前一陣子有去海洋音樂祭跟查勞與巴西瓦里一起表演。 那天從一大早一直玩到半夜， 感覺

On the way to work today a woman sat down next to me on the subway train. At a peripheral glance she seemed about 20. Long black hair, heavy makeup, a tight black skirt and a gold blouse with transparent black sleeves. Shiny black high heels with golden bows on top. A little gaudy, but nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

A few moments later, however, I became aware of a heavy stench. I assumed the seat behind me was recently occupied by a sweaty construction worker who had spent all day repairing blocked sewer lines, but a glance around made me realize it was coming from the woman sitting beside me. Taking care not to stare openly, I took another look, and was surprised to see that her bare legs were covered with blue veins, her feet wrinkled and dry. Her hands, holding a shiny black purse, looked like the hands of an old woman.

A number of people got off at Kuting Station, and I switched seats to avoid the smell. From there I could see the woman’s face, and sure enough, under the makeup the face of an older woman, possibly about 60, showed through. She sat upright, her gaze kept slightly down, not looking at anyone but seemingly aware that her disguise might not be holding up as well as she had hoped. I wondered what the point of the act was. Was it for her job? Did she work in an office, living in fear of being forced to retire? But her attire suggested something more along the lines of a karaoke bar, one from several years ago. Did she perhaps sell betelnuts? From a distance, viewed through the dirty windshield of a little blue truck after a long day’s driving, she might seem alluring to a tired trucker. Or was she someone’s grandmother, with no means of support, raised in the rice fields but now forced to come to the big city and play the part of a much younger woman in order to feed her family?

I got off a Taipei Main Station, but the woman continued on, out towards Danshui and her date with the target of her mysterious ruse.

I didn’t do much Tuishou last Wednesday night. I spent the time with forms and stretching, and watching other people push. I did one session with The Guy Who is Not from China, who is beginning to employ the quick push method, trying to surprise me into tightening me up. I’ve found that the most common methods of getting one’s opponent to tighten up into a rigid, easy-to-push line are force and speed. While I do need to learn to deal with these better, I’d still like to get more into more complicated aspects as well, such as yielding and meeting force without tightening up, and delivering power from that state.

Saturday morning found the concert hall at CKS Memorial half-covered in scaffolding, but our space was still mostly there. A worker with a hose sprayed the remains of cigarettes and bird droppings from the floor nearby. I practiced the empty-handed form but not sword as I seem to have broken my practice sword and will have to get another one. This is the third one; I need to take better care of them.

I was reminded as I practiced the form that, not only are there a million things to remember, but also that I am doing a great deal of them wrong. A lot of it is just internalizing all of these things until I don’t have to think about them. Then they will hopefully join my list of tools for use not only in forms and Tuishou, but daily life as well.

Mr. Qin arrived later on, as I was taking some pictures. It seems that, though he is about my age, he actually also studied along with Teacher Xu under his old teacher, the late Teacher Yu, who was a student of Master Song, also deceased. It seems that there’s a bit of intrigue here, as a group of devotees of the late Master Song happen to practice on the veranda on other side of the concert hall, and have been known to act out a bit whenever they catch sight of anyone wearing our purple uniform. They seem to think we’re trying to steal their secrets or something, I guess. Not From China Guy said that, when he was walking by, they glared at him and said “WTF are you looking at?”

Teacher Xu said that they actually worship Master Song and follow his secretive methods. They also frown on Teacher Xu, seeing him as a kind of renegade disciple, which I think is pretty cool. Next time I’m over there, maybe I’ll go take a look.

“Little Qin” (as Teacher Xu calls Mr. Qin) is apparently also involved with them to some degree. I didn’t talk with him about it too much as I practiced with him, however. He told me that I needed to free up my hips and suggested some exercises. I find that I twist too much when I push, which exposes too many weaknesses.

The day became quite hot as noon approached and the other groups left us alone on the balcony. Mr. V and the guy I pushed with at Sun Yat-sen Hall got pretty busy, resulting in Mr. V sustaining a no-doubt unintentional eye-poking. Later, he and an older student practiced moving Tuishou, and they danced around the balcony trying to shove each other over.

“Some people push very well but only in one way,” Teacher Xu was saying. “It could be, however, that if you change your tactics a bit, approach them from a different angle, you’ll find that they won’t be able to deal with it very well.”

Norm wanted to go eat Burmese food in Yonghe, so I met him at Nanshijiao Station on Wednesday just before noon. I’d emailed a bunch of other people, but nobody was able to make it at that time. I’d been out there before for violent go-karting sessions with Shirzi before he disappeared, but I haven’t been back to the area since.

Norm’s here on a visa/business run from Thailand and has to get a new passport, so he has time. When I met him he was wearing, as always, a large Hawaiian shirt, shorts and flip-flops. I’ve never seen him wear anything else. We walked up the road, past the Texas Instruments factory to the rows of old, dilapidated buildings on “Burma Street” where most of the restaurants are located. Norm, just managing to keep his large frame out of traffic, pointed out the spots he’d visited and preferred, and we found a place employing an attempt at air conditioning for lunch.

Our meal consisted of curry chicken noodles, beef noodles, and a kind of pancake. The chicken noodles had crunchy fried noodles and were delicious, while the beef noodles were more or less the same as regular beef noodles.

Norm doesn’t speak Chinese or Burmese, so I translated his requests for mint tea after the meal. They said they had milk tea, but no mint tea. Norm was perplexed at this apparent impossibility, but a little later he spied the glasses of milk tea and pronounced that the drink he was looking for. “It is kind of minty,” he explained. We decided to go to another place for tea, an open-air place with a decades-thick layer of dust and grime hanging from the ancient electrical cords. Shrimp, vegetables and other unidentifiable food lay soaking in sauces on the counter while we drank our iced tea. Norm was full of stories of crazy people he’d known in his travels. I’d first met him years ago at The Birdhouse, a run-down hostel in Taipei where Dean used to live. Norm had no recollection of this meeting however. I suspect the Mohawk I sported at the time might have something to do with that.
We finished our tea and walked down the street a little ways looking at the groups of men sitting and sweating around small tables out in front of the various restaurants. I paused to take some pictures of a building while Norm wondered aloud why backpackers felt the need to carry so much damn stuff with them. “All I need is a small backpack,” he said. “You’re a photographer, so you need all that crap, I guess.”

Walking back to the station we passed a few more local restaurants, the owners of which would call out for us to come inside. “Notice that the real Burmese restaurants don’t do that,” Norm said. Back on the main road, I saw a few fashionable high-rises being built near Burma Street and wondered if they would change the nature of the neighborhood by filling the sweltering stores with young, well-off office workers. Perhaps more of the little shops will put in air conditioning, and raise their prices. I hope they stick around, though. Something tells me it will take more than office workers in tiny apartments to drive them out.

I’m always up late on Friday nights, so getting up on Saturday morning is tough. I managed to get to CKS Hall’s concert hall around 9am. The opera hall is all covered up for “renovation” and the concert hall looks like it is going to get the same treatment, whatever that is. Part of the balcony had been roped off, and all of the groups practicing were crowded together. Right next to our group was a group that looked like they were practicing Shaolin-style moves, all dressed in a particularly ill-advised shade of black, considering the punishing heat of the sun that day. It reminded me of way back when I practiced a similar style, all kicks and jumps and sudden, harsh tight moves. Not surprisingly, none of them looked older than 40.

Teacher Xu corrected me on some of my form moves, and then taught me a few more. I don’t mind going slowly; I figure I will try and keep just the two forms up, the sword and the empty-handed one I’m working on now, as I’ve forgotten two other sword forms and a many empty-handed ones over the years.

At one point a thin, older fellow in white came up and wanted to do Tuishou with me. He was apparently an old student of Teacher Xu’s, or at least they knew each other. He pushed a little like Yang Qing-feng, but faster and with a more limited repertoire, often repeating the same moves. I didn’t try to push him, instead just going back and forth for a while.

Later on a heavy-set fellow dressed in our uniform arrived. I didn’t recall ever seeing him before, but he obviously knew everyone. His name was Mr. Qin, and he talked about the stir caused when someone posted some Tai-chi-related articles on a Hong Kong Internet Tai-chi discussion forum. Apparently some pretty petty threats were tossed around. I listened to Teacher Xu and Mr. Qin as I practiced my form, fascinated at the level of complexity in the Tai-chi community, something I’ve never really been exposed to. After listening to them discuss it at length, I was rather glad of that as well.

Teacher Xu had to leave around noon, and there were only a few students left, including Mr. Qin. I asked if we could do some tuishou, and he obliged. When we started, I was discouraged to note that he seemed to push more like the Tree Root group and less like Teacher Xu. One time he pulled me down fairly harshly. “There’s no need for that,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said. I felt disappointed and wondered if I should just stop and go home, but there was something in his pushing style that seemed more substantial than the usual tree root stuff I encounter on Wednesdays, so I stayed. For one thing, he would push until he met resistance, and part of the reason he seemed so tight and inflexible was that he was putting more emphasis on the “locking” part of our mantra than the “relax” part, but also because he was seeing if I could get out of the holds. Once I admitted that I had run out of ideas, he was glad to explain the answers to me, and things improved from there. As with Qing-feng, I wonder how much of what he explained can be transferred to use while pushing with other people, but I guess I’ll find that out when I try it with other people. It turns out that Mr. Qin is actually an army officer who works at the Ministry of Defense. Interesting.

By the time I left. Only a couple of students from our group remained as I crossed the baking square on my way back to the MRT station.

I was tired last night, as it had been a long day. After going through my forms and stretching, Mr. V walked up and offered to practice with me. I was a bit surprised as he’d been reluctant to push with me for some time. Recently he’s been hanging out with the Tree Root group, and I wondered if he’d learned anything new from them.

We began to push, as usual, with our respective right legs forward, which meant I had a disadvantage due to the old injury in my left knee. Oddly enough, Mr. V seemed intent on pushing me with one hand. Time after time he failed and had to resort to using two hands, but he kept trying to use one hand. I recalled way back when he was just starting out, I once pushed him over with one hand. Apparently he remembered as well.

Mr. V’s technique has become more subtle over the past few months, but it remains for the most part just as forceful. The Tree Root method involves setting one’s hands in a fixed position locking your opponent’s arms and using strength to keep them from moving, pushing inexorably back in a fixed direction. I have to say Mr. V has picked up on the concept pretty well; the way he pushes is a lot more similar to the Tree Root Master than before. Still, most of the time he had to resort to the ol’ college football charge to push me over. I let him, stepping back before anyone broke anything. I’ve still got bruises on my arm from the couple of times I tried to resist.

I waited for opportunities to show up and took them. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they would have worked had I not telegraphed ahead what I was doing, and sometimes they just flat out didn’t work. There were a few times where I manipulated him just so that he would fall over on his own. That’s my favorite strategy.

Time passed, and we kept pushing, still on the same foot. Mr. V was intent on some purpose, I felt. The light on the monument had gone out and the dancing ladies had departed by the time I finally suggested we switch feet. The pushing changed in nature then, as I had more backward space that way due to a stronger back stance. We pushed as other changed partners again and again, as Teacher Xu went around instructing others. It was hot and everyone was sweating profusely. I wasn’t too tired as I had for the most part given up using force and was trying to deal with Mr. V’s tactics as softly as possible. Students started leaving as 11pm approached. We’d started at 8:30.

Eventually we gained an audience as students stopped pushing and prepared to leave. I heard the new little guy, whose surname is the same as the Chinese term for Weeble-Wobble, mention “the foreigner” in an apparent reference to me. When this happened, Mr. V finally threw in the towel. A good thing, too, as I was becoming very thirsty.

I formally introduced myself to Weeble and said he could use my name to refer to me in the future, and not to call me “Elder Brother Teacher” as he apparently wanted to. The idea of levels and competition only hurt everyone’s chances to learn this particular art, I think.

I may be either overly paranoid or slow on the uptake, depending on your political stance, but something just occurred to me last night, something that would explain a great many questions, politically speaking. Mainly, how did Frank Hsieh get the DPP presidential candidate nomination? Why doesn’t he seem to have a concrete platform? Why is Su so down on being his running mate, when it would clearly help the ticket’s chances?

Then it hit me: Maybe Hsieh isn’t the real DPP candidate. Su’s behavior recently mirrors that of Wang Jin-pyng, who seems to be waiting in the wings for the chance that Ma won’t be able to run in 2008. Why would Su do that? I wondered. But when I thought more about it, I realized that Su has more to wait for than Wang in this respect. The DPP never changed its charter to let an indicted candidate run for president, and with Chen and Yu in charge, it’s not likely to. Chen always preferred Su over his rival Hsieh, and the presidential office has been trying to get Yeh Chu-lan off her vp-oriented warpath, with dubious effect. Also, Hsieh’s involvement in a number of corruption scandals is still being investigated, whereas Su is relatively clean.

Right now, the KMT is gunning for Hsieh while paying little attention to Su, who still controls a lot of resources. In the case of an indictment of Hsieh close to election time, there won’t be enough time for the KMT to gather enough political momentum against Su to be effective in time for the election. Not only that, but the DPP can score big political capital points by trumpeting the fact that Hsieh will have bowed out of the election after being indicted, while Ma is still running.

It could also be that this is just a contingency plan for the DPP in the case of a Hsieh indictment, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense as a main strategy. We’ll see who thinks too much in a few months.

Some video I took the day we played at Hohaiyan:

I haven’t written for a couple of weeks, so I’ll have to play a bit of catch-up here.

Yang Qing-feng has been giving me a lot of tips lately. I’ve always found him one of the most difficult to push, and I would rather emulate his style than the tree-root group. Qing-feng is all about flexibility and rotation, not giving your opponent anything to push. He pushes me into a compromising position and then waits for me to figure out how to get out of it. I feel like a real rank beginner pushing with him, but I do feel like I’m making a little progress. Earlier, as I pushed with Mr. Hu, who has been hanging out with the tree-root group, the other members stood around until he won a bout. They made some appreciative noises and, apparently satisfied with their approach, went back to their discussion on tree-root tactics.

Last Wednesday Teacher Xu told me to concentrate on my lower backbone and torso rather than on my feet. It seemed to work. Apparently you can adjust your focus on your opponent, be it their feet, backbone, etc., but you shouldn’t concentrate on your own feet. He also said that too much swiveling of the hips can betray you, as it’s a move easily taken advantage of.

I’ve been going to practice on Saturday mornings at CKS Hall as well recently in order to further my study of the form I’ve been learning very slowly over the past few months. I figure that I will stop after that and just concentrate on one empty-handed form and the one sword form; that should be plenty to occupy me. Every time I learn a new one the old ones just go out the window, it seems. Another area I need to work on it stretching out my leg muscles, particularly the back of my thighs. They’ve always been too tight; even when I was a kid I had a hard time touching my toes.

Last Saturday when I was finished going through the form, the other students were doing Tuishou, so I joined in. I usually find Mr. Hu pretty easy to push; everyone else pushes me onto my backstance very quickly, which is training it pretty fiercely. I’m able to move further back now than I used to be, and my backstance is also stronger and more stable than before as well. One time a foreigner came up and talked with Teacher Xu for a while; it turned out that he was a yoga student from England. He seemed very interested in the art, but he was only going to be here for a short time.

There was a new guy I’d never seen before at practice at CKS Hall last time, baguaquan. He seemed to really want to push with me, and not long after we started he asked me if I was a student of the Zheng Man-qing school, as he felt I pushed in that style. For his part, he had five or six set moves that he cycled through, most of them meant to catch his opponent off balance. He became increasingly frustrated as we pushed. One time he managed to get me just about pushed over. I was bent over and unstable, and he’d basically beaten me. He made a quick, violent move and shoved me onto the concrete floor, right onto my bad knee.

I was pissed, but I restricted myself to telling him that I had no interest in studying the ba-gua moves he seemed to want to practice. This was tuishou practice, not pro wrestling. I sat for a bit nursing my sore knee before hobbling off across the square. My knee still bears a bruise, but it doesn’t hurt any more. It wasn’t that big a deal, but it’s a little frustrating to encounter such situations.

I wasn’t in the most alert of states when I had to get up at 5:30am on Sunday morning, get my things together and go downstairs to meet Chalaw’s rented van. The reason for the early start was a morning soundcheck on the stage at the Hohaiyan Rock Festival at Fulong beach.

The van was already mostly full by the time it pulled up in front of the 7-Eleven downstairs from me; Chalaw had already picked up David, Andrew, Hong-hao and a few others. We drove through the wet shadows of the morning, though the sky was already bright, through Xindian to the highway, up and over the city through the entrance to the newly completed Xueshan Tunnel to Yilan. It’s one of the longest tunnels in the world, but it didn’t feel particularly long, perhaps because we were talking and didn’t notice. Hong-hao in particular always seems to have a joke or story on hand. He is a policeman in real life, after all, so I expect he has a lot to talk about.

The sun hit us in Yilan after the long tunnel, and we turned up the winding coastal highway, stopping at Chalaw’s friend’s surf shop, a curious building painted bright purple and pink, where we sat on the deck and watched the waves for a while. The heavily tattooed Sky, our bass player and half-Italian drummer Samuel, who were driving, showed up, and we set out again, passing an elaborate all-white stone complex with minarets and domes like a mosque. It turned out to be some sort of museum, but the gate was closed.

Fulong was already bustling with people, even at that early hour. I’m guessing some people stay for the whole three days, but they must book rooms months in advance. We met Doug and his girl, and then drove around the back way, up the hills and then down onto the beach where the stages were located, one big one that looked vaguely like the shuttle assembly building, and another smaller one up the beach towards the bridge. We entered the backstage gate, which seemed to be pretty strictly guarded, and found a courtyard of off-white tents, one of which had our name on it. All were air-conditioned and flapping in the wind. The courtyard had plastic laid over it and featured a forlorn-looking kiddie-pool in the middle.

We got situated and did our soundcheck on the huge stage. The technicians were very thorough and professional, swarming over every problem, though they had a hard time getting David’s dobro to hook up correctly. The stage was so big that we were all spread out; I found myself actually standing on a stage on the stage.

After the check David and I walked back to town to get, among other things, a hat for me and some coffee for him. Walking along the sand was a chore, and the sun was brutal even in the morning. David was taking pictures with his new camera, a nice little digital Ricoh fixed-lens job. The town’s one 7-Eleven had a line at the counter and no cash left in its ATM, so we went to the Farmer’s Cooperative ATM instead.

Back at our tent we found a pile of lunch boxes in a bag. The prospect of spending the entire day there seemed oppressive, so we hopped back in the van and drove back to the purple surf shop, slathered each other in sunblock and hopped gingerly across the scorching sand to the waiting waves. Para-sails floated above, launched from the nearby cliffs and floating down to the beach. Someone found a surfboard, and we took turns using it. Doug was the best surfer, having learned in South Africa, and Chalaw got a few good runs in. I was more adept at falling off the board and semi-body surfing in, dragging the board along behind me. Occasionally I could feel a slight pricking feeling of being stung very lightly by small jellyfish. Still, it was great fun just being out in the ocean jumping over the shiny blue waves and floating under the sky.

The afternoon was wearing on, however, so we again crossed the flaming sands, strewn with the swollen corpses of prickly blowfish and the occasional jellyfish, back to the shop to shower and dry off. The heat made drying off a quick issue after showers in wooden closets, balancing on cargo slats. The proprietress of the drink stand caught me staring at one of the half-naked surfers, and gave me a knowing look. Later she asked the group if I was married and how they should find a nice aborigine girl for me.

We hadn’t even come close to Fulong when the traffic jam began. And endless stream of cars on the two-lane highway. People began walking miles out of town, as there was no hope of parking anywhere closer. Exasperated, we tried to ply the bike lane, but the shoulder wasn’t wide enough. The Colors Music people called Chalaw, wondering frantically were we were. Then someone called Hong-hao, who said, “We’ll be there in a minute, we’re almost there!” eliciting van-wide snorts of derision. Outside we were passing and then being passed continually by the same family walking besides us.

Eventually we did make it back to the stage. Fulong beach is a huge peninsula of sand that reaches out into the ocean next to the mouth of a river, and it was rapidly filling with people. The other bands had already arrived. Zhang Zhen-yue’s tent was on one side of ours, and Cui Jian’s on the other. Ah-yue was hanging out with his crew and playing some Frisbee, but there was no sign of Cui Jian except someone playing sax in his tent. David had gotten a message from Thumper, who was apparently in the vicinity, but he couldn’t get through to him, so we went for a walk to see if we could find him.

The beach was full of friendly chaos. Mostly teenage concert-goers were digging into the sand, creating makeshift lounges for themselves. The bridge was a solid stream of foot-traffic, filled beyond capacity and requiring a director sitting on a high chair to manage it. The dust kicked up by the crowd’s feet mingled in the air with the smoke from the food vendors, creating a light haze. Convoys of trucks delivering food and taking away waste rumbled around. As we walked past the smaller stage, which was holding some kind of beer-related activity, it struck me that I’d been in Taiwan longer than a good portion of the people there.

“These kids! They know nothing! They’re useless!” a short old man, dressed in what I assumed to be some kind of management garb, told us. Originally he had thought that David was “showing the foreigner how awful things are in Taiwan” until David explained that I wasn’t actually the foreigner in this situation. But the old man’s words were borne out by the vast field of garbage that covered the beach in the light of the sunset. It was a truly amazing and daunting sight to anyone, much less those in charge of cleaning it all up.

Thumper was nowhere to be found, but we did bump into Sean Scanlan on our way back to the stage. He complained that he had lost his photographer and was looking for an interview but couldn’t get anywhere close to the bands. David invited him to come see if he could come backstage with us, but the security people were having none of it.

Night settled over the scene as the first bands finally took the stage. The staff had set up a TV backstage so that we could see the show from there, and a group of people had gathered in front of it. Cui Jian showed up, vanishing into his tent, and not long after trumpet and sax riffs began to emanate from within. With some reluctance I refrained from taking out my trumpet and playing along. No, no, that would be rude. But I still wanted to.

The first two bands were pretty hard-core rock. I suppose that makes sense, it being a rock concert and all. In our set we had rock songs, but also a few songs that weren’t rock songs at all, slow and melodic ballads with aboriginal themes. I hoped the audience would appreciate the change of pace, or at least not charge the stage.

Finally it came out turn, and we got our instruments together and walked up the back steps under the towering mass of the stage, now lit with thousands of lights. Instructions for going on and coming off stage were given, but I couldn’t hear them over the crowd. Then the center doors slid open, and we walked out and took our places. Beyond the lights lay a sea of people, hundreds of thousands of faces, completely covering the peninsula and framed by the dark masses of the mountains. They greeted Chalaw with a roar and seemed ready to enjoy anything. My mouth was very dry. I’d forgotten to bring water.

The show started and went by very quickly. All the sets had been cut down due to the late start, so we had had to cut a couple of songs. I gave what I felt to be a decent accounting of myself on stage, considering I’ve never played in front of nearly that many people before. A huge camera boom was swinging around over the crowd, while a mobile cameraman was running around the stage, followed closely by an assistant. It reminded me of the days when I used to do that.

Afterwards we took our bow and then, while everyone else headed off to the side, I stupidly went back to the center door, which of course opened to reveal Cai Jian-ya and her band waiting to come on stage. I hurriedly retreated to the side door and back down off stage. The group of people were still watching the monitor. Ah-yue was really into Cai Jian-ya’s show, hopping around to the music she played, including one of his own songs. Or maybe he still gets nervous before a show, as he kept running back and forth to the bathroom.

We put out instruments away and sat outside listening to the other bands. I went out to the front of the stage to listen to Ah-yue, who seemed to be off that night, shouting his lyrics out of key. Or maybe I was just in a funny place, sound-wise. I noticed then that the TV images were being projected on huge screens on either side of the stage. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t know that when I was on stage.

MC Hot Dog was next, but I went back backstage again. Ah-yue and his crew had vanished, his tent empty. Cui Jian and his band emerged from their tent just before their show; he waved and walked quickly up the stairs. We’d made a plan for an early escape to beat the traffic back to Taipei, so we planned to only listen to two songs and then go. It was a shame, though, because Cui Jian was amazing. He really knows how to work a crowd’s emotions. He and the bass sax player wore hats with red stars on them; I wondered if that was some kind of ironic statement or a party requirement or even both. I didn’t get to see him play trumpet. It’s a pity that it wasn’t the kind of concert where all the bands can just go up on stage at the end and have an outright no-hold-barred jam session.

Reluctantly we tore ourselves away from the masses of jumping teens and piled into the van, edging carefully up the dark sand dune behind the still-rocking stage and out onto the coastal highway. Others also had the same idea, but there was only a small amount of congestion at the entrance to the tunnel. I was exhausted but still high from the show, and I think everyone else was as well, as we kept chatting instead of dozing off as our bodies wanted us to.

It was after 1am by the time Chalaw dropped me off in Bitan. My mind was still spinning from the events of that long, amazing day, but I slept better than I have in a long time.