Remembering Jiaming Lake and the Southern Cross-Island Highway (Part 2)

This is continued from Part 1.

I should note that the eastern section of the Southern Cross follows the Xinwulu river. The river originates from Guanshan, Xiangyangshan, and Sanchashan i.e. the mountains I summitted during this trip (except Guanshan, which I didn’t summit). The Xinwulu river flows down into the east rift valley, where it flows into the Beinan river, which eventually flows into the Pacific Ocean at Taidong city.

I started this trip by taking a train to Guanshan (the town, not the mountain), and spent the first night there. Guanshan is a town in Taiwan’s east rift valley, at the southern end of Taiwan’s ‘rice bowl’ (i.e. prime rice-growing region), and relies on the Xinwulu river for much of its water. The next morning, I got on a bus, which went up to the Southern Cross-Island Highway. The bus passed through Chulai, about 300m above sea level, which is where the mountains meet the valley and is the last place along the highway where rice-farming is feasible. After going through Chulai, the next settlement was Xiama, then Wulu, and then Lidao, where I had breakfast.

Most of the road was in good shape, though there were a few rough patchs, and a flooded tunnel where the bus literally had to drive through the water. [UPDATE 2020: A year later, in 2014, bus service to Lidao was cancelled, which does not completely surprise me given road conditions and lack of population. I don’t know whether bus service was ever restored, or if there is currently bus service to Lidao].

Lidao is a Bunun village (every settlement past Chulai is a Bunun village) about 1000m above sea level, and is the last place with flat land. The people there apparently feel they don’t have enough farmland, so many of the mountains around Lidao have terraced fields. The Boss (I explain who he is in Part 3) claims that the people have taken the terracing too far.

Remembering Jiaming Lake and the Southern Cross-Island Highway (Part 1)

A view seen near Yakou on the Southern Cross-Island Highway in Taiwan

I recently read the novel Yushan Spirits (玉山魂) by Husluman Vava. In the preface, he describes the incident which inspired the novel. He was traveling on the Southern Cross-Island Highway in Taiwan. At Yakou, the highest elevation point on the road, he was feeling the effects of the altitude change, so he decided to take a break at a parking lot, where there were two multi-story buildings. This is at the border of Kaohsiung and Taitung counties, so passengers going between Kaoshiung’s bus system and Taitung’s bus system would transfer there. Husluman Vava saw an old man waiting with other bus passengers who seemed to be looking at the mountains in a particular way. He addressed him in the Bunun language, asking him if it was going to Taitung. The old man answered that yes, he was going to Taitung to visit his daughter.

They got into a conversation, and eventually, the old man said (note: I’m translating this from Chinese, which was translated from Bunun, and I’m also abridging this, so the accuracy is questionable) “When I was young, I often went hunting here with my elders.”

“Here, in this parking lot?” Husluman Vava replied.

“The mountain forest here was originally our village’s hunting ground … I once shot and killed a deer in this area – just about there! There was originally a giant rock there, the smart deer would duck behind there to get out of our sight … it was rare that we hunted down such a big deer,” the old man continued as he basked in his old sense of glory.

“What? Inside that multi-story building?”

“Yes! But someone who doesn’t understand mountain forests, who doesn’t understand hunting, put a building in a place which belongs to deer … this place has changed, there are more and more things which don’t belong in the mountains. Sometimes when I pass by here, I wonder whether the things I remember actually existed.”

Husluman Vava was really struck by this comment. He pondered what would drive someone to stop believing their own memories were true, and what it meant when it happened to a whole culture. That was the starting point for the novel.

I myself have been to Yakou, in 2013, and I recall looking at the buildings mentioned in the preface. However, at the time I was there, there was no bus service; I had to hitchhike to get up there. The buildings were closed and not in use. When I was looking down at that, I also felt like they looked really out of place in their setting.

Some Further Reflections on Love

I recently served as a host for the Carnival of Aros and chose the theme “Love” (here is the round-up post). I’ve been pondering the submissions, and thus, I now have some further reflections on love.

A theme in many of the submissions is that love (especially but not just romantic love) is given an unduly exalted position in our culture. A few quotes in this vein:

“Love has such an inflated meaning / That it’s become meaningless to me;” from “Love Is Just a Feeling” by Magni

“Multiple people express a desire to not cheapen love. Allow me express an opposite desire: love should be cheap enough that I feel comfortable ever claiming it.” from “Those Magic Words” by Siggy

“Call me a faker, call me a fraud / But I think you’re all mistaking romance for god” from “Obsessed With Love” by Chara C.

“Even those who decry one species covert others, romantic traded for platonic, the flower pot placed on a pedestal just the same.” from “Love is a Flower” by Briar

I recommend that you remember the idea behind these quotes – that the value of love is overblown in our culture – because I’m going to reference it in the conclusion to this post.

I poke at the essay “The empty promises of Marie Kondo and the craze for minimalism”

I am on a weekly blogging schedule, and the essay “The empty promises of Marie Kondo and the craze for minimalism” seems like just the kind of thing I’ll enjoy poking.

Yes, I disagree with the main premise – that the KonMari Method or that ‘minimalism’ offers empty promises, especially since I think going through the KonMari method in my own home delivered everything that Marie Kondo promised. Yes, I am going to be very critical. Yet I am going to be critical with smiles and giggles, not with screaming and raging.

First of all, I agree with the hosts of the Spark Joy podcast that “Konmari equals minimalism/minimalism is KonMari” is a myth. KonMari and minimalism can definitely complement each other, but I have found many examples of minimalists who have broken some or even all of the core tenets of Marie Kondo’s philosophy, and there are people who faithfully follow all of the steps of the Konmari method who aren’t minimalists. Heck, I have a blog post about one of the philosophical differences between the Konmari method and minimalism. There is also this discussion of how they are different. It’s not just KonMari fans who say KonMari isn’t the same a minimalism; there are also many minimalists who say that KonMari isn’t minimalism (example). This essay in the Guardian, on the other hand, tends to conflate the Konmari method and minimalism. To mean, that weakens its arguments.

As I said in that previous blog post, I neither claim to be a minimalist nor claim to be a non-minimalist. You, my dear readers, may decide whether or not I am a minimalist; I’ll accept your judgement.

Eighth Anniversary Blog Post

Eight years and a few hours ago, the very first post in this blog was published.

I don’t think I imagined that I would really keep up a at-least-once-a-week schedule for eight years when I started. But now, I’ve been in the habit of blogging at least once a week for so long (eight years!) that I no longer really remember what it was like to not have a weekly blog deadline looming over me. It would be weird if this blog stopped being part of my life!

I wish I had some fantastic insight to deliver to you all for the eighth anniversary of this blog, but to be honest, I don’t. At least not this year. I had a more worthy insight last year.

Lacking some wonderful new insight for this year’s anniversary, I will instead note that, out of the five post popular posts of the previous year, four of them (FOUR) were published in 2017. Not the top five most viewed blog posts of all eight years of this blog, just from the previous 365 days. And the other post in the top five was published in 2018. So they aren’t my oldest posts, but none of them were published in 2019, which I find mildly interesting. If you’re curious, the five most viewed blog posts of the previous 365 days are:

“Mortality on the Pacific Crest Trail” (this is by far the most viewed post on this blog ever, a lot of people want to know about death on the Pacific Crest Trail)
“The Valley of Life and Death: An Wuxia Novel with a Female Protagonist who May Be Aro-Ace” – I really would not have expected this post to be in second place. I suspect it gets so many views because it catches the attention of both the wuxia fans and people looking for aro-ace themes/representation in fiction
“Instructions for making a Climashield Apex Quilt” – I hope that this post getting so many views means that people are making awesome quilts that are serving them well. This is also the only post in the top-five-most-viewed-in2019 list which was not published in 2017
“Does My Palace Cause Cancer” – I hope that the popularity of this post means people are becoming more aware of the toxic chemicals present in camping gear
“A Life of Fighting Is But a Dream” – Taking a Tour through Sinophone Pop Culture with “Dao​ Jian Ru Meng​” – Yep, another 2017 blog post which was really popular in 2019

I wish to thank my readers for spending some of their precious time on my blog, and I look forward to another year of blogging!

The Pleasures of Making My Own Bouquets

Here is a bouquet featuring several types of yellow flowers, some non-yellow geraniums, and some non-flowering white sage in the back-center.

I once took a two-hour workshop on how to make a flower bouquet. Thus, I know a few principles of choosing and arranging flowers, which is more than 99% of people know, but I am hardly an expert.

Round-Up for the Carnival of Aros December 2019 Edition: “Love”

First of all, I heartily thank everyone who submitted to this carnival.

I am making TWO lists. The first list is purely links for people who want to access the submissions in a compact form. The second list contains descriptions and quotes. All submissions are represented in both lists, I’m just trying to accommodate different reading styles. Both lists are in the order that I received the submissions.

SHORT FORM LIST

I Ramble About Love. by Sara K.
“Those Magic Words ‘I Love You'” by Siggy
“Obsessed With Love” by Chara C.
“Love vs. Radical Kindness” by techno
“My Experiences Feeling Demiplatonic” by Magni
“Love is Just a Feeling” by Magni
Carnival of Aros – Love by Neir
“On ‘I Love You'” by Lokiana
“What about love?” by Scoop
“My experience with “love” being aromantic” by Isaac
“Love Is a Flower” by Ax
“The Baggage of Love” by Briar
“Growing Up Platoniromantic: Colours of Love” by Blue Ice-Tea
“Thoughts and Quotes about Love” by Soulriser
“Some Thoughts on Love” by raavenb2619