Panai, Nabu and Mayaw were planning a special “119” concert on the 119th day of their protest, and they invited me and David Chen to participate. Day 119 (“119” is the emergency number in Taiwan, just as “911” is in the U.S.) was a Wednesday, so I brought my trumpet to work in my gig bag, and waded through the sweltering heat of the day to the park, where they were setting up the performance space in the square in front of the 2/28 Museum. One by one, the groups did soundchecks in the reverse order of the performances. David and I came up with a couple of suitable songs for guitar and trumpet, one slow and one faster. Well, David did, I just listened and played where I thought I could add something.

People showed up to the square as the park fell into night. The performances ran the gamut from traditional indigenous nose flute to classical violin. There was even a smoke machine.

Mayaw was last before we had to leave the square. The show had to end before 10 p.m., and the remnants of the crowd flowed back to the metro exit protest site, where I saw Thomas Hu and Ah-zhi, the accordionist I played with back in ’09 when we toured Taiwan with the Heineken beer band. Panai and Nabu sang; it is always a joy to hear them sing, Nabu standing with his cane, at once chanting, singing, shouting, as Panai sits by his side, singing like the mother of our dreams. They’re strong people, but it’s hard to see how little attention their efforts are getting, especially by an administration that has professed to have their interests at heart.

The next Saturday I led a group of my students on a photowalk around Qingtian Street. Chenbl was busy with work, so I had to assume some of his duties, but it went well despite the heat. I used to live in that area back in my free days, back when I started this blog in fact. I’d thought I was struggling then, but it wasn’t real struggling. I’d find that out later. So much time has passed that I end up reminiscing about reminiscing, and that gets old fast. Now I make mental notes as I go, but don’t dwell on it. It’s just too much.

After we cooled off at the traditional iced fruit shop across from the NTU campus, I walked over to the Treasure Hill community with the remainder of the students to view the display of the remains of the Kategelan Village there. People had gone out to the empty, open lot out in Neihu where the police had dumped all of the people’s belongings and recovered most of the art, and made it into a display at the foot of Treasure Hill along with a wall of photos. I found one of my photos and one of the rocks I painted, though badly chipped from its journey.

I took the students around the area, noting where we had filmed our movie there so many years ago, how it’s now all art spaces. Again, meta-reminiscing. After the students left, tired from the day, I waited until all the protesters had left as well, and sat quietly staring at the space and remembering the village as it had been. It seemed appropriate.

I was walking back out towards Gongguan when I spotted Mayaw and some others waiting for their car to be liberated from the temple parking lot. I had planned to go home, but they invited me to the bakalan, a kind of celebration of accomplishment, at the metro station protest site, so I tagged along with them to find tables of food, people singing, playing guitars, people dancing, people playing badminton. I played a couple of sets. Panai was asking everyone, “Can you play badminton? I mean, are you any good?” Because she is actually very good. It’s been years since I’ve played, but I enjoyed it. Damn, I really need to get back into some kind of shape.

The gathering was comforting in a way I’d all but forgotten. There’s been so much distance in my life lately, it was nice to get close to something for a change.

But I had petty things to do. Always, the petty things.

It’s been a weird spring. Lots of rain after the Dragonboat festival, which is strange enough. The whole world seems to have gone awry. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe things are normal for everyone else.

Chenbl and I led a photowalk on Saturday along Dihua Street, a kind of warm-up to this fall’s event. The students have become a large, friendly group, though they still have some bad shooting habits I’ve been trying to wean them out of. Still, lots of improvement. We looked at some promising exhibition/workshop locations there. The photography scene here is still so underdeveloped, it’s difficult to get people to see the value in such activities; baby steps are still steps. The gentrification of the area is spreading apace, into the alleys and northward towards the less-developed sections. This is a much better sign than these old buildings being torn down. As is usually the case in Taiwan, a bunch of people had to do it first, prove it was profitable, before anyone else joined in.

After the photowalk we went to City Hall, where the Stage show was being held. The Ramblers were mostly assembled in our tent behind the stage, awaiting our Red man as usual. The sky had been darkening into a threatening grey-black all afternoon. Chenbl got a message on his phone that our friend Chi Bo-lin had died in a helicopter crash. We told another mutual friend, Shen Chao-liang, who said he’d also just heard. The Stage show is Chao-liang’s idea, along with his schoolmate. The skies got darker still as the half-naked women mounted the jeeps and swung around on metal poles as lightning flashed, tempting fate.

The rain began as we waited for the other bands to finish, pelting down in large drops and creating a small river running through the tent. The downpour made it through our dual-stage stage as we went through the soundcheck, spraying us and the instruments and the electrical wiring. The world was water. So we waited for it to stop.

It took its damn time. I sat back in the tent, my feet up on a chair as the water rushed underneath, halfway listening to everyone around me talking about things I didn’t care anything about. I was already tired from the hot sun of the morning.

Eventually the rain let up a little, and we went on the stage to salvage our gear and play. The audience was enthusiastic. The people who would dance to anything danced to us; a conga line infiltrated the crowd. I was in the middle of a solo when I saw stage crew running towards something to my left, but I couldn’t turn from the mic to see what it was. Was someone trying to rush the stage? Was Sandman doing something untowardly? But when I could turn, I saw smoke and fire as the crew pulled a heavy electrical cord from the wet ground.

Fortunately it was our last number. No encores. I heard that they were planning to light up all the stages at once at 7 p.m. but this turned out to be a lie. Chenbl and I waited in front of city hall until after 8 p.m. before deciding to leave the thumping, soggy scene. We found refuge from the humidity and our hunger at the ancient McDonalds near Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, wolfing down salty burgers and pseudo-chicken.

I wanted to rest on Sunday, but I had to get my hair cut. It’s past time. I could have just shaved my head, as I tend to do in the summer anyway, but instead we decided to splurge, going up to Shilin to pay for Auntie #2 to massage our heads for half an hour amid the various forbidden delicacies on display. Lunch was Vietnamese, served by the boy we’d seen grow up over years that seemed like minutes.

The skies were threatening rain again as we went back to Chenbl’s to pick up my instruments, so I took a nap on the sofa. The news of Chi Bo-lin’s untimely demise had taken over the news, on repeat, with all the grisly, awful details, including suspicions of shenanigans. He exposed huge corporations’ constant and continuous rape of the land, and he was making a sequel. But yeah, it was probably just an accident.

I wanted to take the subway over the the music hall where we were practicing, but Chenbl said a bus would be quicker. I hate buses. I hate that I have to wait and hail one down, haul my stuff on board and be jerked around with abrupt starts and stops. I hate people looking at me flailing around on the bars. I hate the smell of fresh piss on the floor.

But I did get there on time. Practice was enlivened by the presence of a traditional Chinese instrument player. He could recreate the Mario theme on his sheng. I was playing too softly, and had to break out that awful marching-band blare, which left me vented and somewhat empty; I just wanted to go home, but what would I do there? Sleep has been uneasy lately. The whole world is a water curtain cave.

It’s been a long day for quite a few people in this town.

Today is the 100th day of the indigenous land rights protest site on Katagelan Blvd. Over the last three months and change, a lovely little village developed on the sidewalk and part of the wide boulevard, led mainly by Panai, Nabu and Mayao. A long, orderly row of tents grew on the sidewalk, with larger pavilions for gatherings, a kitchen with a stove and tables, shelves of food, books and music, and all decorated with aboriginal themed art. Towers of bamboo adorned the space, and the Sun Moon Lake tribe donated two lovely wooden canoes. Educational talks and symposia were held, as well as a wide variety of musical performances. Panai even recorded a very nice album there, with my friend and fellow musician David Chen contributing his guitar skills to the mix.

I’ve been spending a bit of time there as well, whenever I get some time…sometimes talking with people, sometimes helping out with this or that, and sometimes just sitting quietly. It’s been a quiet, friendly space when I needed it over the past few months, and I’ve learned a bit about a few things and made a few new friends there. I showed my friend and old classmate DJ Hatfield around it just yesterday, which was great because he’s been spending his summers in Dulan for the last few years, has learned the Amis language, and is well-liked among the people there.

Today I was planning to go over to spend Day 100 at the village and see how they were dealing with the record downpour that was causing all kinds of flooding in northern Taiwan, but before I’d departed work, a terse Facebook alert from Mayao appeared on my screen: “They’re tearing it all down.” Another friend’s live feed showed hundreds of police officers swarming the village and beginning to tear things down. Mayao and Banai were overcome by dozens of officers, and Nabu wheeled away in his wheelchair (he has difficulty walking). Mayao just had cataract surgery; police attacks were probably not what the doctor ordered.

When I rushed out of my office to walk over to Katagelan, the skies were dumping rain at an alarming rate. Even though I had my big-ass umbrella, my shoes and pants were soaked instantly. The news was full of reports of flash flooding all around the city. Just how, I wondered, could the police spare hundreds of officers to dismantle a completely peaceful protest site under such circumstances?

But it was true, I saw when arrived. Literally hundreds of officers swarmed over the site. All the protesters had been physically removed, and heavy cranes were violently tearing down all the tents, towers, shelters…everything. All of the kitchen supplies, the artwork, the furniture, even a large portrait of President Tsai was dumped into a heap on the pavement, crushed, shoveled with a loader into the back of a large truck and hauled away as we watched helplessly from behind the barriers and police, who had set up a large megaphone system that was spewing patent nonsense like “There is low visibility due to the rain! For your safety, please leave the area!” The atmosphere felt like it was straight out of mainland China. The most bizarre thing was the presence of Environmental Protection Department officials. In a nation notorious for morally bankrupt factories spewing hazardous pollution into the air and the rivers, the EPA always claims that it is understaffed, underfunded and unable to monitor these blatant breaches of law. Yet they apparently have plenty of time and personnel to dismantle a peaceful protest that is completely green and sustainable.

Mayao was standing on a stool continuing his live broadcast as the destruction continued, while Panai and Nabu sat forlornly on the corner in front of the Taipei Guesthouse gate. I circled around the scene, switching between my Leica M6 and my phone depending on the circumstances. Fortunately the Samsung S7 I use is water resistant, and the Leica is virtually indestructible. I missed my Sony, but it’s in the shop yet again being fixed, so I had to make due with what I had.

Just about everything had been hauled away when a New Power Party legislator showed up, followed by another one I recognized, Freddy Lim. By that point the destruction of the village had been going on for several hours, and I wondered what took them so damn long to get there. Still, nobody from either the DPP nor the KMT showed up at all, so there’s that. The legislators had a furious chat with the police on the site, who refused to yield, so the legislators held a little press conference in which they criticized the police’s actions. I guess that’s all they could do.

As darkness fell, the police removed the barriers and opened the street up to traffic again. The rain, which had lessened around sunset, returned as the cops formed lines around the area. Some of them surrounded Panai and Nabu, still in his wheelchair, and shouted insults, not letting them move, and when they did, following them around. The police chief came over and started issuing orders: “If they set up any tents, take them down!” he shouted. “No cars are allowed to stop in this area, period!” It was as if he had decided he was a mini legislature of his own, spewing out laws at a whim. I thought of all the people in the city in need of police assistance, wondering where all the cops had gone. When some people brought over folding chairs for some of the older protesters, who were huddled under umbrellas on the wet sidewalk, the police started pointing and shouting, saying “Those aren’t allowed! Those are illegal!”

It was past dinner time, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I’d also run out of film and my phone was dying, so I left the site in the evening, soaked and tired, but still in better shape than most of the protesters, who are still, as far as I know, huddled on that corner under the pouring rain, surrounded by shouting, sneering police.

I hope they can bounce back from this. I don’t know if Day 100 was their target day to remove the protest site once and for all, or if they decided to take advantage of the extreme weather to do it. In either case, I have to say it was an extremely shitty thing to do. I’ve been disappointed that the government has managed to ignore this issue this long, but going to these lengths smacks of tactics this administration really should know better than to engage in.

EDIT: The police apparently executed their own law and bodily forced people to leave the area early Saturday morning, shouting “We’re doing this for your protection!” Not a single peep from the presidential office.