Summer surprised us

Today Winnie and I rode the metro for so long that, just sitting in my desk chair, I could feel for the longest time the bump and sway of the Danshui line. It reminded me of being nine, eleven, and thirteen, going by car with my dad to the waterpark in the old German settlement of New Braunfels, how I’d feel the tug of the artificial rivers as I slept through the homeward journey. We got mixed up once, ended up twice at this out-of-the-way station, decides the gods wanted us to visit Dingxi. Serendipity— and gracious locals— led us to fresh-baked bread and a spontaneous night-market run. I’ve got half a loaf each of whole wheat and thick-grained white, even if I didn’t meet a guru or a guardian angel.

Transferring issues aside, this city is absurdly navigable. I already feel like I know Taipei marginally better than Austin, whose white-picket suburban skirts I’ve clutched at like a timid child with his nurse, for about a decade now.

At lunchtime we got caught in a torrent of truly Old Testament proportions, hid out under the eaves of a Korean food stall. We waited out the rest of the rain at a movie theater, watching Kungfu Panda in 3-D, and then wandered a couple of commercial areas— Ximending for the second time, for me, and the religious tourist hub around Longshan Temple. I feel weirdly at home in Longshan, surrounded by the pious elderly— the streets studded with teashops displaying dainty wares in porcelain and purple clay. It made me want to buy ginseng wulong, which I developed a taste for in Habrin. I also glimpsed a sex shop stall though, amusingly out of place amongst sandalwood bodhisattvas and Pu-erh cakes.

The Guanyin statues— little wooden ones for your dashboard as well as big stone figures guarding teahouse doors— made me think of Maria Kannon— the Japanese hidden Christians’ Blessed Virgin, wearing the face of the East Asian goddess of mercy. It was this big one cradling an infant especially, which the secret faithful would have casted in their worship as the Christ. Thinking of the Kakure Kirishitan, I start to warble “Ave Maria” as I share the street with this floating sangha, tourists probably from Japan as well as within the city. I feel silly, but also like myself— the kind of aggressively uncool eccentric who bursts into song with a smile at socially inappropriate times.