excitement.
Photos: Wal and Annie, me and Wal with the new "doctor", Aussie grapes(!), preparations in the park, cinema posing, Thai Town, temple antics.