I got some good news today; I got someone to cover for me at work for a week, so I called my friend Lorenzo at the travel agency and booked a flight to Shanghai on the 6th, as well as one back from Beijing on the 16th. I plan to take the train from Shanghai to Beijing at some point.

Some things I’m not sure about:

-How the people at immigration will reconcile the sight of me with my Taiwanese travel documentation

-If or how my ATM card will work there

-If my phone will work there, how much it will cost or what numbers I should tell people to call

-Whether I’ll be able to stay at cheaper “local only” hotels with my Taiwan ID (“Hey, Mr. Hotel Manager, is Taiwan part of China or not? Huh? HUH?”)

-Whether I should bother lugging my big 20D or just relying on my little Canon IXUS

-How well I’ll understand people/be able to make myself understood due to the different accents after 13 years of not being there

-Just how much cash to bring and how

-If I should spend any time in Hong Kong on the way

-Just how to buy a sleeper ticket on the Te-kuai train to Beijing, how much in advance I need to go, or even if they have food on board

And so on. Still, despite all the things I don’t know, I feel excited to finally be going somewhere, especially to places I’ve never been. I have a little under a week to find these things out, get a new, larger backpack, perhaps get some traveller’s cheques (another thing I’m not sure about) and figure out just what it is I’ve forgotten in all of this.

今天下午, 受到朋友答應幫我代辦的好消息時, 立即打電話給旅行社叫他們幫我訂一張台北到上海/北京到台北的來回票. 我打算在上海逗留幾天, 再座火車到北京去. 許多方面來講, 這次旅行是一個沒人試過的大實驗: 一位外表長得很像西方人卻拿者台胞證的旅客到中國大陸會遇到甚麼樣的反應與對待? 不管怎樣, 希望海關至少會讓我進去, 不然的話買票的錢就浪費掉了.

訂了票, 心情就自然好起來了; 我終於要好好的休假, 去我沒有去過的神秘所在探險. 這種說法是否聽起來有點離譜? 哎, 不管了. 反正這個消息令我高興得睡不著覺.

如果各位有住在上海或北京, 而且想配我在那兒逛街, 幫我介紹一下

Tomorrow (Saturday), we (the Muddy Basin Ramblers) will be playing in public for the first time in a while (a couple of months) at the Daniel Pearl Day festivities held at Treasure Hill (near Gongguan MRT station).

UPDATE: The band as a whole can’t make it, but Sandman and I will probably attend the festivities anyway, possibly with instruments (just in case).

I’m feeling very parenthetical today (must be the weather).

The stage is apparently on a rooftop up the hill, in fact the very rooftop where we filmed the chase scene with Maurice and Sandman. I’m not sure how it’s going to work, as only a couple of bands are going to be up there on the accoustic stage, and it’s a bit of a climb. At least there will be a great view.

Badminton practice last night was disappointing. Everyone else was fine; I was disappointed in myself. The reason is that I’m just not as good a player as the rest of that group, and I always feel as if I’m somehow dragging them down. It’s hard to get into a game when you’re feeling apologetic about it. Playing on Mondays with the Pug-nosed Women is much easier, but the play is much slower and not very challenging.

I think it all comes down to this: if you’re whining on your blog about how you suck at badminton, you really need a vacation. Also if you’re taking pictures of your bathtub drain thinking Ooh this is a nice shot. This I will admit. I’ve been trying to set up a trip to China (Shanghai, then train to Beijing, a la Mark, but without the spitting) over the Double-ten/Moon Festival holidays, but the pieces aren’t falling into place fast enough and I might miss that opportunity.

In other news, they’re putting up barriers on the platform at the Taipei Main Station MRT stop, either as an experiment or a very slow implementation of a new system to keep people from falling/jumping onto the tracks. It’s one of several upgrades to the existing MRT system, such as new “sliding door” turnstiles at Shandao Temple station (they open fast enough, but only just, which is causes some fear of balling oneself) and new “open plan” cattle cars with no seats that look like someone just moved out. I shouldn’t laugh, though; I love Taipei’s MRT system and am glad they’re making efforts to improve it.

When I got to the park last night, I found that a bunch of hip-hop wannabe dancers had taken over most of our space. Mr. V was sitting on the sidewalk curb looking dejected. There was nothing for it, so I took my sword and did my form on the questionable grass where everyone takes their dog to crap, even though dogs aren’t technically allowed in the park. The usual drill for the form: once to remember is, once as slow as I can, and once slightly exaggerated for a good stretch.

Yang Qing-feng arrived, giving Mr. V someone to do push hands with after Qing-feng did his form. I practiced my weapons-free form for a bit until Teacher Xu arrived with his son. He’s been going through my site and had questions for me about various English words and slang I sometimes use.

Qing-feng got tired of grappling with Mr. V, and turned him over to me. Mr. V tends to lose balance in a spastic fashion, twisting and jumping away as if he had been held in that position by large rubber bands. He’s unlike anyone else in that respect. He pushes the same way, though he’s improved a lot since he started. Lately he’s experimenting with sudden changes of direction. Usually I can deal with them as I have a pretty solid stance, but sometimes it gets me. Sometimes it gets down to “yield or get hurt” because neither of us is flexible enough.

Teacher Xu had more water analogies for us tonight: He told us to envision our qi as a water tank inside us, to complement the whole “arms as hoses” idea of a couple of weeks ago I guess. “Just let it out. Your goal isn’t to push, but to release the water. Don’t try to aim it; it will go to the right places automatically.” More like electricity, I thought, than water, but I didn’t say anything. He demonstrated, but it was hard to grasp in practice. Teacher Xu pushes people so effortlessly and intuitively; it’s hard to get one’s own ability to even begin to match up, at least at our level. “Be like iron, wrapped in cotton,” he advised. This, I assume, was to be kept separate from the water analogies, as iron wrapped in wet cotton would feel pretty much like, well, iron.

Later I pushed hands with Qing-feng, with easily predictable lack of success. Changing direction almost never works on him; every time I manage to get through his defenses it feels like I got lucky; trying to repeat whatever I did never works. Pushing Mr. V builds up my confidence, but Qing-feng teaches me that I still have a long, long, long way to go.

Learning tuishou is extremely counter-intuitive at first, in that, if you want to learn the deep, most effective tactics, you have to put your ego totally aside and let yourself lose, because you learn more that way. If you concentrate on winning and resort to brute force every time, you’ll never learn anything, never be able to hope of pushing anyone bigger or stronger than you are, and what’s the point of that?

Yet many students, and even some schools, focus merely on that. Occasionally we get someone from one of those schools, both students and teachers, looking to prove themselves, and it seems more like straight-out wrestling than anything. In the end they either adapt to our methods or leave. It’s not a quick and easy route by any means, and sometimes I worry that I’ll never quite ‘get it’. But I can at least try. And by that, I mean try by not trying, which is comfortably ambiguous enough for me.

Autumn is settling in after a really hot summer. The people in the building next door decided it was time to burn a metric shitload of ghost money on their roof, i.e. just outside my apartment, and the smell was seeping inside. I can’t stand staying indoors in weather like this in any case, so rather than do one of the many things on my to-do list on Sunday, I decided to go explore the ;latest and greatest MRT line, the one out to Tucheng.

I took the MRT all the way to Yongning Station, at the end of the line. Only a couple of blocks after exiting the station, I was in the countryside, with old abandoned brick houses and forest roads. I walked down a street lined by silent factories, their sides papered with ads, and happened across a shattered car windshield on the sidewalk, which occupied me for several minutes as I took macro shots of the glass. Then I visited a temple that featured a huge black dog statue, as well as the empty factory behind it.

Then back to Jincheng road and up to Tucheng Station, where city hall and several other government buildings are located, as well as a couple of temples. I passed by a blond foreigner smoking a cigarette out on the street and nodded to him. No doubt we were both thinking to ourselves, “Damn, I just can’t get away from these frellin’ foreigners!”

After touring the more interesting of the two temples (one looked too new and boring), I walked past the abandoned KMT HQ to a major intersection that was downtown Tucheng, where I found via a realtor shop that house prices weren’t any cheaper than Xindian, and then back to the station, where I took the train to Haishan Station. I’d noticed on my way down that most of the passengers got off the train at this station. After an abnormally long escalator ride to the surface, I found that the station is located in the middle of a park, itself sandwiched between various schools. I walked around the neighborhood and liked what I saw: tree-lined streets, a good amount of newish apartment buildings, and just a general good feeling to the place. If I had to live in that part of town it wouldn’t be a bad choice.

By this point I was feeling a bit tired, though, so I took the train to the Far Eastern Hospital Station, in the hope of finding a bench by the river (it’s next to a river on the map) and watching the sun go down, but by the time I arrived the sun was already gone, and there was no obvious way to get to the river (referred to as a “ditch” on the station map), so I just set out towards Fuzhong Station, taking pictures of intersections and neon signs as I proceeded. After stopping to ask directions once at a motorcycle helmet shop, I found myself at the Lin Family Garden, which I visited once many years ago. I took pictures of a red neon cross I saw before, though it was kind of ruined by the blue sign underneath. Then it was around the busy streets across the square. It reminded me of Taichung in my student days; lots of young people and various foods available on a stick (the food, that is, not the young people).

So that’s all the stations; I’ve been to each and every one and explored the areas around them, and now the MRT system can resume it’s boring, known reality once again. Until the next line opens, that is.

It’s been a while since I took the Crazy Bike out for a spin, due to weather and various engagements. As Saturday dawned I still hadn’t gone to bed, having gone out drinking to celebrate Dean’s return to Taiwan and consumed a long line of rum and cokes. The coke kept me up and the rum kept me drunk, not the best combination. I went home and spent hours posting inane messages all over the Internet and chatting until 7am before the buzz and wakefulness finally died.

When I got up at noon, the weather outside was fine, not too hot, and only slightly cloudy. I took the Crazy Bike across the street to pump up it’s flat tires and set out up the river. The wind was at my back and I made good time, reaching the Xinhai Bridge across the Dahan River at about 4pm. I decided to explore some unfamiliar territory and crossed the bridge, heading upstream. The path ascended the floodwall and continued, interrupted by sporadic crazy dips around floodgates. Markers set in the pavement read “Yingge-Danshui Bike Path” and had kilometer markings that indicated Yingge was about 10km away from the bridge.

The path passed through residential sections and a park, and then past a recycling complex that featured a huge silver dome as well as a range of foul odors. Beyond that, the developments thinned out, with nice new apartment buildings and parks. The path followed the train tracks, which skirted the edge of the hills to the north. The kilmeters on the markers counted down as I cycled past fishing ponds and tumble-down embankments dotted with fishermen, nearly crashing as I watched an express train pass me up.

The path ended abruptly at a construction fence, apparently just short of Yingge, along the river. (see this picture for satellite location map). There was no way around or any other path to follow. I got off and took the above picture, then turned around. It was 5pm and the sun was starting to set, the shadows of the hills spreading across the path.

The reason for my speedy progress quickly became apparent as I pushed against a fairly strong wind. The going was a lot slower. After dark the path lights came on, but certain sections were completely dark, so I strapped on a headlamp I’d brought along for just such an occasion. Then it started raining, so I hurridly stowed my iRiver and donned a convenience-store plastic raincoat.

The rain lasted until I got back across the bridge and well on my way back down the Xindian River. I don’t usually ride that late, and there were fewer people out and about, which made for nicer riding in general.

I got back home at about nine wanting a big hot meal, so I ordered a couple of pizzas. Remind to never again eat that much pizza in one sitting. Urgh.

“Whoever’s kung-fu is the strongest, that’s who should yield more,” Teacher Xu told us as I grappled with Mr. V this last time. I wondered if the instruction was for actual practical use or more for psychological reasons, i.e., both students would want to be the better one, thus more yielding would occur, which is one of the goals of tui-shou. He was probably trying to get us both to yield, as Mr. V tends to shove, balls-to-the-wall with all of his force, and if I don’t counter with something I find myself balanced on one food and almost falling down backwards very quickly.

To his credit, Mr. V usually attempts the softer approach first, but resorts to brute force after it fails. I’ve become known, though I’m not sure how true it is, for my solid stance and difficulty to topple. Ironically, it’s probably overcompensation on my part due to a chronically poor sense of balance.

I’d spent the first part of class practicing the 64-step form, or at least the part I know. Every time I think I know a move, Teacher Xu divulges another, deeper aspect to it that I previously had no idea about. It seems that there are levels beyond levels in this art. Sometimes I think it’s bottomless.

After Mr. V, I did pushing hands with Yang Qing-feng, who is a court policeman in real life. He’s small and extremely flexible, and I always have a hard time forcing him off balance, though I’ve slowly been getting better at it. Teacher Xu says since we’re all improving at the same time, it may feel like none of us is improving at all. I can certainly sympathize with that sentiment.

At one point we were trying out one-handed pushing on each other, and I found I could easily push Mr. V over with one hand, but I could angle my body so that his hand just brushed off when he tried it on me. Qing-feng was another matter, however. Pushing him is like pushing jello pudding.

One move we were taught, or rather one idea I should say, is to isolate and trap one part of your opponent, preferably close to your own center, while rotating the rest of him in another direction. By separating him into components (figuratively, I would hope), you’re making his body move in ways he can’t deal with.

Of course, pushing is different with different people. Qing-feng goes slowly and waits to trap you, while Mr. V just rushes in, and the best hope with him is to deflect his force into a new and hopefully unexpected direction that he’s not focused on.

“Imagine a bridge between you and your opponent,” Teacher Xu said to us towards the end of the lesson.

“What kind of bridge, like a suspension bridge?” I asked. “Or a highway bridge, one of those?” Teacher Xu just shook his head.

“Just a bridge, an invisible connection, that’s all.”

“Oh.”

I sure know how to ask stupid questions.

In this age of protests, rioting demographics and terror on all sides, I think we’ve all lost sight of one important truth: the theme for the 60’s cartoon Underdog is just about the coolest piece of music ever written for TV*.

I mean, it has a plucked-bass beginning with an ominous-sounding accordian, mostly in a minor key breaking into an exhilerating, brave majoresque chorus and then retreating back into the stealthy minor before repeating the process at the end. In this it mirrored the plot of every episode of the show, a musical interpretation of Underdog’s unassuming identity as a shoeshine dog (not bad for a dog, when you think about it; most dogs would have trouble holding down a job that required thumbs, much less rhyming) as well as his transformation into the brave subtext-beating hero we all knew and loved, and then back again into a mild-mannered minor key. Yet at the same time it was far too good for the questionable quality of the animation and storylines it preceeded. Most cartoon themes were just good enough for the shows the accompanied; the Underdog theme was major motion picture material. I even dare hope that the movie they’re reportedly making does it justice.

I wish I could find a higher-quality version of the theme; in any case, I’ll probably be humming it for some time to come now that it’s lodged in my brain for the first time since 1972.

*Well, for a TV cartoon, anyway. The theme for Hawaii 5-0 is still the best-sounding theme on TV.

A group of Native Americans, or at least people dressed up in pseudo-traditional regalia, has been performing in a square near us for the last couple of weeks. By performing, I mean singing along and occasionally playing a flute to Cusco-type synthesized music and the theme from “Last of the Mohicans”. I think they were pissing off the Dancing Ladies, and I couldn’t help thinking it would be really cool to see what would happen if they all got into a giant brawl.

I got Mr. V again this week, but instead of trying to match his force, I concentrated on trying to keep myself planted while moving as far backwards as I could. I found there wasn’t much he was able to to, as he was stretched beyond his own balance and didn’t have the leverage to do much in that position. All I had to do was move his arms away. My knees, particularly my injured left knee, couldn’t keep that position very long, though. I guess I need more practice.

Teacher Xu told us to envision our opponents as a 3D ball that you could roll by applying pressure in the right places. All you have to do is build up a resistance in one direction to create an opening in another. In fact, you yourself are also a spinning ball of energy, he said. He also said that, no matter whether you’re pushing or being pushed, to envision not your front, but your back and your opponent’s back as the origin and destination of one’s energy.

“Imagine that your arms are hoses full of water,” Teacher Xu said at one point. “And you’re using them to manipulate your opponent.” I didn’t quite get this, even after trying it. I understand concentrating on your opponent’s feet, but the water-arms thing is beyond me at this point. I did get the ball thing, which seems to work for me. I suppose different people get different concepts at different rates. I know, big surprise.

It’s been pouring rain every day recently, making any plans for travel or outdoor exercise impractical this weekend. Although the rain brought with it a pleasantly cool breeze wafting through my apartment, the thought of all that shiny wet pavement lying unphotographed was too tempting, so I got on the train out to the new section of the Banqiao MRT line to do some exploring.

After I got off at Yongning Station, the end of the line, however, I was faced with a solid wall of wet people huddled at the station exit. Beyond them was only more wetness, a wet street, splashing cars and not much else in the darkness. I exchanged my old broken umbrella for a new one at the 7-Eleven across the street and started walking around the neighborhood, but it quickly became clear that I wasn’t going to get anything good under those conditions, at least not without getting my equipment soaking wet.

Depressed, I went back and got on the next train back to town, and then getting off at Banqiao Station to see what they’d done to get ready for the impending opening of the High Speed Rail system next month. Banqiao Station is quite large and grand, but strangely unadorned. The HSR ticket counter looked alarmingly small. I wandered through the warren of tunnels in the complex and then around the exterior, taking shots here and there of various wet, shiny things. Not many came out. It was disappointing. I got back on the train.

As we neared CKS Hall Station, I noticed an abundance of people wearing red shirts, and recalled that the Anti-Chen Shui-bian sit-in, instigated by former Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Shih Ming-te, was starting that day, so I got off there and went up to have a look. The halls were filled with red-shirted people, and I ascended the stairs to find that the streets had been closed off in front of CKS Hall. A few small stages had been set up with bright lights, surrounded by people chanting “Chen Shui-bian Step Down!” both in Mandarin and Minnan. On the other side a small psuedo-shrine had been set up next to a poster with “Conscience Revolution” written on it.

I proceeded to the East Gate, where people were milling around under several balloons with slogans written on them. The main demonstration stage was between the East Gate and Gongyuan Road, and a great number of people were crowded into that stretch of Katagelan Boulevard, with a large stage and a fleet of media vehicles behind it.

“The whole world is watching!” the woman on stage was saying. “Let’s say our slogans in English! Everyone repeat our demand that Chen step down in English after me, like this: ‘Chen! Depose! Chen! Depose!'” Each slogan was followed by a loud amplified BOOM! and the drawing of a hand, thumbs-down, on the giant screen. I wondered if I should go tell them that their English could stand some correction, but I couldn’t get close enough to the stage to talk to anyone who would be able to pass the word along, so I abandoned that idea.

Behind the stage were some reporters and a handful of policemen standing in front of a single barrier across the road to the Presidential Office. I circled around the other side of the rally back to the East Gate, taking a few more pictures, and then back to the MRT. Some friends of mine said I should be careful at the rally, as they’d heard that the DPP was planning to start something, but it all seemed under control, peaceful, even cheerful and optimistic. Many people smiled at me, and nobody seemed even close to violence. Not long ago one DPP lawmaker said he wished Shih had been killed in his activist days, and lots of stories about his various character flaws, most notably from his ex-wife Linda Arrigo, have surfaced since he started the campaign. It’s not surprising; I would expect the same thing to happen to anyone in Shih’s position. I was half expecting Shih to do a 180 after all the arrangements had been made and turn it into a pro-Chen thing, but he’d have to have a terrific exit strategy if he pulled that now.

Someone told me James Soong was there, but I didn’t see him. Soong seems to be pushing Ma Ying-jeou to join in their campaign, but Ma, caught between the more radical and the more moderate camps of the opposition, doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about it. He apparently doesn’t see any reason for Chen to step down, and frankly I agree. I also suspect that most of the protesters didn’t actually expect the president to step down and were just trying to express their dissatisfaction with him. If Chen steps down, they’ll have dealt the DPP a serious blow. If not, they’ll have made their point. We’ll see how things work on, but while 2008 is still a ways off, I don’t see the point of spending that time under Annette Lu’s leadership rather than Chen’s.
This might not be about the current president, however. One person to watch in all of this is Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, who could be in line for a premiership if Su is taken down, either as a result of Chen stepping down or a concession if he doesn’t. Wang, who has the backing of not only Soong but also former president Lee Teng-hui, has never liked playing second fiddle to Ma, and some reckon he might make his own run for the presidency in 2008.

All of this, however, depends on what happens in the next few months.

The rain continued on Sunday, and I spent the afternoon drinking tea at the Wistaria teahouse with Prince Roy, his wife and her friend, and Wayne, who showed up soaking wet with his Canon 30D not recognizing his lenses for some reason. He fiddled with the equipment, trying to get it to work as we chatted over a couple different kinds of teas and listened to the driving rain outside. As usual, the mixture of Chinese and English at the table left me feeling slightly sub-par in both languages. I usually try to stick with either one or the other. This is probably a habit leftover from when I was studying Chinese and refused to allow myself to lapse into English when I encountered an idea or term I wasn’t familiar with. Instead, I would force myself to think of a way to explain it in Chinese without actually using the term I didn’t know.

After the tea, PR and I got some sandwiches, and I trudged back to the station through the ankle-deep puddles. The band was practicing at the Sandcastle, and I didn’t want to be late. It turned out I was earlier than everyone except for David. The rehearsal went well, though we had to stop too soon, just as I was working out some nice harmonies with Sandman on one song. Ah, well, next time. I think our next gig is the Daniel Pearl Day party at Treasure Hill on the 30th. See our website for more details when we know more.