Day One: Hit the ground running

Arrived Taipei airport at 5 in the morning from Los Angeles. No buses at that hour so took taxi to Artists Village. Happily, a guard had keys to our rooms. Large factory like rooms, cement floor, plain, for artists to dance or build or paint.

Sat and I rested for two hours and then ventured out into the streets. 8:00 AM and it was already 90 degrees. I felt disoriented and wanted to hold Sat’s hand. I’m worried about how we will get on since he’s been my teacher for 18 years and we’ve never traveled together and I could easily, unwittingly, make an American protocol guffaw. Sat is very formal; perhaps, that’s his way of maintaining respectful borders. But he may have been disoriented as well. He suggested we find a restaurant by keeping to the left. Left at each turn. We went left from the Artists Village and then left and then left and found a simple restaurant where lots of people were eating before work. I had eggs and rice. Sat had eggs and pork and rice. Then we bought containers of fresh orange juice for about 20 cents for our room. We started home by going right and right but couldn’t remember how many blocks we walked straight at the last left.

Finally, we found the Artists Village. Ahhh, all is well except somehow we were told by the director that in our emails we had reserved three rooms. We realize we will need to check and re-check communications.

One of our main intentions was to visit a Monkey King Temple. Sat said that he’d read about a Monkey King Temple in Taiwan. I asked the Taiwan Cultural Council in New York City about the Temple. The director’s assistant who had lived in Taipei all her life said she was absolutely certain there was no Monkey King Temple in Taipei. I kept insisting and at last she found an address but wasn’t very hopeful. We asked Jenny if she could direct us to this address in Taipei. Jenny told us she lived in Taipei and there was NO Monkey King Temple, and this address did not exist. I felt I was in one of Rabbi Nachman’s stories in which the messenger keeps asking for the Lost Princess and everyone says there is no such person. The messenger keeps insisting; we continued to insist. Jenny turned to her staff. The six person staff at Artists Village testified as a group that there was NO Monkey King Temple in Taiipei. They knew because they lived there. We looked at one another but didn’t leave the office.  “Let me check,” the youngest on the staff finally said, and lo and behold, she found a Monkey King Temple in Keelung, a city two hours from Taipei.

We called my three contacts. Ju-Huang, a Taiwanese documentary filmmaker who had agreed to shoot the Taiwan segment of our documentary called us back very excited. “You are very fortunate.My partner is shooting the Hungry Ghost Ceremony in  a small town north of Taipei. I’ll pick you up  tonight at 6pm.” We reached Rainbow, the sister of Alex Wong, an extraordinary healer and T’ai Ch’i teacher who lives in the West Village. Rainbow would pick us up on Sunday for an excursion into the country. Alex’s friend, Aka, called back. He’d come by Saturday night. Sat and I went to our rooms to rest.

Ju Huang arrived at 6:15 in a car with her boyfriend Song, one of the best cameramen in Taiwan. She had more good news. She had arranged for us to meet Mr. Sun tomorrow night before his street opera performance, and  she and Song would take us to Keelung  on Saturday morning to the Monkey King Temple. The bad news was that she couldn’t shoot the documentary herself; she was too busy, but one of her partners, Jeremy, had agreed to do so from Monday on.

As if to bless our quest, the very entrance of the Mazu temple, where we were to meet the film crew, had a sculpture of Monkey King, the Tang priest, Sandy and Pigsy (we were not including Sandy and Pigsy in our rendition of the story  because of time.)

Ju Huang was surprised.” I never paid much attention to Monkey King,” she said, and “here he is on the front of the temple.”

The temple had beautiful painted sculptures of Kwan Yin and also of arhats with open hearts who reflected what I was feeling: gratitude--at the kindness and open-heartedness of the Taiwanese people. I stood a long time in front of the open-hearted arhats, contemplating the beauty of the open heart and a culture with a physical manifestation of the open heart.

We ate in a small restaurant on the street and then waited for the rest of the crew so we could drive to the place where the people were releasing paper boats filled with food for the hungry ghosts.

When the mayor of the small town noticed me, the only Caucasian in the crowd, he wanted to know why we had come.  What a day, starting out with our clinging to the left side of buildings, ending at midnight talking with the mayor.