First of all, before I start blathering on about my weekend, watch this video. Now, I used to tell people that everyone should visit New York City at least once, but I’m beginning to think I should change my advice. That person being arrested? It’s you.

After Tai-chi practice on Saturday, I joined Daniel and Prince Roy for a nice lunch at the Yongkang Sababa. The weather was perfect for lounging and eating pitas on the veranda. We then went to check out the progress of our favorite teahouse, Wistaria. Unfortunately, not only was the old structure still closed for renovation, the opening was delayed until June. We walked up Xinsheng to its other location, in a quiet alley, and sat next to the front window, which looks out onto the small garden.

Unfortunately for us, peace and quiet was not to be had, due to a woman loudly “educating” a couple of foreigners at a table on the other side of the room. The foreigners were apparently still jetlagged from their trip. “THE TEA CEREMONY IS A CENTRAL PART OF OUR SPIRITUAL LIVES,” the woman orated. “IT IS SOMETHING WE PARTAKE OF EVERY DAY.” I fought the urge to shout, “ANCIENT CHINESE SECRET, HUH?” at her.

Despite the noise, the tea was very good. We got our favorite Iron Bodhisattva tea and some snacks and spent the next couple of hours chatting above the din. After night fell, we walked over to Chicago Pizza off Jianguo and took a couple of pizzas over to the Da-an Park amphitheater to eat as we watched workmen take down scaffolding from that night’s show. In the distance we could hear a constant drumming. I wondered how they could keep going without tiring out. After the pizza was gone, we walked over to take a look, and found a group of people doing Brazilian dance-fighting to a drumbeat.

The next day, Sunday, I decided to dust off the Crazy Bike, which had laid dormant in the bowels of my building all winter, and take a ride. I told myself it would be just a short ride, as I’d planned to get the Tokyo video done that day. The weather was just too nice, and it had been too long since I’d ridden. When I reached the confluence of the Xindian and Dahan Rivers, I turned west up the latter stream and crossed to the other side on the Xinhai Bridge. Then I began to wonder if they can extended the path. I told myself that I had come that far, and I might as well find out. The path ran between the train tracks and the river as I passed through Shulin, where I found that it had indeed been extended. I continued along the riverside, and found myself in downtown Yingge, across from the ceramics center. I’d set out at 1pm, and it was only 4pm, so I felt I could be back in Bitan by 7pm.

I was wrong. On the way back I began to get tired, and my knees began to ache. I stopped to chat with some drunken aborigines who having a party under a bridge, sharing a drink with them and plying them for hat-related information. I stopped on the bridge back to take pictures, and then at the site of the construction of a bridge across the meeting of the three rivers for still more pictures. At Gongguan I parked on the wooden walkway and laid on a bench to watch the stars for a bit.

It was well after 9pm by the time I got home, and after some spaghetti for dinner, all I wanted was a shower and bed. So much for productivity. Later I measured the distance I’d ridden with a map interface, which is probably not entirely accurate due to it’s straight-line distances, but it said I’d gone about 70 kilometers. It was a good ride, but I probably should have taken it a bit easier the first time out. Still, I now know that the path goes all the way to Yingge, so maybe next time I little exploring of that area would take the edge off the journey there and back.

I just got back from seeing The Forbidden Kingdom. My main reason for going to see it, besides liking martial arts films, was to see the historic first on-screen pairing of Jet Li and Jackie Chan. If the fight scene between the two is all you’re there for, you won’t be disappointed; I just about cried out in joy. In fact, most of the fight choreography in the film is good, thanks to Yuen Wo-ping, but Li and Chan’s stuff is just brilliant, especially for those of us who have seen countless movies by them both throughout their careers and wondering what they would look like fighting together.

Of course it’s all carefully orchestrated not to show a clear winner between the two. Even the the opening credits, their names appear at the same time, linked together by sharing the “J” at the beginning of their names on the screen. It’s obvious that the producers of the film took great pains to make sure the two got equal billing and screen time. In fact, it seems that the purported protagonist of the film, Jason Tripitikas, played by Michael Angarano, was pretty much ignored throughout. The result is that the story is not told from any particular point of view, and not even the director seems to care what the protagonist of the film is thinking in more than a cursory fashion.

Aside from the choreography, the music, cinematography, editing and art direction of the film are all excellent. The writing, however, is pretty awful, and the story told as an afterthought. If the people making the film had given Jason not only more lines, but better lines, even some character development that didn’t depend on other people making remarks about what we should have seen, it could have been a compelling story. Jason speaks gratingly poor Chinese throughout the movie, seemingly unrelated to the motions of his lips. Either Angarano’s Chinese was too fluent for him to be a “believable foreigner” or it was simply unintelligible and had to be looped, (but looped badly? Is there any reason for that? Maybe it’s just the Taiwan version that’s like that?). A few sardonic remarks. maybe in English, a couple of witty asides as he goes through his miraculous training, could have gone a long way in fleshing out his character. As it is, there’s simply nothing in the character to latch onto.

Chan and Li are the real stars of the film, and they both do a good job. Li makes a surprisingly good Monkey, I have to say. But in the end it feels more like an American Hollywood production with a pseudo-Chinese veneer than anything else. It could have been a great film, alas. Reports say that Jet Li and Jackie Chan enjoyed working together so much they’re thinking of doing more. I hope they get a chance to work with better writers and directors when they do so. Perhaps the US involvement in this project was considered “neutral ground” for the two stars to cooperate on, but I’d like to see what they can do under a Chinese director.

A few days ago this account marked seven years of mindless blather since my first post on April 22, 2001. I completely forgot, of course, but now at least I have an excuse to make an individual post about it instead of lumping it in with all the other boring minutae of my life.

Seven years! Even then, I was wondering where all the time went. Back then, I was living in a room in someone else’s apartment on Xinsheng South Road and working at Ogilvy & Mather. The world of my early 30s seems like a different world from today in my late 30s. I moved an average of once a year since then, though I’ve only worked at two other jobs during the same time….but I’m not in the mood for a nostalgia-fest at the moment. Things were good then; they’re even better now.

I am kind of curious if anyone had been reading this thing continuously from the beginning. As I managed to completely alienate the one friend who inspired me to create this site (ironically, the site was a major factor in said alienation), I doubt it. Actually, I’m pretty sure I lost most of my followers when O&M moved offices and took away my proximity to Whiny Woman. Sure, it saved my sanity, but it also killed my ratings. Ah, well.

I was watching Futurama on the subway last night when I felt someone tug at my shirt. I looked up to see a couple of woman staring at me; one of them held up a magazine, which turned out to be this month’s Taipei Pictorial, turned to the article about me. “Is this you?” they asked.

We chatted a bit, but it was clear that they had just picked up the magazine for light reading material and were just amazed by the coincidence of seeing someone from inside standing next to them. I’m still waiting for my copy in the mail, but I will look for some extra copies later today. The .pdf file can be downloaded here, if you can read Chinese. It’s kind of a puff piece, but nice.

Construction in my building has begun again; it’s forcing me to go to bed early, because there will be no sleep to be had after 8am. I’ve been working from home recently due to even more construction at the office. Between construction at work, construction at home, construction around the MRT, construction on the Bitan riverside, it feels like the whole world is being rebuilt. ‘Tis the season, I suppose.

I went down to Camera Street last night after work to check out the new Sigma DP1 I’ve been hearing so much about. The images I’ve seen online from the camera have been quite impressive, but many users were pointing out usability problems. After handling it and snapping a few shots, I have to say it does feel like an older camera, mostly in a good way, but not so much in step with the modern digital era. Some of the things people want in point-and-shoot cameras these days I would rather do without, things like face detection and color schemes. The DP1 is more like an old manual camera than a modern point-and-shoot. The worst thing about it, I thought, was the low-quality screen on the back. Focusing must be a bitch on that thing. Sigma has been updating the firmware, but I wonder how much they can do that way.

I’ve also been hoping for an announcement from Canon on the next generation of the 5D, but nothing so far but rumors. The 5D itself has dropped below NT$60,000 here now, dirt-cheap for such an amazing piece of equipment. Lenses, however, tend to keep their value. No doubt they are working on new ones to accompany newer models these days. Both should be announced no later than Photokina in the Fall. It just reinforces the feeling that everything is under construction, including cameras and even phones, with the 3G iPhone supposedly coming out soon as well as a new Panny HD video camera. Although I bet they don’t use jackhammers.

I finished posting the Matsu photos, 165 out of 609 that I took during the three-day trip. I’ve inserted some of them into the blog posts on the subject if you want to scroll down a bit to take a look. A friend of mine who works at a magazine said they might be interested in using some of them for a related travel article.

Flickr has either generously introduced a wonderful new useful feature or shoved an unwelcome, distracting irritant down the throats of its paying users, depending on your point of view. Like it or not, however, videos are slowly making their way into the photo-sharing site so beloved by a huge number of people.

My first reaction to this development was one of dismay. I knew that Yahoo! was out to compete with Google’s Youtube by introducing the videos into the photo community that it bought a while back, and it didn’t seem like a good idea to throw another medium into the mix. And the whole “long photo” thing is just inane. I considered immediately deleting any contacts who put video into their streams, but then I wondered if I was overreacting. I am a filmmaker as well as a photographer, after all. Is video such a bad thing to include into the flickr experience?

I think it could be, but for reasons that are difficult to explain. Most of the negative reactions on flickr itself have been basic, simple and repetitive entreaties against the move, without much explanation involved. What really surprised me was the vitriol, ridicule and animosity with which these objections were met. “Quit yer whining,” “Just deal with it,” “snobs!” “crybabies,” “Knee-jerk reactionaries,” etc. Flickr staff were, of course, siding with the pro-video groups and removed and remonstrated the more radical anti-video elements, while allowing the pro-video insults and YouTube-level confrontations to continue for the most part. It was a far cry from the civilized, friendly debate that used to characterize flickr’s forums, as if the entire site had gone into “DeleteMe Group” mode.

Another thing that bothers me is how Flickr has implemented video, simply dumping it in among the pictures. It’s like a library had DVDs interspersed randomly among the books on the shelves. The videos are represented by small squares the same size as the photo icons, but with a tiny “play” triangle” in the bottom corner. They show up in Contacts’ Photos, Explore and Searches. Only by going into the settings can you make it so that they don’t all play automatically when you go to the page. Instead of photos, we now all have “content,” “things” and “items,” and the top of my page reads “Photos & video from Poagao” despite the absence of video. Also, the videos all have sound, which changes the Flickr experience quite a bit by itself. Long pictures with sound, perhaps the blurb on the intro page should read.

“Stop whining; All you have to do is not play the videos,” is a comment repeated often in the related threads. I suppose it may still be possible to maintain a semblance of the original flickr experience if you weed out all of your contacts who have video, but they’ll still pop up elsewhere. But what’s the real difference? Ah, this is where it becomes very difficult to put into words. When I browse a page of photos, I am in a certain mindset. My eyes see the small photo and instantly take it in, and I know immediately whether I want to click on the larger version. It’s a frame of mind that allows me to instantly process what I’m seeing and lets me browse through many photographs to find that one that gives me shivers down my spine, that emotional “oomph” that some photos kick you with you first lay eyes on them.

If video clips are interspersed throughout the page, however, I have to work harder just to differentiate and weed out the videos. Why? It’s not that I don’t want to watch the videos. They may be very good. But the little thumbnail simply can’t represent it; I have no idea what they are. It’s just one small frame, and I will have to click on it, wait for it to load, and watch it most of the way through before I even know what it is. It’s a whole different media and requires a different frame of mind. An equivalent would be mixing up Chinese and English words. I know both languages, but going back and forth from one to another all the time is difficult for me because I tend to have a Chinese-language mindset and an English-language mindset. Video pulls me out of my photography mindset.

This mindset is important to me; it’s the mode I use when I’m out taking pictures, seeing pictures and potential shots out in the ordinary world. It’s different from my film mindset, which I use when I’m directing a movie. In directing mode, I see motions, changes, progressive angles and many other things that are different from my photography mindset, which just sees composition and lighting, shadow and space. Before, Flickr was a place where I could envelope myself in this world, where I could safely stay in this mindset and appreciate the little surprises I came across within it. All of those wonderful photographs are still there, of course. I just can’t appreciate them from the point of view that I could before.

Now, to the vast majority of flickr users, the above is simply absurd, unintelligible at best and likely offensive to many, in that they feel that some lofty “mindspace” of mine shouldn’t get in between them and their ability to have videos of their children playing soccer next to their photos of their children playing soccer. This is probably the reason for the strange nature of the ongoing debate. Those of us who feel videos are taking something away are not only unable to express what it is we’re losing, even if we could, it’s an utterly alien concept to most of the people who use the site, one they’re not in the least interested in preserving, as they weren’t even aware of its existence in the first place.

As an experiment, I went to the streams of those who were pro-video and those who were anti-video, and while there were varying degrees of quality on both sides, it seemed that those most interested in video took pictures that could have been video stills, while the anti-video crowd seemed to take more all-encompassing works, photos that seemed better able to tell a story on their own.

When you come down to it, video is here to stay; Flickr is aiming to please most of its customers by adding it. For Yahoo! it’s actually a mildly encouraging sign after they raped and left for dead promising sites like Geocities and eGroups. What people say they want and what they really want, however, are often two different things. I wonder if anyone who clamored for video capabilities on Flickr will pause one day and think to themselves that, somehow, there’s something missing, something they just can’t put their finger on. Then again, probably not. It’s here to stay, and we might as well see what we can do with it.

The guy who ran the hostel knocked on my door at 8am with a bag of fried things and doujiang for breakfast. I was gathering my stuff together and stuffing it into my backpack, which fortunately can be expanded to accommodate the…wait a minute, I didn’t buy anything. Hmm….accommodate the instant noodles I was taking on the boat, then. Prince Roy was busy watching a black-and-white, blurry version of a baseball game in his room. The world outside was white with fog even thicker than the day before, and we heard the Taima ferry’s foghorn repeatedly as it tried to make its way into the area.

After settling our bills, we were driven down to the port, where a fairly large group of people, mostly soldiers, waited for the ferry, still making its presence known via foghorn. PR and I sat on the waterfront and watched it appear out of the fog and sidle up to the dock. Back inside, a short, bespectacled MP checked the soldiers’ papers as we lined up. MP’s are allowed to arrest up to three ranks above their own, so everyone from sergeant on down was at the mercy of the little private.

Once on board, we put our things away in our cabin, the very cabin we’d had on the trip out (this time sans interlopers), and went up top to watch the departure. I struck up a conversation with a soldier who turned out to be one of the few volunteers in the new experimental program. He told me that he makes NT$37,000 a month, and gets nine days’ leave in Taiwan every three months. He is in for five years and will be discharged at the rank of sergeant-major. Now, a year and a half in, he is a corporal. He was also born the year I arrived in Taiwan.

Fuao Port disappeared into the mist, and we slid along the surprisingly smooth seas with only a slight rocking. Perfect sleeping weather, so that’s what we did, getting up for a lunch of gooey microwaved curry rice in the restaurant. Then we went out and stood just below the bridge watching the ocean and wondering where all the garbage we saw on the water came from. PR thought there might be a wreck somewhere ahead.

The sun came out; we were making good time. Keelung came into view before 4pm, though it took us a while to weed our way through the harbor and dock. For a while, PR and I stood stupidly by the upper-deck exit, wondering when they were going to extend the gangway, before we realized that everyone was headed below to the car gate at the rear of the ship.

Keelung, and Taiwan, were pretty much as we’d left them, albeit about 15 degrees warmer. Summer came while we were away. Keelung, of course, is a depressing place to arrive, even from as undeveloped a place as Matsu, but my spirits were lifted somewhat by the atmosphere of the soldiers just starting their 9-day leave. We walked to the train station and caught a train back to Taipei. At each stop more and more students would crowd onto the train, and it struck me how different they seemed from the soldiers only a few years’ older.

An hour of cell-phone-related chatter later, PR and I parted ways in the MRT station, him to sort through the 478 photos he took, and me to sift through the 609 pictures I ended up with after deleting the obvious duds every night to save CF card space. Not that we were competing, but it will be interesting not only to read his version of the events I’ve described here, but to see the pictures he took as well.

And now, over 6,000 words later, we return to life as we know it. Just 15 degrees warmer.

I was woken up this morning not by the washing machine, but rather two loud blasts from the Taima ferry’s foghorn. Pulling back my curtains, I was met with a white wall of solid mist. “Someone stole my view,” I texted Prince Roy downstairs.

Over the next couple of hours, however, the fog gradually lifted to reveal a sunny, warm day. PR and I took a short walk down to the village to look at a particularly interesting little house we’d seen the night before. On the way, we stopped to chat with a woman who was watering the plants in her yard. She told us that nobody was selling land or houses in Matsu, for various reasons.

Back at the hostel, we rented a couple of scooters and set out to explore Nangan island. We rode the curving white road through the hills of the center of the island to the highest point, Mt. Yuntai, but although there was a helpful concrete map telling us where to look for other islands and mainland China, the view was shrouded in mist. A military situation center was located at the peak, decorated with black murals of Chiang Kai-shek in Dirty Harry poses. The KMT emblem part of the flag had fallen off the mural, and Chiang had bird droppings on his shoulder. Soldiers peeked out of the gunslits, the emblem painted on the ceiling of their little room.

We rode back down and on to Jinsha Village. At first it appeared much like a Chinese city, with a group of people sitting on the curb. It turned out, however, that the group were all tourists. We visited the local temple and helped a frog caught in the sun to a shady spot. Then we walked through the alleys and by a local hostel constructed with traditional materials. At one point we ran into a couple from Canada, who were staying there with their dog. They said their flight had been canceled and that there was no ferry on Monday, which was alarming news. We still held out hope that our flight, at 5:30, wouldn’t be canceled as the sun burned the fog away.

Along the waterfront was a bomb shelter decorated in the blue and white of the KMT, featuring small pieces of art inside. The old stone houses reached up the side of the mountain, and more were being built near the village’s mail road.

We rode on to Matsu Village, where The Matsu Temple was located, along the beach where Matsu’s body washed ashore. She is supposedly buried under a concrete slab in the temple, though some say it is just some of her clothes, or her father. I take it nobody’s thought of exhuming the remains to check. A pavillion next door features lovely chairs in the shape of upturned hands. Mine was wet. Monkey! I thought.

Some WWII-era military transport ships were beached along the shore, as well as a supply ship. PR and I walked along the edge of the bay, examining the various fortifications and their decreptitude, and I explored part of a tunnel that appeared to be abandoned, but still features two 80’s-era video games. Unfortunately, they weren’t plugged in.

Matsu Village was full of soldiers, the main street positively hopping in comparison with the other parts of the island we’d seen so far. It also features an ATM and a 7-Eleven. We had lunch at a local restaurant that smelled like barracks due to all the soldiers there; a bank of small fans were no match for their numbers. I had egg rice covered in barbecue sauce, which was better than it sounds. PR had soup with a side of soup.

It was around this point that PR discovered that, for some strange reason, his travel agent had booked our flights out of Beigan Island, instead of the island where we actually arrived and where we were staying. In a desperate bid to change this situation, we raced back across the island to the airport, breaking speed records and cameras along the way. Once PR ran into the curb and nearly crashed.

When we arrived at the airport, we were told that all the flights had been canceled. This was bad, as we both have to work tomorrow. What was worse, all the flights on Monday were booked solid, as well as standby. The ferry, however, was running, so we rode back to the port and booked two tickets for tomorrow morning back to Taiwan. It will only arrive at Keelung at 4pm, effectively ruining any chances of work that day, but it’s our only option at this point, other than just settling down here for good.

Our dilemma resolved, after a fashion, we continued our tour by riding to Siwei Village, at the northwest corner of the island. There we found temples with interesting carved figures, one apparently wearing skiing goggles, and another I thought looked uncannily like me, and elaborate chandeliers overlooking the sea.

One temple, the White Horse God Temple, marked the spot where the bodies of two mainland generals washed up on the shore. The local people buried them, and then a light would shine out at sea warning fishermen of inclement weather. At another village we visited later, Qingshui, another body had washed up on shore, yet another mainland general, and when the villagers buried it, they found the fishing quite good for the next few seasons. So they erected a temple on the spot. It seems that Matsu is quite The Place for washed-up generals.

The afternoon was wearing on when we reached Renai Village, which is located on a steep hill rising from a nice little bay. We parked at the top and walked down the main street to the harbor, where some residents had made great efforts to restore their buildings to their former glory. It was the first place I’d seen here that rivaled Fuxing Village, where we’re staying. We toured the local temple, the interior of which was ancient despite the exterior being touched up in 1984. The tables were scarred with decades, if not centuries, of daily temple use.

Next stop was the Stone Fortress, which meant riding through an army base gate and along the coast to a place where a stone outcropping had been hollowed out and made into an impregnable fortress. Inside was a long, dark hallway, lined with shelves for soldiers to sleep and machine gun holes, two toilets, water tanks, a sentry post and a room for the dog, which apparently not only had a rank, but was an officer. I’ll bet the guys who served there have stories to tell.

Westwards, the sun was settling into the haze, so after figuring that we liked Matsu Village best, we rode back there on the winding coast road, past a reservoir adorned with a cool wooden pavillion, though to the village, where we bought some snacks and sat in front of the temple watching the day come to a close. The supply ship was completely beached by this point, but apparently men live on it, as it was lit up. Soldiers finishing up their weekend leave milled around on the main street and at the bus station.

After dark, PR insisted on trying the nearby Pizza King, so we barged in on what was obviously a boistrous family meeting and ordered two small pizzas. When they came, approximately 27 seconds later, they looked pretty much like regular pizzas, but tasted almost nothing like any such thing. The bread, for one thing, was sweet and soft. The sauce was barbeque sauce, and although we managed to stop them from putting raisins on our pizzas, they did feature carrots and quite a lot of pepper. It was sort of like Teppanyaki in pizza form, and it actually wasn’t bad once you got over the fact that it looked like pizza.

When we left the restaurant, the streets were almost deserted; all the soldiers had gone back to their bases. The ride back across the island was nice and cool in the night. The harbor lights flashed as we descended and then climbed again on the way back to Fuxing Village to the hostel. After handing in the keys, however, I didn’t quite feel like turning in just yet, so PR and I went for one last tour of the village, including the temple by the bay, the broiling water a symphony of gurgles and crashes I would love to record and play back at home.

Tomorrow we have to get up by 8am or so to catch the ferry. We snagged another cabin this time, but PR called window bunk already. It will be interesting to see how the trip is experienced in real time, without sleeping through most of it.

I was awoken this morning by the clotheswashing machine churning away in the next room at around 6am. So, it being quite cold in my room, I turned on the heater to drown out the intermediate noise with constant noise. A while later, I was again woken by a phone call from the front desk. “Can you turn off your heater?” she asked. “The dripping water is keeping the guest downstairs awake.”

“By the guest downstairs, do you mean Prince Roy?” I asked.

“Yes, and he wants you to cut it out,” she said. So I turned it off. It was almost 7am by this point, so I gave up on sleep and just got dressed. Outside, the Taima ferry plowed through the waters on its way from Dongyin to the port here. It looked like the makings of a beautiful day outside, a little cloudy but dry. PR was watching the Yankees game on TV, but we had to catch the boat to Beigan for the day.

Despite waiting forever for the people in front of us to buy tickets down at the port, we just made the 9:00am boat, along with a dozen other passengers. The boat was about the size and shape of the USS Minnow, and the pilot drove it like a bus. PR had the window open and was told to shut it, a wise decision as it was sprayed with water once we got out into open ocean.

The port at Beigan seems to be in the middle of nowhere, and you have to take a taxi to the main village by the airport, or so we’d been informed. Actually there were scooter rental places right there, but we didn’t see them. We shared a taxi with a couple instead.

The main village of Tongxi isn’t much to look at. It’s basically two streets, once perpendicular to the other. I took pictures of a KMT emblem while PR rented a pair of scooters, and then we were off. We rode up steep, curving roads past military base after military base to the top of Bishan, where an observation platform was located right in front of yet another military base and a sign saying “No pictures.” Gunfire and shouts echoed clearly up from below, where soldiers were training. I asked the guard at the gate when the planes usually landed, and he said one was due in a few minutes, so we waited. Powerful strobe lights began to flash on the tops of all the nearby mountains, and we heard the sound of a small propellor plane approach, and then disappear. We saw no plane. The weather wasn’t bad, so I can’t believe they cancelled the landing because of that.

Disappointed, we got back on our scooters and rode down to the coast to look at a series of temples along the coast. Temples in Matsu look different from their counterparts in Taiwan, with more reds and yellows and whites involved. We saw one temple just for female gods, with a phoenix motif and two female lions out front. We looked for the Thunder God temple, which I pictures as a kind of superhero god, hopefully wearing a cape of some kind, but we didn’t find it. Nobody knew what we were talking about when we asked them.

We continued down the coast to the Chinbi village, which is inordinately cool. For one thing, it’s been preserved, and all new buildings have to be built like the old ones. The community of stone houses faces a small beach with a turtle-shaped island not far off shore, and is apparently home to visiting artists who live there to “create”. We parked our scooters and walked into the complex, noting the many old signs harking back decades, with slogans like “Retake the Mainland” and “Look Out for Commie Spies!” The place was filled with interesting little nooks and crannies, sunny verandas and shady courtyards. One interesting motif was the use of frogs in the design. We even found a room full of various frog-related statuary. It seems that long ago, the village was besieged by drought and disease, and after praying to Matsu, relief appeared in the form of rainfall, and frogs, so frogs here are kind of like cows in India, i.e. not on the menu.

At the local Matsu temple, another surprise awaited us. In addition to all the flowers and notes wishing Matsu a happy birthday, on the altar lay the latest Pizza Hut pizza with all the toppings, a bucket of KFC and a bottle of Pepsi. Matsu is living it up this year, it seems.

We had lunch at the Chinbi Cafe, sitting out on the patio while a stray cat begged loudly for scraps. I wondered if it had eaten any frogs. I met the people who had donated the fast food at the altar. They had originally planned to take the plane the day before, but it was canceled (probably the same flight Mark was supposed to be on), so they took the ferry over, carrying the delicacies with them at great inconvenience. Now that’s dedication.

The food at the Chinbi Cafe was delicious and the view unsurpassed as the sun came out, the blue sky showing through the clouds. I asked the owner what renting places there was like in the summer, and was told it was very difficult. “It’s full of tourists during the high season,” he said. After lunch we walked around a bit more, exploring the place before getting back on the scooters and continuing on our way.

We stopped at a few more temples, including an old Matsu temple painted in a striking shade of yellow on a large, nice beach. In front of it was a field covered with yellow flowers, and next door was a small military unit. The soldiers were out in the courtyard polishing or painting things, but otherwise there was nobody around. The crash of the waves on the beach and birdsong were the only sounds. It was extremely peaceful and would be a good place to meditate. Another temple down the road had scenes from “Journey to the West” carved on its elaborate facade and a flashy ceiling inside.

We rode down to the ferry port and back, stopping at a couple of statues of late President Chiang Kai-shek, one with a jaunty hat, and then back to the airport and across a sand spit to Hou-ao village. We then waited at an intersection-free stoplight counting down to zero as a soldier on guard gave his comrades across the street the finger from his post atop a small building. When the inexplicable light turned green, we rode up into the hills, past some military displays to an observation deck at the edge of a sea cliff. Not content to merely tempt fate by standing too close to the edge, I went to get closer pictures to a bunch of “Danger: Landmines” signs nearby while PR climbed across a small rocky bridge and up to an outcrop of stone high above the waves. There was also a military museum with, ironically and suitably depending on your point of view, an alternative serviceman sitting at the reception desk overlooking the old guns and other military paraphernalia on display. The mannequins were all tall, thin and white Caucasian models that looked extremely odd wearing the green slickers and face paint.

The afternoon was wearing on as we rode back down to Hou-ao Village to have a look around. The community is located just at the edge of the hillside, in front of the channel of water between it and the airport. We happened upon a row of plastic bags hung out to dry, as well as several Beijing 2008 Olympic mascot figures in a pile, on bases that read, “Courtesy of The People’s Government of Gulou District.” Curious. In fact, we had already noted that many of the offerings at the temples were in fact mainland Chinese goods. Another curiosity: an electricity bill stuck in the doorway of a building that looked as if it hadn’t seen any improvements since the Qing dynasty.

We rode back across the sand spit and under the airport runway to the scooter place to return our rides, stocked up on water at 7-Eleven, and walked along the street looking for a taxi. As we did so, we passed an old lady carrying fish noodle ingredients. She said hello, and PR noted that he had read about her in his guidebook.

Eventually we caught a tattered cab back to the port to catch the ferry. Unfortunately, we just missed the 4:30pm boat, and had to wait an hour for the last boat back to Nangan. In the meantime, we sat at a nearby temple and talked about what we had seen so far, as a fishing boat docking up confused the two young coast guard members entrusted with registering the vessel. The tide was out and the water level was about two stories lower than it had been when we arrived.

The ride back was as uneventful as the ride there. PR nodded off while I waited impatiently for a wave to slap a woman across the cabin who had left her window open. Unfortunately, no such thing happened, and I had to content myself with capturing blurry photos of the mountains of Nangan across the sea.

The sun was setting when we arrived back at Nangan port. We caught a cab back to our hostel; the cabbie thought it strange that we would choose a place with a view over somewhere “in the middle of everything.” Yes, I came to Matsu for its urban sophistication and cosmopolitan nature; what was I thinking?

We walked down the hill to Yi-ma’s Shop, but found it awash with people, including a couple of shrieking children who thought I was a pirate. We decided to head instead to the temple by the bay instead, where we sat and ate garlic peanuts and cookies while catching glimpses of the stars overhead through the clouds. One of the temple doors was open, and we took a look at the spookily empty interior. The “guards” painted on the side gates were women, which is unusual. The “guards” on the main gates were done in 3D and looked unnaturally real in the night, as if they could step out and throttle you at any moment.

By the time we got back to the restaurant a bit after 8pm, the crowds had left, and sat down to another delicious meal prepared by Mrs. Chen and her crew. PR got a huge glass of laojiu, but I declined. Just like yesterday, the atmosphere was most relaxing. As we ate, we heard Taichung Mayor Jason Hu pimping out his city on the radio to Chinese tourists, and then an official from Miaoli did the same. “It has begun,” PR said. Mrs. Chen gave us some nice fried peanuts for dessert, and we made our slow, stuffed way back up the hill to the hostel, exhausted from all the sun, wind, riding and food. It was a full day and an interesting one.

Tomorrow afternoon we will have to board a place back to Taipei and the relatively normal world. But before that we hope to explore this island of Nangan a little more via scooter.

It was about 11am by the time I got a text message from Prince Roy that he was awake and ready for lunch. In the intervening time it had started to rain outside, with my hotel room doing a decent impression of the Water Curtain Cave, complete with a small waterfall running down one window. Downstairs, the hotel owner said Mark’s flight would surely be canceled. “We can’t see Beigan island,” he said, pointing. “When we can’t see Beigan, the planes can’t land.”

We set out for the cultural, commercial and economic center of all of Matsu: Jieshou Village, the county seat. The County Government building overlooks a large field full of small gardens that used to be the local harbor before it was silted in, making for very fertile soil. Indeed, it seems that all the flat land here is used for planting something or another. The one main street that makes up the town was lined with mostly closed shops, some KTVs, a pool hall full of soldiers, and the huge old KMT headquarters, covered with ROC flags, a large banner of Ma Ying-jeou and Vincent Siew holding hands, and the blue-and-white party symbol on the front facade.

Most of the restaurants were closed, but we found a place down by the current former harbor, also silted in and being made into a park, that sold beef noodles and the like. It was also mostly full of soldiers, but we got a table by the kitchen. At one point an MP officer came in, and the place got very quiet until he left. The dumplings I got weren’t anything special, but enough to fill me up. PR had beef noodles, adorned with the magic sauce he’d brought along, courtesy of his mother-in-law. I tried some and kind of liked it, even though I usually don’t like spicy food.

As we ate, Mark called and said his flight had indeed been canceled. He didn’t seem interested in taking the ferry, either, so it was just me and PR. After lunch we walked around the neighborhood, visiting a local temple that was completely empty inside except for a large population of birds, and then walking up the hill behind to some fields and huge grave sites. PR spent several minutes in an Iwo-Jima-esque effort to unravel a political flag planted in a garden, apparently to scare away the crows. Our shoes sunk into the dirt, loosened by the rain. The grass under the wind-bent trees was bright green.

We walked down to the village again, stopping by an interesting little red temple by the soon-to-be park, and then back to main street to visit the 7-Eleven, which was doing an extremely brisk business. While waiting to use one of the two ATMs, I chatted with a soldier. I could tell from his rank and his disposition that he had not arrived long ago, and he confirmed this was true. Although the government buildings proclained that we were in Fujian Province, none of the cars’ license plates reflected this, and just read “Lianjiang County”.

Fortified with snacks and water, we walked back to Fuxing Village, where our hostel is located, and down to the waterfront, where a brand-new Taoist temple with bright red walls flanked the small harbor. The light inside was very nice, illuminating all of the religious figures inside. We kept walking up the hill to a guard post, posing with the cactii for PR’s camera, which was wrapped around a dead plant. Around the corner was an empty military emplacement that looked like a seaside villa painted dark green. Though the door was locked, the windows were not, and we spied yesterday’s menu taped on the wall inside. It was deserted, though, and half of the wall looked like it was ready to tumble into the sea below. We looked at the surrounding defenses and the views of Beigan to the north as we reminisced about our own experiences in the military. Across the water, China lay shrouded in clouds, invisible.

It had stopped raining by this point, but it was still cool and cloudy. We headed back towards the village, passing a military fueling point whose camouflage efforts (pink) were dismally inappropriate, and ended up at a century-old restaurant called Yi-ma’s Old Shop, run by Mrs. Chen, a woman with a bubbling personality and a love of telling stories. We sat down for some tea after getting a tour of the place as a couple of girls came in looking for accommodation advice. Mrs. Chen helped them find rooms at the same hostel where we were staying. Soon after a group of soldiers came in for dinner. Mrs. Chen provides social services for soldiers, helping the ones that have trouble dealing with military life here.

It was getting dark outside, and after seeing the sumptuous dishes coming out of the kitchen, we ordered mostly what the soldiers had had. The food was really good, and not just because it was different than Taiwanese food. Mrs. Chen brought out a couple of glasses of Laojiu, which to me tastes just like Shaoxing wine, i.e. sweetened spit, but PR seemed to like it.

After dinner, Mrs. Chen told us at great length how the other place just across the street had come to have basically the same name as her place. Everything Mrs. Chen says is pretty much at great length, but it’s interesting nonetheless. She’s full of advice and good cheer, and if she doesn’t have an answer to your question, she’ll make some calls to find out for you.

It was night, and PR and I wandered around the alleys of the village, past empty houses and closed doors and the sounds of families eating and watching TV, while I tried to find interesting angles. We came across one barking dog as well as one dog that had lost its voice, a Westie that sounded more like a squeak toy than a dog, before we arrived back at our hostel at the top of the hill.

We have no idea what we’re going to do tomorrow; I suppose it depends on the weather.

I met Prince Roy last night after work at the train station, which was packed full of people wanting to get home for the three-day tomb-sweeping holiday. It was cold and rainy, not very appealing for travel. We caught an electric train to Keelung and walked down the rainy street by the terminal to a port building, by which was docked the Taima ferry, a mid-sized ship painted orange and white. Only a handful of people milled around the departure lobby when we picked up our tickets. Fortunately we were able to switch out the 4-person cabin PR had reserved for a two-person stateroom in first class. “You should twitter this triumph,” PR said.

“I’ll wait until we’re actually in the room and sure that it’s ours,” I replied, skeptical of our good luck. After dinner, we came back to find the waiting room packed with people, a good half of them soldiers dressed in their warm winter fatigues. A group next to us was being introduced to each other.

“She’s American,” one said, about one of the group. “I mean, she’s half American.”

“Oh, I didn’t know whether or not to speak English with her!” another replied, adding the customary “My English is very poor!”

Boarding was announced, and a crude line formed. We went through security, including X-ray machines and the like. Thankfully we didn’t have to take off our shoes or get rid of liquids. A walk across the gangway later we were shown to our stateroom, which was full of another person’s stuff.

Of course it is, I thought, while PR fumed at, among other things, the apparent lack of organization. The stewards took his ticket and went to find the other party. They were sure that there was a mix up with the tickets, and I wondered where they would stick us. Eventually, however, the other party, a young couple, returned, surprised to find us lounging in their chairs amid their luggage watching their TV. It turned out that they had misread the cabin number. The place was ours, and I promptly twittered the fact.

The boat’s engines ramped up, and we slid out of port, past huge container ships and Navy vessels, accompanied only halfway by the lackadaisical harbor pilot out into the open ocean. We watched the yellow lights of Keelung recede along with Turtle Island, which was silhouetted by a huge, single light behind it, a way to say, I suppose, “This is a huge island that you really shouldn’t run into.”

It was raining a little. We went forward to the lounge, where they were selling instant noodles and beer. Groups sat around playing cards. Later on we went up top to the helipad to look at the waves. My phone could get a GPS position, but Google Maps needs a phone signal to download actual maps, and there was no phone signal, though PR had one.

It was good to be on a boat again. I always enjoy such trips, even more than plane travel. It just seems more real and substantial to me, making the trip mean something different than just a small jaunt.

The lounge closed at 11pm, so we retired to the cabin and watched the same news cycle repeat itself a few times over on the one channel offered on the TV. The ride was smooth, with just a little gentle rocking, perfect for sleeping.

We were awoken this morning by a loudspeaker in the room playing a song about how wonderful Matsu is. I opened the curtain to find it just outside, along with a Coast Guard vessel guiding us into the harbor. His Highness was still asleep and didn’t seem to want to get up, and I considered leaving him there for the trip to Dongyin, where the ship was headed next.

“What a desolate place this is,” I said as I looked through the mist at the mountainous landscape beyond the port. I couldn’t help it. It’s one of those Star Wars lines that just comes up sometimes. We gathered up our things and went below to the carpark area and out onto the dock. The crew let us off the boat despite the fact that PR’s ticket had never been returned to us after the cabin mix-up.

Out on the dock all I could feel was the atmosphere of getting off leave, emanating in thick clouds from all the soldiers who had just disembarked and were being shuttled off to their respected bases. I called the hotel where we’d reserved rooms, and they said they’d send someone over. PR went to sit by the dock while I waited at the gas station.

We were picked up by a friendly taxi driver. “Please excuse the dirt on the car’s floor,” he said. “Soldiers, you know.” He took up a winding road to our hostel, which overlooks a nice little bay. I was surprised to find that my room came with a computer and Internet, so while PR finishes his night’s rent downstairs, I am writing this before I take a nap, as the room seems to be rocking a little; I either haven’t gotten used to land yet, or I’m really tired. Mark is due to arrive this afternoon by plane, as he couldn’t make the ship’s departure time. It’s cloudy and cool but dry outside, and completely quiet except for bird calls and the occasional barking dog.