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Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Another Shameless Plug: Book Excerpt

Our book, The Taiwan Adventure:  An Expat's Observations of Life in Taiwan is on sale at Amazon.com and other bookstores throughout the World.  It's now out in the Kindle Version, so it has become quite accessible.  You can purchase the book at this link.  Today in a shameless plug I want to present and excerpt from the book:  The Number 7 Cross Island Highway.

7.1 The Number 7 Cross Island Highway

A Poppy Field in Daxi

One interesting thing I've discovered is that the meaning of certain words is different in Taiwanese English than it is in English-English. Huh? What does that mean? Take the word Highway, for instance. We've driven the #7 Cross-Island Highway from Daxi Township all the way to Yilan. It starts out
as a beautiful highway. It’s wide with double yellow lines down the middle
and moves along easily at 60 km/h (38 mph). In essence it lives up to the
name highway. 
One minute we’re zipping along in beautiful mountain scenery. We 
passed a huge field of orange poppies: Then the immaculately manicured
Chiang Kai Shek mausoleum. Then something happened to the road. The
highway was like a road with dual personalities…and suddenly the evil
personality showed up.
The complexion of the road changed. It narrowed a little, then a little
more. Then it began to snake through the forest and up the side of the
mountain; twisting and turning; even the switchbacks had switchbacks. Until
the Cross-Island Highway looked more like the Cross Island Goat track: And
then I’m sure I saw a goat refusing to get on the road.

A remote temple in the mountains

At times it felt like I was driving the car in the cartoons where the tires
on one side of the car stayed on the road and the others hung out over a
yawning abyss. Okay maybe I’m exaggerating here, but not much. Then the
road got really narrow and the sun began to set.
Then it got darker and darker. The conversation turned darker as well. It
was like driving through a horror movie. It got so dark that we couldn't see to
the trees on the side of the road. And then it got really dark. I thought it would
never end.

A waterfall near the road before it went all Twilight Zone/Zombie Apocalypse on us.

We had decided to drive over to Yilan. People have been telling me what
a wonderful place it was, so we thought we’d make it a day and drive the 7.
Because I hadn't been there before, I was watching the mileage signs; just
before dark we saw a sign that said 28 kilometers to Yilan. So we drove in the
same direction for at least 10 kilometers then we saw the next sign. Yilan 32
kilometers…wait…we were traveling in the right direction how did it get
farther away. Then I’m sure I saw him…In fact, I’m positive I saw Rod
Serling hitchhiking with a sign that said “The Twilight Zone.” Then it got
really, really dark; it got so dark that the boogieman had a night-light.
Eventually about an eon later we came out of the mountains and into a good-sized city.
We stopped for gas and a man gave us a road map so that we could find
an alternate route home. One of our friends had commented to us that we
shouldn't stop for anyone walking on the road. He said that many people had
reported seeing ghosts on the side of the highway waving to people. I just
passed it off as a legend. You know where I grew up we lived with the legend of
the “White Witch of Nortonville.”
This woman was apparently a nurse in the 1800s during an epidemic of
small pox in Northern California. Legend has it that she overturned her wagon
while trying to reach some sick child in a remote cabin in the hills near the
Somersville mines in Nortonville. Now she supposedly wanders the roads
around the cemetery she’s buried in. We would go out and visit Nortonville
looking for her but didn't really expect to find her.
Then, I saw a guy, standing there, I couldn't help but stare he was
completely pale, like he hadn't been outside in years. He had dark circles
around his eyes and walked with a shuffling gate, sort of dragging one leg
along. He had a double-bitted axe in one hand and chainsaw in the other. He
was headed for the mountains… on the road we just came down.
When he heard we’d just come out of the mountains he looked a little
peeved. He just muttered something that sounded like, “I knew I was late.” I
wonder what he meant by that…




1 comment:

  1. good blog, nice to visit this blog.
    best taiwan blog 2011. wooooow. fantastic.

    ReplyDelete