This blog started as a way to document my experiences being a displaced soul, however, the first place that I covered(the first blog entry) is where I feel most home. This is not the place where I’ve spent the most time in my life. In fact, the longest I’ve been here at one time is nothing more than a few weeks, and usually, a few days. However, every little thing and observation that I experience here have such big impacts. Being a small town where most people who live here were born here, lived here most of their lives and retire here, is a condensed version of the big world. I am not talking about fast economy and industry, but the life of a human being and the evolving society. This is a place where you can see vivid traces of the past and the struggle against new adaptations. Here is where I spent the best days of my childhood, and a place where I feel my clock stops, giving me a chance to free my mind and take a real rest. This is also a place where I replenish myself with the wonderful lessons that the old folks and the heritage of this town have to offer. This is my anchor point, the place where the boat calls its base port.
This little town is probably very representative of Taiwan’s traditional community structure. In every village, there is always a temple that worships a divine spirit who protects the village. In this case, the are smaller shrines placed on the four corners of the village’s border, each stationed with the divine spirit’s soldier to guard the village against bad spirits. The people of the village pay tremendous respect to the divine spirit and hosts worship ceremonies each year to celebrate the spirit’s birthday.
This temple isn’t just a status symbol for the village, it is usually the center of where everything happens. In front of the temple, there’s usually a big compound where the locals can hang out, children can play, mobile vendors can sell their products and where events can be held. This is where the old folks come chit chat and gossip with each other, have a game of chess or have a drink with old time buddies. You will see the same folks everyday for years, until they pass away. Who says old folks don’t hang out and people-watch?
The old folks who hang out here naturally becomes the pray…. No, I mean potential customers for mobile vendors. These vendors travel around between towns in small pick-up trucks packed with stuffs to sell. It can be anything from fruits and vegetables, pastry, specialty food, clothings, random houseware to metal sharpening service for farm tools or kitchen knives. As each vendors arrive at the compound and gets set up, they will use the temple’s PA system to make a village-wide announcement about their offerings. So I can be way out there in the farm working on my plot, and I will hear them loud and clear about how beautiful and juicy the watermelons are that they have brought to the village, and of course, how cheap they are. It’s shameless promotion time, but in tough competition fighting for precius customers, nothing is too shameless. The most popular and anticipated ones are those who come to promote and sell medicine. Medicine? For some reason, Taiwanese old folks are very much into medicines. This are usually unapproved medicines that are being sold as the antidote for every ache and pain and cancer there is under the sky. Old folks usually aren’t perfectly healthy. They have decent savings and live a thrifty lifestyle. They are not exactly poor, but lack the kind of attention from their kids who, mostly, have moved away. So when someone comes into town, shows care and tells them that there is an antidote that will take away all the pain and misery away, that’s a sure-win strategy.
However, do all the old folks believe in this stuff? Well, probably not, but they are still very keen to participate in these demos and shows. In fact, they will wait there for the vans to show up each day! Of course, because there’s incentives! You see, in order to get these folks to come and listen to your sales pitch, there must be something that they can gain first. So for these old folks who come, they will each take home a packet of noodles. A pack of noodles… that’s not much at all! How much is a pack of noodle worth? A dollar? Well, if you get a free pack of noodles everyday, that’s five packs a week, more than 250 packs a year! Now that’s a deal! So much for the “anticipation-of-the-day”. That’s country lifestyle for ya city folks.
On another note, because these unapproved medications are so popular in this part of the country, it is rated to be the world top region for kidney and liver failure patients. It reminds me of the ancient Chinese emperors who will have their top physicians make them medicines that will turn them into immortals so that can live forever, but usually end up eating things with heavy metal contents and die prematurely. Everyone wants to be the emperor. Everyone wants to buy health. A contrary point to that is, life must be pretty damn good to make them all want to live longer!
Moving up a few blocks is the market place of the town. This is where the traditional/farmer’s market is, where venders will have permanent spots to sell their produces or goods. The market also attracts individual vendors to farmers who have produces that they want to sell. They will occupy the side of the streets or the empty lot in front of the market, usually with just a piece of canvas on the ground to lay their produces and a stool to sit, and an empty wallet to get ready for the cash flow. Cash. There really isn’t much of it around. Everything here is cheap but usually made or prepared with real good ingredients when it comes to food. It makes those famous food stores in the city look cheap and overpriced. People here want to make an honest living, because there is no one to cheat. Everyone here is either a childhood friend or distant relative. Everyone watches out for each other. Life here is slow. There is not much of business competition. There is always the go-to guy if you need any service. You will know them in person. You will go to their home because their home is their store. You will meet his family. You will sit down for a tea. You will have some chit chat with them and you will realize that the day has gone by without knowing. Then you go home for dinner and watch the never ending soap opera on the TV. You will then go to bed and wake up early, go to the market for breakfast and hang out at the temple. Maybe you will go to your own plot to do some maintenance, spray some fertilizers and plow some land and see what vegetable you want to bring home for lunch or dinner, what fruits are ready for harvest. Maybe you have more food than you can eat by yourself, then you give them out to neighbors, friends and families. Then the PA announces that the medicine man is here again and you go to the temple to check it out, spend a good hour listen to his sales pitch and bring home a pack of noodles to go with the vegetables you have brought back from the farm earlier today. Maybe you will also bring back a bottle of the cure-all antidote and wonder if the magic is real. There is always something to do, something to talk about, but never anything really exciting. But this is exactly why life is so good here. It isn’t bad!
Breakfast hot and fresh!
One morning as I was waiting for my order at the breakfast shop that serves Taiwanese style sandwiches, a Thai lady(foreign worker) walks in...
"One chicken burger." The Thai lady said.
" Do you want cheese?" The lady boss asked.
Wow, English? Yes English! Small town Taiwanese shop does business in English!!!! I don't think you can find this ANYWHERE else in Taiwan, even in the big cities. This is just how small towns like this have adapted to changes in the environment. As industries around the town employee more foreign laborers, local businesses can no longer afford to ignore their presence. In the past, there's a fear or discrimination against these foreigners. They are outsiders, don't belong here, but times have changed. Local stores start to have Thai or Vietnamese signs on their shop front to appeal to the foreign laborers, and start to accept them as a part of the local economic system. It's definitely a wonder to see this happen. All these efforts by the government to educate people to learn English can't match the needs to do business.
Ornaments for worship
Just chillin'... nothing much. These are funny guys. They are just hanging out. My mom was buying some vegetable from an old lady next to them and they started to join the conversation helping the old lady to promote the produce, telling my mom how to cook it to make it really tasty and such like as if he's the one selling the goods. That's small town for ya.
It's quite an impactful sight to me, how hard it is to make a small living. This old lady was trying to sell her vegetables. For how much? US$1. It's very easy for us to complain how food has gotten expensive, how we demand fresh and pretty looking produce that has to be juicy, nutritious and easily accessible, but it is a totally experience being a farmer trying to make a living. One dollar is all she's asking for.
On another note, my mom did buy the vegetable from her. When we got back home, my grandma saw the vegetable and asked where it came from. My mom said she bought it from the market. My grandma asked for how much? NT30 my mom said. My grandma then said,"Any vegetable from her farm looks better than this!" Opps, competition!
Deep fried vegetables..... yummm..... Most of the country folks are vegetarians here due to religious and health preference.
This building has an interesting. According to my mom, this used to be a shop that sold gasoline many decades ago. There were barrels of gasoline places around the store. One day, two teenagers decided to play stupid. One dared the other to throw his cigarette butt into the barrel, and so he did. The store exploded in flames and the scar remained till today. The houses beside it have been rebuilt, but somehow, keeping it in its original state always creates an interest for those who have no idea what the story is.
One of the most memorable place is the train station. This isn't in my grandparent's town, but in a bigger neighboring town. When we were young, the second freeway that runs north-south wasn't completed. It would take much longer to drive, so we would take trains to come to visit my grandparents. The train station therefore was a place of excitement and goodbye. For the locals, this is a means of transport between this little town and the bigger cities. People come and go, anticipate and rejoice.
Students practice their group dance in front of the station.
Commuters park their scooters at the station to go somewhere their scooters won't take them to.
More photos of the town here.
My all-time favorite place to hang out is nonetheless the farm. Not just anyone’s farm, but my grandparents’ farm. I remember when I was little, I will walk around the farm bare footed right after the land had been plowed, because the seemly dry soil is so soft that your feet just sinks in, then as the soil wraps the feet, you feel a sense of coolness from the rich moisture within the dirt. There is nothing more fun than natural play dough. A little water and a pile of soil gets a kid going for hours without getting tired or bored. Your play room is the fresh air with the fruit stalks and trees and your play mates are the birds and bugs. As a kid, am always fascinated with seeing how food is produced, not by forcing feeding strapped chicken or cows, but patiently cared crops that takes tremendous amount of effort and back-breaking hardwrk to nurture. Of course, my grandpa tells me all the methods, experiences and techniques that he’s learnt from the decades of farming. There is no ride-alongs on giant tractors like those mid-west farmer, but there’s riding on grandpa’s old 125cc Kawasaki motorcycle after a day farm chores. Farming in Taiwan is a very personal business. It’s not really considered mass farming as compared to US farms. Each plot of land is manually maintained by its owners. There are usually a good variety of different crops on each land to spread out the work load, as in, some crops like tomatoes will take a couple of months to ripe, where crops like sugar canes and pineapples will take a year or two, but are much lower maintenance intensive. It also helps to spread the risk in case of disease or natural disasters. Some crops can help you make a quicker buck but much more vulnerable to strong wind or rain, some are stronger but takes much longer to harvest. It’s a delicate balance between man and nature, but it all comes down to what the nature throws at you. A good year will be one with good climate and ample rainfall. A bad one will be a three-day typhoon that wipes out everything over night.
Peanuts!
"Stop taking picture of me, so ugly. Go take pictures of that tomatoes over there!"
Bug trap
My uncle proud of the vege!
Punkin!
My grandpa's trademarked logo.
Chillin' under the longan tree.
A different plot full of star fruit trees.
For my grandparents, they are officially retired, but they can’t stop playing with dirt… what childish folks. So they keep themselves busy by planting random vegetables and fruits that they want to eat…. months later. I am sure that the satisfaction of literally tasting your own efforts is something absolutely irreplaceable. Every year when I visit them, there’s always something new on the plot. This time, other than the usual suspects like tomatoes, vegetables and corns, they’ve planted some sesame crops!
Grandma and uncle bundling the sesame crop.
The sesame crops are then left to dry up. The seed pods will then split open to expose the sesame seeds.
Fresh sesame seeds!!!
Old lady on tricycle...
More farm photos here!
Minding other people’s damn business!!!
So what’s everyone else planting? Well, that’s what I do best! Ever since young, my favorite thing to do whenever I come here is to tour around the entire village and the farm lands to see… well, anything! When I was younger, I will be on the bicycle. Then I got older and took over my aunt’s scooter. I can make several trips around the villages a day. I simply love the breeze while cruising through the farms, see the birds picking on the bugs and make-shift scare crows made from scrap materials. I also look for what’s new in town, who’s planting what and what’s changed. In general, things usually don’t change much every year, but as a trend, more and more lands are being left underutilized. Weeds take over and no one farms on those empty plots. The lack of welfare and good benefits system for the farmers to support their career discourages the younger generation to continue farming practice. The low income and high risk in terms of uncertainty from unpredictable weather and the market price fluctuations don’t provide the farmers much job security either. It’s hard work that doesn’t pay off, at least not to the modern standard that us city folks expect from our jobs. But they feed the country, literally. Way back in the ancient times, the social status is ranked this way. Priests, teachers, farmers then merchants. It seems that the ranking have been shuffled.
Pineapple is a pretty popular choice because of low maintenance and high investment return, which makes life easier on old farmers. However, it can take about two years to harvest depending on the breed of the pineapple.
I have no explanation for this photo.
Being the strange kid who tours around the town on two wheels with a big camera, I must have earned some status myself. Well, in the past, most farmers don’t own their own land. There’s usually a rich family who owns most of the local farm lands and they will rent the plots out to the farmers. The rich family will then send people out to tour the farmers to see if everything is alright and to collect the rent. No one does it now, but I seem to have picked up the legacy, except that I am far from bring rich.
Strange things happen around here. This is a car, for some unknown reason, placed on top of a drainage canal beside a plot of land. What a land mark!
MORE strange sightings!!!! Just as me and my sister were riding the scooter along the roads that twines between the farm lands, there were three pre-historic looking fish laying right in the middle of the road!!! WTH?! We figured that someone caught them and was riding away, but the fish somehow made it out and fall on the road. I have no idea what these strange looking creatures are. They are obviously bottom feeders with flat bottom and eyes on the top. They are quite big! We found them still alive and kickin', so we dumped them back into the canal beside the road. On another note, I will never touch fish caught in the canals. Imagine all the polluted water from the fertilizers and stuffs..... wonder if them glow at night.
More photos of strange things here!
Most looked forward to….
My English teacher said that the word “favorite” can only be used on one thing. There can be only one favorite, not two or more. Well, who gives a shit? I am officially making "favorite" plural. The point is, I have another favorite. The Night Market!!!
The local night market is an ecosystem of its own. It takes place every Monday night. This is a community of night market stalls that rotate between different towns throughout the week, so they will be in another town yesterday and will be in some other town tomorrow. But today, they are HERE!
The night market creates a really unique atmosphere. It’s at night. The streets are supposed to be quiet. People are supposed to be sitting at home watching their soap operas. However tonight, the streets are packed. People come out for their weekly dosage of entertainment. These stalls have been around for years. Some have been around for as long as I can remember. The same food, same taste by the same people. Usually the food stalls stay put, but others like clothings and housewares stuffs tend to change owners. Local night markets like this really foster the country side atmosphere. It’s usually pretty small, but it fills the temple compound pretty good. There’s everything from food to shopping to entertainment. There’s something for everyone, the young, the energetic, the old and the holy!
Monk asking for donations.
Monk being fashionable.
Favorites no.1 - Oyster Omelet.
This particular stall has been around for 30 years. Everyone who's tried it claims that this is indeed the best oyster omelets in the country. I don't think it's anything unique in taste, but what's impressive is the dedication and the generous portions that makes it great.
Favorite no. 2 - Egg cake and wheel cake.
This little stall is run by a couple who's been around selling these delicious and heart warming cakes for as long as I can remember. The best in the country, again, of course. The egg cake is basically pouring a dough into a iron mold that is being cooked by fire. The cake is done within minutes, the lady boss then flips the mold open, sort of like an industrial process. It's crispy on the outside and moist on the inside. I can't have enough of these.
The wheel cake is similiar to the egg cake. Dough is poured into cylinder shaped molds. The boss then put in fillings, usually red bean paste or sweet butter paste. He then closes the mold and let it cook. The same process takes place as the egg cake.
Other stores around.
The famous salted-crispy chicken.
Pastry
Beverages
Now this is what I call old school. Basically, there are tanks of little gold fish. The game is, you will pay for a net to scoop the fish and get to take home whatever you can catch. But the real catch is, the net is made of water dis solvable paper that can break very easily, so it's all about the technique. I would say that this is the predecessor to the Japanese UFO catcher where you operate a not-so-cooperative robotic arm to grab your toy. Why old school? Because this is one of those disappearing games that you just don't see in night markets today. In most cases, they are being replaced by pin-ball machines.
Sometimes I wonder how does the divine spirit see the night market. Fun to watch? A nuisance? Too noisy? Not high enough?
I think the best thing about the night market is, it gets everyone out together. It’s the liveliest night of the week!
More night market photos here!
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