The Dragon and the Plum Blossom: Ping Pong Politics – 奧運桌球四強賽

by Charles DeBenedetto

This is not a game. Photo Credit: AP

Spotlights shine down on an empty stadium. No fans are there to applaud. There is nothing but a long table in the middle of a vast emptiness.

 

Two men emerge from opposite corners of the arena. One man is older, larger, scarier, with a bright yellow dragon swirling around his deep red shirt. The other is younger, softer, slimmer, and gentler. His shirt is deep blue, with small polka dots and a plum blossom on it.

 

The men, or rather, the man and the boy, walk to the table at the middle of the arena, and choose their weapons. They look into each other’s eyes. The dragon man is ranked number one in the world, but the young boy meets his gaze with calmness, not fear. The world expects the boy to be pummeled. But the boy is determined.

 

This is the men’s semi-final Olympics table tennis match. The dragon man is twenty-four year old Fan Zhen-dong(樊振東) , from the People’s Republic of (Communist) China. The young boy is nineteen year-old Lin Yun-ju (林昀儒), from “Chinese Taipei,” the pseudonym for Taiwan that is used at the Olympics. Taiwan is an independent and democratic country, but it cannot freely participate at the Olympics directly because of China’s bullying, and also indirectly because the world is too afraid of China to call them out for suppressing a country that has a similar population to Australia.

 

Fan Zhen-dong is not responsible for China’s wrongs. He is just a table tennis athlete. But he benefits from the self-confidence that comes from being a citizen of such a strong and aggressive country. He knows he is going to win, because China has taught him that the Chinese always win.

 

Playing against a person from the country that China bullies most often must heighten his self-confidence many times over.

 

For Lin Yun-ju, the opposite is most likely true. Taiwan has been bullied and threatened by China for decades, which probably gives the Taiwanese athletes feelings of inferiority. Maybe Lin Yun-ju feels inferior, too, but I cannot read any emotion on his face.

 

Or maybe they are good friends, as they have both trained in China’s table tennis league, and have faced each other before. But at the Olympics, nobody sees them as friends. They are the symbolic representation of the China/Taiwan conflict.

 

* * *

 

The match begins. In table tennis, there are seven games in a match, but you only play until one player has won four games. Each game is for eleven points, unless it is tied ten to ten, in which case you would keep playing until one player earns a two point lead.

 

I realize that I am supposed to “show” you the match and not “tell” it to you, but how could I? I don’t know how to capture the rocket fast serves and instantaneous counters. I don’t understand how they put spin on the ball, or the different ways they hold the paddle or hit. But I can tell you that the first game flies by in just seven minutes. Lin Yun-ju earns eleven points, while Fan Zhen-dong only earns six.

 

All of China is shocked. Fan’s hand begins to visibly shake while he plays. Lin remains cool.

 

The rest of the games are all extremely close. Fan wins game two 11-9, then he wins game three 14-12. Lin takes game four 15-13, and then they have both won two games.

 

This was supposed to be easy, but Lin is a pest that won’t go away, and he is the little engine that will. He knows he can. He knows he can.

 

Fan’s nervousness shows in the battle cry that erupts from his throat every time he wins a point. Lin just makes a fist and holds it up to his chest in self-congratulation. His fans call him “The Silent Assassin.”

 

Fan takes game five 11-9. He just needs one more game to win.

 

Game six is not looking good. Fan is taking the lead. He is learning Lin’s serves, and responding to them quicker. Sometimes, he even predicts the serves, getting ready before Lin even hits the ball. Lin is down by four points. I am beginning to lose faith in him, but slowly, one point at a time, he is closing the gap. He won’t stop fighting. Miraculously, he takes game six 11-9.

 

They are tied, three games each. The final game will decide who goes to the Olympics final round.

 

This is not supposed to happen. Sure, the Chinese can and do earn gold medals in many sports, but table tennis is their sport. They do not lose, and when they do, it is earth-shattering. To lose to Taiwan would be Universe-shattering.

 

All of China is terrified. They are sweating. Their self-confidence has been critically damaged.

 

All of Taiwan is cheering their boy on. They are inaudibly praying for the silent assassin. They are feeling braver, prouder, and more hopeful.

 

It is game seven, and it’s close. It’s tied 3-3, then Fan starts to take the lead. They’re both tired, and they both cannot lose. Fan is shaking more, his face is pale, and he shouts even louder when he gets a point. It’s 10-6, and Fan has four chances to win the match. I lose faith in Lin again, but he doesn’t lose faith in himself.

 

Then, it is 10-7. Then, it is 10-8.

 

Still, Lin is the calm one, and still, Fan is scared.

 

Finally, it is 11-8, and Fan Zhen-dong has earned his spot in the Olympics final round. Lin Yun-ju has lost the match, and all of Taiwan sighs a heavy, sad sigh.

 

* * *

 

Even though Lin Yun-ju lost, it is obvious when watching footage of the game that he is always the one in control. Seeing statistics about the game, it is painful how equal they are.

 

Points won:                             Fan – 75             Lin – 75

Biggest lead:                           Fan – 5               Lin – 5

Serve points won:                   Fan – 38             Lin – 37

Serve points lost:                    Fan – 38             Lin – 37

Most consecutive points:        Fan – 5               Lin – 6

Biggest deficit overcome:       Fan – 2               Lin – 4

 

Lin Yun-ju lost the match, but the Chinese are still recovering from the blow to their ego. They may have won this time, but they are no longer clearly the table tennis champions.

 

* * *

 

It’s just a game, but it’s also not just a game.

 

China has been bullying Taiwan for decades. They regularly fly fighter jets over our heads. They constantly threaten us with invasion and conquest. They have missiles permanently pointed at us. They forcibly prevent us from being acknowledged by the world as the country that we so clearly are. They make us compete at the Olympics as “Chinese Taipei,” even though everyone, including the Chinese, know that we are “Taiwan.”

 

They are always in a position of power, and Taiwan is always in a position of weakness.

 

And yet, a nineteen year-old boy from Taiwan made China nervous. He made them blink. He made them unsure of their ability to win. He showed them that a fight with Taiwan is a fight among equals, where victory is not assured.

 

Lin Yun-ju may be “The Silent Assassin,” but he spoke for all of Taiwan with his performance that day, and he said “Taiwan does not go down without a fight.”

It is (Almost) Enough: Whale Watching on the East Coast - 東岸賞鯨

by Charles DeBenedetto

(Hualien Harbor. Photo Credit: K.H.)

Even through my medical mask, I can smell the salt in the air. We begin to walk with umbrellas up to protect against the heat, but the swift winds force us to bring them down and endure. After a few hundred meters through a relatively empty parking lot, we find shade under a large tent. We look around, and see mostly young married couples holding their children in their arms, as well as some grandpas and grandmas, too. Some children run around us, get too close to the water, and then get reeled in like a fish by their parents’ hollering.

 

A few minutes later, our guide approaches us. She is a young Taiwanese woman, probably a recent college graduate, and she speaks so softly that, even with a microphone, she sounds like see is whispering in everyone’s ears. She stalls for time while the crew gets ready, first by showing us how to properly put on our safety vests, and then by asking us questions, like “Has anyone been whale watching before?” or “What are you most excited to see?” Eventually she gets a cue from a crew member, and she announces that it is time to go. We line up for temperature checks, then make our way to the small ship.

 

(Time to go! Photo Credit: K.H.)

We all file in line on the dock, and as we step on board, one of the crew members is there to help us get on safely. As I step onto the boat, he holds my hand for a moment. It is just for a second, but it feels very powerful. Maybe it’s because of covid, or maybe it’s because this is almost certainly the only moment in our two lives that will ever intersect. Whatever the reason, holding this stranger’s hand feels…human.

 

Shortly after, I use some hand sanitizer.

 

My girlfriend and I take our seats at the back of the boat on the second floor, which smells of exhaust at first but is fine once the boat begins to move. The water in the harbor is smooth as an ice rink after a Zamboni drives over it, and I’m sure everybody is thinking “This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be!” But once we reach the open Pacific, we are immediately rocked back and forth violently, so much so that I wonder if we are going to capsize.

 

We sail straight out into the Pacific for a long while, and we all look straight ahead, as though we are all playing co-captain. But finally, I decide to look backward, back at Taiwan. This is what I see:

 

(Hualien as seen from the Pacific. Photo Credit: K.H.)

 

From our vantage point in the middle of the Pacific, all of Hualien City appears miniature, each building a mere speck, dwarfed hundreds of times over by the mighty mountains behind them. The mountains are a faded green, and playful clouds dance all over them. The trail that the clouds leave behind look like something that a child would make if given a can of whipped cream and no parental supervision. 

Everyone is still looking out into the open Pacific, and I seem to be the only one to notice the value of looking back.

 

* * *

 

When I wrote about Shi Ti Ping last year, the small village in Hualien’s countryside, I wrote that the people lived in “the small space between gods” – where the mountain god meets the ocean god, with a tiny dot of land between them leftover for human life. But looking at Taiwan from the Pacific, I realize that everywhere in Taiwan, from the remotest village to the Taipei metropolis – it is all the small space between gods.

 

Part of the Taiwanese story is the continuing fight to survive despite all of the ways that both nature and humans try to thwart them. Everything from typhoons and earthquakes to authoritarianism and the One China Policy threaten. But the Taiwanese are the people who took a chance on a perilous boat ride across the Taiwan Strait to get here. Then, when they arrived and saw the menacing mountains and lack of fertile land, they thought, “We’re not turning back. We’ll make it work.”

 

But the view is not just menacing. It is stunningly beautiful. Enough so to have made many over the centuries decide to dock their boats here and attempt to carve out a life. Thinking of all this, I feel a bit like I am a part of that story too, as I also took a chance to come here and try to make a good life. And Taiwan has proven to be worth the risk.

 

* * *

 

My thoughts are interrupted by our guide, whispering into the microphone again. “Everyone, if you look from ten o’clock to two o’clock, you can see some dolphins have come to catch a ride on the waves that our boat is making.”

 

At first we see just one, then two, then four. Soon, there are dozens surfing on our waves, not for any real purpose other than for joy’s sake. They cut in front of each other, jump over our waves, then quickly race around to get back in line. They remind me of children at the fair with a lot of tickets to redeem on the rides. I smile widely, enjoying the fun vicariously.

 

(One of the dolphins near our boat. Photo Credit: K.H.)

Our guide whispers, “I don’t know what you feel, but when I see dolphins I always think about how much fun they seem to be having. In that moment, I wish that I could be a dolphin and swim with them. I also always feel surprised at how close they are to Taiwan. We often think of them as living very far away from us, but really, they are our neighbors.”

 

I agree with her, and I also find it so admirable that they speed up when the boat does, trying to rise to the challenge the captain is presenting them. They must be having even more fun as the game increases in difficulty, like a video game moving from level one to level two. But eventually, we are too fast even for the most determined dolphins, and they swim away to continue their fun somewhere else.

 

* * *

 

We never did see any whales on our whale watching trip, but that’s okay, because the dolphins and the views of Taiwan are already well worth the price. As we sail back to Hualien City, the Sun begins to set into the mountains, and half of a rainbow appears over the Pacific. Our guide, always the sentimentalist, whispers, “if you look to nine o’clock, you can see a rainbow. It seems to be blessing us at the end of a wonderful and safe voyage.”

 

I know that sounds really cheesy, but she is not wrong. Seeing the rainbow does make me feel that way too, and makes me feel like the gods sent it as one last miracle on top of the beauty of the mountains, clouds, sunset, and the sparkling Pacific, as if to say, “is this enough for you yet?”

 

It all reminds me of a quote by Toni Morrison, that goes:

 

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.

 

I want to say, “Yes, it is enough,” and yet, here are my pictures for you to see, and my story which is written just as much to remember as it is to share.

 

As our boat glides into Hualien Harbor, I think of all the boats throughout history that have come here, and of all of the people who have seen the views that I have seen today. From the first indigenous people to have rowed canoes here up from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, to the Portuguese sailors who allegedly passed by and shouted “Ilha Formosa!” meaning “beautiful island,” which today is a common nickname for Taiwan.

 

Of course when they saw this island they had to say “Formosa.” What else could they say?

 

* * *

 

As we walk off the boat, we take one last look at the darkening ocean before getting into our car. Driving back to our hotel, the mountains and the ocean slowly disappear along with the Sun. Nothing seems to exist except for us and the short stretch of illuminated road ahead of us. But I know that it is all still there, and that it deserves to be called “Formosa.”

 

(The Sun beginning to set into the mountains. Photo Credit: K.H.)

The Gods Are Not Among Us: The Yuli Shrine Rubble - 玉里神社

by Charles DeBenedetto

(The unassuming entrance to Yuli Shrine. Photo Credit: K.H.)

 

It's quiet, almost eerily so, despite being high noon. We walk past dogs lying limply in the shade of their houses, then through a tunnel and under the tracks of a slow-moving train. Coming out again, we turn a corner and an unfamiliar yet familiar sight meets us.

 

There are two thick concrete pillars jutting out of the ground, with two horizontal crosspieces laying across their tops. It is a Japanese torii gate, the symbolic entrance to the Japanese spirit world of Shinto, but its concrete is ugly in comparison to the normal red-lacquered wood of Japanese torii.

 

An English sign next to it reads:

Yuli Shinto Shrine is a culturally significant landmark. Damage or destruction of historical relics will result in at least five years in prison and a fine of up to 1,000,000 Taiwanese dollars.

I want to laugh at that, because even at the entrance, I can tell that this place is falling apart.

 

Beyond the ugly torii, we ascend an enormous stone staircase, seemingly made for giants, and we look awkward as we lunge up each step. As we go higher and higher, I imagine that the view of the countryside would be beautiful from up here, but we are surrounded by low-growing trees and can see little beyond them. Japanese stone lanterns flank the staircase, as well as some broken stone slabs. We see another concrete torii at the top of the staircase, and just beyond it some teenagers are dancing to rap music, practicing their pops and drops.

 

Clearly, this place is not sacred anymore.

 

The music stops the moment we pass through the torii, and they giggle their apologies, no longer feeling cool, but deeply embarrassed in the presence of two adults who probably do not understand them anyway. Do they see us as adults? I wonder. How quickly time passes, or maybe it’s just my somber expression that makes me look older than I am.

 

(The second torii, and the dancers in the background. Photo Credit: K.H.)

From the second torii, we have reached the top of our climb, and we follow a wooden path for a little while before it ends abruptly and becomes nothing but loose stones. There are flowers and tall betelnut trees, and to our left is a view of the town of Yuli. We can see many small, tin-roofed houses, the railroad tracks that cross through rice paddies, and the Coastal Mountain Range that separates this little valley from the thin sliver of Pacific coast on the other side. It’s a breath-taking view, and was deliberately chosen as the view for the Japanese Shinto spirit to enjoy for eternity. But as we walk to the end of the path, what we see is barely recognizable as a Shinto shrine.

 

(The remains of the main worship halls. Photo Credit: K.H.)

What would have been the outer worship hall is now a pile of stone rubble, sectioned off with a wire fence. Some stones have a distinguishable pattern on them, but most do not. Behind the outer worship hall, there is a well-preserved stone staircase, and at the top would have been the most sacred inner worship hall, which would have literally enshrined the essence of a god. Instead, there is nothing but some short grass.

 

What happened exactly? Did the people of Yuli burn down the inner shrine and knock down the outer shrine after the Japanese left? Did the Americans bomb it during the Pacific War? Did Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party destroy it after taking control of Taiwan? All are possible, but I’m inclined to believe that the last theory is most plausible, as the Nationalist Party’s hate for the Japanese was immeasurably deep. The fact that there are even concrete torii gates and some stone lanterns left feels like a miracle.

 

* * *

 

As we walk past the dancers again, and down the giant steps, I think about what this shrine probably meant to the Japanese who lived here. Although the Japanese regime was abhorrent, the Japanese who lived here were probably decent people, who did their jobs and lived their little lives far-removed from the imperial government in Tokyo.

 

Those people came to this shrine to get married once. They came here to pray. They came here for courage, before being enlisted in the Japanese Imperial Army to fight the Allies. They came here to share their joys and find solace for their sorrows. They came here to feel hope when they had none, and to feel connected to a spirit much greater than their own. But to the Taiwanese people, it is likely that they saw the Shinto shrine as a symbol of oppression, of a colonial regime that they did not ask for and that did not care about them.

 

Passing through the torii is often thought of as a spiritual homecoming, but here, it is not a gateway to a spirit world, but to a convoluted past.

* * *

With the ugly torii and the century-old rubble behind us, we walk back into the quiet country town, where life is so simple and slow that the complicated history feels almost forgotten. Looking up beyond the town, we see the same green mountains that the Shinto god once looked at from its worship hall on the best real estate in town.

 

We can hear the click-clack of the lazy trains far ahead of us, and in the air behind us, the faint echo of rap music.

 

(Walking back down again. Photo Credit: K.H.)

A Glimpse of an Angel: The Formosan Sika Deer - 臺灣梅花鹿

by Charles DeBenedetto

(Our glimpse of the Formosan Sika Deer. Photo Credit: K.H.)

“Shh. Look.”

I am about three paces behind my girlfriend, and I am not sure if she can hear me, but I don’t dare speak louder. She turns back to look at me, and I make two simultaneous gestures. With my right hand, I use a finger to cover my mouth, and with my left, I point out into the forest, away from the rocky path.

I crouch down low, and, when she sees it too, a hand covers her mouth and she crouches as well.

It looks at us with large, coal-black eyes in a small, slender head. Light brown fur with white dots on its back, it looks as though snow has been falling on it for a few minutes, and it has yet to shake it off. Perhaps only two or three meters away, it looks at us with curiosity, not fear. It looks healthy, surrounded by plenty of vegetation in the tropical forest, and it chews away happily as it looks at us.

After about five minutes (or was it an hour?) a smaller version of it scrambles out of the undergrowth to join the bigger one. It stays behind her, and she gestures for it to wait behind her until she can determine whether or not it is safe. My girlfriend takes pictures, which I am thankful for because I am not a photographer, and even if I were, I would be too afraid to make noise by searching my backpack for a camera. They stay for about ten minutes, then slowly, casually walk away, as if they were trying to leave a rather uninteresting conversation.

We watch them until they disappear, then we look at each other. We realize that we witnessed something special. 

 

* * *

 

We saw two Formosan Sika deer, which in Mandarin are called “plum blossom deer” for their white dots on their back that resemble the national flower of Taiwan. Although the plum blossom is a rather common flower, the Sika deer, we later learned, is truly uncommon. Our encounter with the mother Sika and her child was note-worthy, as most Taiwanese people have probably never even seen one in captivity, and even fewer would have seen a wild one like we did. But, in our travels around Taiwan, we have noticed that many places have names including “Lu,” the Mandarin word for deer.

Two of the most popular tourist destinations in Taiwan are “Lu Gang” (Deer Port) and “Lu Ye” (Deer Wilderness). Next to “Lu Ye” is “Chu Lu” (First Deer), and in Miaoli County there is a tribal village called “Lu Chang” (Deer Field). Others include “Lu Cao” (Deer Grassland), “Lu Gu” (Deer Valley), and “Sha Lu" (Deer Sands), while there are surely many others I don’t know about. But where are all the deer?

Before the mass immigration of Han Chinese people from mainland China to Taiwan, indigenous people hunted deer in the flatlands that would eventually become developed into big cities along the west coast. The city of “Lu Gang” (Deer Port) got its name because Taiwan’s first highly-prized commodity was Sika deer pelt. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of deer pelts were shipped through Lu Gang every day, until the flatland deer populations depleted. As Han Chinese pushed indigenous people out of the flatlands and into the mountains, indigenous people hunted mountain-dwelling Sika deer to sell to the flatlanders. Overhunting brought the Formosan Sika deer to near extinction, and today, only about one thousand remain.

 

* * *

 

After our encounter with the Sika deer, we check into our B & B just outside the borders of the national park. With a large, smooth white stone building, a green lawn, picnic benches, and a large wax-apple tree, it almost looks like it might belong in the American countryside. Black letters spell out the word “summer” on the outer wall. Walking along a stepping-stone path, we go into the first-floor kitchen to meet our hosts.

A man introduces himself as “Ah-Ben.” He is a bit shorter than me, but has a roughness about him that tells me I would certainly lose a fight with him. His wife is taller, with thin, round glasses, and her smile seems to be permanently attached to her face. After the formalities about the accommodations, they ask if we saw a deer in the forest. We happily report that we did, and we show them on the park map roughly where we were when we spotted them.

Just then, one of their cats walk in. It has a twisted paw, and is limping horribly. Ah-Ben’s face looks physically struck when he says “the poor thing stepped in a deer trap.”

He shows us pictures on his phone of traps he has uprooted. As he scrolls, he begins a tirade. “I walk every day looking for traps, and sometimes I pull out more than ten in a day. It’s an endless game; they set them, and I remove them. I’ve talked with the park rangers, but they’re in on it, too. They look the other way and pretend that an endangered species isn’t being hunted.”

He stops for a moment to breathe, then asks us, “Do you know what the punishment is if you are caught killing a Sika deer?”

We look at each other, blankly, then look back at him.

He wags three fingers in front of our faces. “Three-thousand Taiwanese dollars. That’s it. A three-thousand dollar fine, a stern talking-to, and away you go. But you can earn eight-thousand Taiwanese dollars just for selling the antlers! By the time you sell the meat, the pelt, and everything else, you can earn as much as thirty-thousand Taiwanese dollars! The government won’t crack down, because it is a part of the indigenous peoples’ culture to hunt deer. But that culture will die along with the deer.”

By this point his face is visibly red. It is clear to us that those thousand-or-so remaining Sika deer’s safety is the most pressing social issue to this man.

In my head, I convert the numbers from Taiwanese dollars to US dollars. You would be fined about $90 US, and you would earn about $900 US. Sadly, that’s a pretty good deal.

I ask him, “Is the economy so bad here that people must resort to killing deer to make enough money to live?”

He waves a hand in the air to dismiss my question. “Of course there’s work, but why work when you can set traps and earn a month’s salary every time a deer steps in one? And those deer, I love them, but they’re stupid. They walk the same routes every day! It doesn’t take long to learn their routines. And then it’s just too easy.”

He pauses for a moment. My girlfriend asks, “Do many people around here know about this problem?”

He says, “My friends and I take turns leading Sika deer tours, but the only people who sign up are the Grandmas and Grandpas. What we need is for the children to know, so that a new generation will learn to protect the deer. But what can the kids do if it’s their fathers and uncles who are killing the deer?”

We sit in thoughtful silence for a while, but we don’t think of any answers.

I look out the window and admire the wax-apple tree. It is as tall as the house, and strong. It looks as though it had been here long before the house, and I think about how similar it looks to an apple tree. The picnic bench under it also makes me nostalgic for autumn back home.

I tell Ah-Ben that it might not help much, but I’ll write his story. He thanks me, and offers to give me some of the pictures he has taken throughout the years. As my girlfriend and I retire to our room, we continue to think about how to solve this problem, but we still have no answers.

 

* * *

 

It truly was surreal to see a Sika deer. Across the entire island, only about one-thousand deer remain, most of which live either in captivity or in Kenting National Park, on the southwestern tip of the island, which is where we saw the mother deer and her baby. 

It was extraordinary, but it ought to have been ordinary.

In earlier times, the amount of Sika deer almost certainly exceeded the population of humans on Taiwan, and they used to graze in the flatlands which are now city centers with skyscrapers, department stores, and hardly any wildlife anymore. The Formosan Sika deer will probably never regain its former numbers, but, seeing it slowly, proudly walking away, its child in close pursuit, there is a small hope at least of its continued survival.

In the forest, we watched them until they disappeared. We did not know then that one day they might truly disappear.

(This informational plaque may one day become a memorial plaque. Photo Credit: K.H.)