Dragon Boats on Land: A Surreal Twist on an Ancient Culture - 陸上龍舟競賽

by Charles DeBenedetto

            
     (Our dragon boats looked similar to these. Photo Credit: nsysu.edu.tw)

We are very close to what would have been the end of the semester, had it not been for, well, you know. Having delayed the spring semester by two weeks back in February, we are paying for it now, as we will continue to teach until mid-July.

(Side-note: Having to teach an extra two weeks is extremely inconsequential, in respect to how disruptive to normal life the virus has been in other parts of the world. I am fortunate and lucky.)

Mid-July is the time when Taiwan gets so hot as to be practically unlivable, and, as a result of that heat, many Taiwanese would normally travel to places like Japan, Europe, Canada, or, better yet, wintry places like Australia and New Zealand.

Obviously, though, we will not be travelling abroad this summer.

Without international travel as the finish line, it can feel especially daunting to finish the semester. Already I am counting how many classes left to teach before the summer holiday. When I clock-in, a robotic voice happily says “thank you,” and I appreciate it, thanking me for braving the heat and sweating at red lights on my little scooter to get here. And then the “thank you” at the end of the day is truly a trumpet fanfare, congratulating me on the successful completion of another work day. This late in the semester though, the “thank you” loses its potency.

There is a custom in Taiwan that I have found hard to acclimate to. When there is a long weekend coming up, you must have class on the Saturday prior, to “make-up” for time lost during the holiday. Back home, I imagine if schools tried to do this, then students would riot and the principal would be captured and duct-taped to the monkey bars, but here it is accepted as normal. But then, being so overworked before the holiday comes, you almost spitefully don’t want it, until of course you finally get there, and you triumphantly clock-out and ride your scooter into the sunset, singing “Vacation all I ever wanted” by the Go-Go’s.

That’s the backstory, anyway. So, after working nine out of the past ten days, I clock-in, get my “thank you,” and walk in with a slightly lighter step at the thought of the upcoming holiday. My temperature is taken, and one of my students giddily sprays disinfectant into my awaiting hands. As I walk in, I notice a strange sight.

Sprawled across the green field, four long, inflated yellow dragons, each with eight pairs of handles for people to grip while they straddle them. Complete with long black mustaches and googly eyes, they look cartoonish, and, laying on their sides, they look tired. Beside them, there are smaller, inflated orange caterpillars with six sets of handles.

The school bell rings, and the students slowly coalesce on the quad.

“Attention!” The booming voice of the student affairs administrator quiets all chatter among the students.

He explains that there will be four teams, comprised of students from grades one to five, and that all grades will use the caterpillar, except grade five, who will use the big dragon. The goal? Get your dragon (or caterpillar) across the quad, get off so the next grade can begin, back and forth until all the grades in your team have completed the relay.

The students get in position and the first graders straddle their caterpillars.

“Ready…go!”

Hopping desperately, they bounce up and down, but do not move forward. I encourage my team. “Don’t sit! Stand up and walk!” But their little legs cannot touch the ground! Quickly thinking, myself and the other teachers on our team help lift the caterpillar so they can move. One teacher pulls the caterpillar's head so hard that I am afraid it is going to pop off. Finally, they make it across, but the second graders are equally unable to move.

By the time it’s the third graders’ turn, we are so tired that we can barely cheer them on. Third and fourth grade goes by fine, until finally it’s time for the fifth graders to ride the enormous dragon. The dragon is designed for adults, so again the teachers move in to help. Summoning Herculean strength, one teacher pulls on the dragon mustache so hard that one half of it pops off! “Oh no, I think we rented these,” was my first thought. Finally, we bring them across the finish line.

 After the students are done, the teacher’s race is announced. Apprehensively, I straddle the caterpillar (yes, we decided the ride the caterpillar), sitting at the second position. In front of me, a Taiwanese homeroom teacher, a muscular man with a large straw hat to block the Sun. As the race begins, nobody keeps count for us, so we find our rhythm slowly, awkwardly. I scramble, and struggle to keep in-sync with the teachers in front and behind me. We go torpedo-fast, and I am terrified of falling out of step and tumbling off the damn thing. We make it across the quad, turn around and charge back toward the school as if we are invaders trying to break in with a battering ram. Passing the cone that symbolizes the finish line, we collapse on the ground. I didn’t even see who won, but I laughed at the absurdity of it all, and felt camaraderie with my team for sharing this ridiculous experience together.

Sprawled out on the grass, we have already expended all of the precious energy that we normally ration throughout the working day.

Winners are announced, prizes are distributed, and, the event being formally over, the first graders begin to pile on the big dragon, unable to contain their excitement. Sitting on the front half of the dragon now, and feeling mischievous, myself and some of the other teachers jump high into the sky. Upon landing, the force of our butts shoots the little first graders off of the tail end, followed by high-pitched shrieks and giggles. It’s a wonderful moment, but soon the bell rings again, the kids obediently shuffle into their classrooms, the dragons and caterpillars are deflated and rolled up, and a normal school day commences. 

* * *

Even though the day was normal after that, it did energize me to get through the last day of classes before the long holiday. More importantly, it made me feel connected to my coworkers and my students. All of this to celebrate the beginning of the Dragon Boat Festival, a Chinese tradition dating back thousands of years where traditionally people will race dragon boats, which are long and can seat many rowers, and are painted ornately to look like dragons.

The inflatable dragon boats that we used are not part of mainstream Taiwanese culture, but merely something fun that my school chose to do. Perhaps they will catch on in the future, but for now the actual dragon boats in the water are still the dominant culture. That being said, if the ancient Chinese are looking down, and if they can see the inflatable dragon/caterpillar shenanigans at my school, they might faint and fall off their clouds. But all cultures change in subtle ways over time, the most ancient perhaps being the most susceptible to change.

Meandering Along “Eighteen Turns” Trail - 十八彎森林步道

by Charles DeBenedetto

(Trail Marker for "Eighteen Turns". Photo Credit: K.H.)

It had been a while since we had been on an adventure. Partly because the heavens had been persistently raining for a month, and partly because of the state of the world right now. Although, as I have said before, Taiwan has been the safest place in the world thanks to our comprehensive and quick response to the initial outbreak, still, Taiwanese people have been (rightly) cautious about returning to “normal.” Department stores have been sparsely populated, restaurants have not been seating customers to full capacity, and masks are still even more commonplace than they were before.

But, as we have had few new cases for a while, the scare is (seemingly) over, for us at least. The end of the abnormal was when the Taiwanese Minister of Health, Chen shi-chung, was filmed traveling to the tropical resort town of Kenting, happily encouraging the Taiwanese people that it is time to leave your homes and have fun again (and spend money to revitalize the Taiwanese economy). And so, we too have begun to get back to finding new places to explore. This time, we drove to Chunghua County, past Yuanlin Village, to a walking trail called “Eighteen Turns.”

Yuanlin is affectionately referred to as “the largest village in Taiwan,” which I suppose means that it is the largest of all the small places in the country. Large streets are busy with people buying snacks from street-side vendors, and umbrellas are up in defense of the powerful sun. We stop in a Hong Kong-style restaurant for lunch, and wonder if there will ever be another time when we can actually go back to Hong Kong. Just like the post covid-19 world, there will be a time when Hong Kong returns to “normal,” but it will be a new “normal.” The old normal is never coming back. We eat slowly, and thoughtfully.

Leaving the “biggest village,” we meander down side roads on the way to “Eighteen Turns.” We pass a sign that says “She Tou Village: the home of socks.” I chuckle at that, because Taiwanese villages often will have a specialty crop based on their unique geography and climate, but couldn’t socks be made anywhere? It is true, though, that Taiwan in general is famous for its socks, and a large majority of them are made in this village. One time, my Nana mailed me a pair of long socks for Christmas, with snowflakes and penguins on them. I wore them happily for a couple months before realizing that they were actually made in Taiwan. Thinking about my socks’ journey across the Pacific and back made me chuckle again.

Finally, we park under some bamboo stalks, walk past a koi fish pond, and reach the visitor center, which also serves as the entrance to the trails. Inside, we find a small museum of dead but well-preserved specimens of insects and other small creatures you might find along the trail.

Lately, like many others who are home-bound, we have been playing Animal Crossing, a video game where, among other things, you catch lots of bugs and fish, and so we have become amateur zoologists. Walking around the museum, we were surprised at how many insects we could recognize, thanks to Animal Crossing. “Oh, hey, that’s a man-faced stinkbug!” “And that’s a violin beetle!” After identifying many of the insects, we left the visitor center with a little more faith in the educational quality of video games.

For some, those creepy-crawlies might have served as a deterrent, but not for us, and so we began our hike.

As you’d expect, “Eighteen turns,” is a very meandering trail (I don’t think that there are exactly eighteen turns, though). It is an old trail, one that traders used a long time ago to connect villages in Changhua and neighboring Nantou counties. It is humid, but I wear long sleeves to protect myself from the mosquitoes and the sun. The flora is green and lush, growing uncontrolled as if it belongs in the Jurassic Era. After walking for a kilometer or two, we stop abruptly.

On a lone, skinny tree, dozens of Japanese rhinoceros beetles are cutting lines into the bark and sucking away at the sap. Everyone has their own spot, except for two who are fighting for a piece of prime real estate. In classic Darwin natural selection style, they fight until one proves to be the fittest, and the fittest truly does survive. Like a spatula flipping a pancake, the stronger of the two puts his horn under the weaker one’s belly, and flicks him hard off of the tree and into the grass below. Now the Alpha beetle, I assume that he continues to drink all of the sap, grow stronger, fight the rest of the males and mate with all of the females. The spectacle over, we carry on.

(Beetle fight. Long scars on the tree can be seen where they were digging for sap. Photo Credit: K.H.)

As advertised, the trail twists and turns, and we try to go slow, taking in the natural scenery that is so rare, as much of our lives is destined to be away from it. At the end, the trail shoots upward, a good seventy degrees, and suddenly we are sweating profusely. Shortly after the difficulty begins, it is over, and we reach the top.

It is not a mountain, more of a hill, really, and so civilization still exists at the top. There is a lone, narrow paved road, a small shack of a Tudi Gong shrine, and a tea field. We walk over to the shrine, and make our presence known to the Earth God. It is customary to do this, but I do find it meaningful, as I always wind up thinking, “How is it possible that we could ever have found our way to you?” Also, I always think, “And perhaps we will never cross paths again.”

The entire trail is a circle, so we walk along the flat top of the hill, to try to find where the connecting trail is. Before we get there, the tea field gives way to a pineapple field, and we squat down to get a closer look. They are very compactly grown, and they pop out of a low plant, almost like a bush. I admit to myself that I have been eating pineapples my whole life, but I never knew how they grew before coming to Taiwan.

I have a friend here who says that he thinks pineapples must have come from outer space, because they look so otherworldly. Looking at them in this field here, I have to agree. They have a fabric cover on them, and we are unsure why. Later, we learn that it is to prevent them from getting too much sunlight, but at the time I pondered whether or not it was some Martian technology, perhaps magnetized, so that when the UFO came back for them, it could just suck them up without having to land and make a crop circle.

(The otherworldly pineapples. Photo Credit: K.H.)

Beside the field, the farmer’s family is selling chopped pineapples for fifty Taiwanese dollars a bag (about $1.50 USD). The lady looks at me, and asks in Mandarin, “American?” I nod, and in response, she puts more pineapple chunks into the bag, free of charge. We thank her, and take a seat next to the hillside, where we can look out on Changhua County, speckled with rice paddies, villages, and beyond them, the bullet train zooming by far in the background. We use toothpicks to pick up the pineapple chunks, but they are too large and must be tackled in two or three bites, resulting in sweet juice dribbling down our hands and chins. It’s sticky and messy, but quenching after a sweaty hike.

There is too much pineapple to finish in one sitting, so we tie up the plastic bag it came in, wave goodbye to the farmer’s family, and descend the seventy degree slope to slowly make our way back.

(The view from the top. Photo Credit: K.H.)

Through the Torii: A Story from Japan - 日本故事

by Charles DeBenedetto

 

(The main torii gate of the Meiji Shrine. Photo Credit: planetyze.com)

The train is crowded, but comfortable. Wearing our backpacks on the front, I stare intently at the map, and keep glancing up at the LED screen to make sure I know where we are and where to get off. As the doors open, the hot summer air challenges the air-conditioning inside, and I’m already using my handkerchief to wipe sweat away before we have even left the subway station.

We walk for a few blocks, and notice that the streets are rather quiet, despite the large number of pedestrians. We pass lots of tall buildings selling familiar brands like Nike and Sony, but we are not interested in shopping. We turn away from the buildings and toward the natural scenery of a forest path.

Quickly, the already quiet street turns to silence as we leave the city behind. The road is wide, and made of small stones. On the left-hand side is untended, lush green undergrowth, and it looks as though it would be easy to get lost in it. We hug the forest side and walk silently, thoughtfully, appreciating being among nature after having spent the past few days engulfed by the sensory-overload of the Tokyo metropolis. After walking for about fifteen minutes, we reach a small wooden structure with flowing water inside. Designed for purification, it is used for washing your hands and mouth so that you will be more presentable to the gods.

We are approaching the Meiji Shrine, one of the most famous Shinto shrines in Japan, and dedicated to the late Meiji Emperor. Despite the Allies forcing Emperor Hirohito to declare on national radio that the Japanese emperors are not gods, the Meiji Shrine still exists to house the divine spirit of the emperor. Turning a corner, we see in the foreground an extremely-large torii gate.

The torii gate is the divider between the mundane and the spiritual, and to step through it is to enter the sacred space of the gods. Notably different than Western religious traditions where “we are down here and God is up there,” in Japanese religious tradition the gods are all around us, and shrines are simply special places to house them. Ancient trees are gods, as are old rocks, oceans, and anything that gives you a sense of awe. A Western person might see in the Japanese gods signs of His work.

Getting closer, I crane my neck to see the top of the wooden torii gate. It is twelve meters tall (more than six times the height of an average adult), and each pillar is much too large to wrap your arms around. Many people gape at it, or take pictures of and with it, but few stop for long. I notice the gold chrysanthemum crest of the royal family perched at the top, and I wonder what kind of mighty tree could possibly have been used to make this.

A small sign, partially covered by the overgrowing tree leaves, and largely ignored by passerbys, reveals the answer. It reads:

Ō torii (the Grand Shrine Gate)

This is the biggest wooden torii of the myōjin style in Japan…the material wood used is “hinoki” (Japanese cypress), 1,500 years-old from Mt. Tandai-san, Taiwan.

Simultaneously, I think about many things.

First, as the Japanese Shinto faith is about worshiping nature and living harmoniously with nature, why then would they cut down a 1,500 year-old tree to make a torii gate? Shouldn’t that be considered blasphemous, as certainly a very ancient spirit would have resided within that tree?

Second, what is the purpose of using the Japanese colonial name, “Mt. Tandai-san”? I had never heard of “Mt. Tandai-san,” but after consulting Google, I realize that the current name for that mountain is Mt. A-Li, the most famous mountain in Taiwan. Using the Japanese name only serves to confuse the English reader. I sense some nostalgia in the old name, remembering when “Mt. Tandai-san” used to belong to the Japanese.

Finally, why is this little sign so tucked away? Perhaps Taiwanese activist groups pressured Japan to acknowledge that this torii gate, so important to the Japanese, was actually made from an ancient Taiwanese tree. Although the sign does acknowledge this fact, it acknowledges it in the most unnoticeable way possible. Much like how Japanese schools teach the history of the Japanese Empire, atrocities are downplayed and much is left out.

But I have been to Mt. A-Li. I have seen the massive tree stumps, and the Japanese trains that moved resources, not people, from the mountains to the coast, so that wealth could leave Taiwan and benefit Japan. This was not just at Mt. A-Li, but across the Japanese Empire, from Korea to Singapore. But this massive torii gate, with a 1,500 year-old dead tree god inside, is a symbol of all that.

We pass through the torii, to the realm of the gods. Again, it is quiet, despite the many people. Again, we walk silently, thoughtfully.

I think about awe. That’s an interesting definition of what a god is: anything that inspires awe. Looking at the ancient tree, I do feel awe-struck, and I think about how much of human history that tree was witness to. But I am awed not just by nature, but also by the arrogance that humans have to decide in one day to fell a tree that remembers the fall of the Roman Empire.

I think about Taiwan, how it is just like that tree that became the torii gate. It is beautiful, but for most of recorded history it has belonged to everyone except the Taiwanese. Like the tree, colonial Taiwan's beauty was thought of in terms of its value to the colonizer. My thoughts interrupt the tranquility, and I try to re-focus on the sounds of the pebbles underfoot, and the green forest around us.

We walk silently, thoughtfully.