Sinlaku

Yesterday school got out early by a period in order to allow people to get home and prepare for Typhoon Sinlaku. I rode home in the threatening rain, and parked my scooter in the apartment garage for the first time since the Golden Monkey’s suicidal charge. It took a Grade 3 typhoon to get me to park in the garage again.

Nell came home and the two of us went shopping for food to last through Sunday. This is unusual and quite mind-boggling in its own right, since usually people here just buy food for immediate use. In the US, my kitchen and fridge at home is neatly stocked with food, and I couldn’t be put out of sorts if a hurricane suddenly dropped out of nowhere. Here, however, Nell and I wandered up and down the four aisles of the shop down the street, wondering how much we would eat in two days. We settled on a hodgepodge of noodles, saltines, orange and grapefruit juice, and a packet of bread. Then we swung by the bakery hoping to get better bread, but settled for the day’s remnants of pastries (though one option was a delicious whole wheat bread stuffed with nuts). We also went to a kaorou place nearby (a stand that roasts food) and picked up some cooked food and red tea. We knew we wouldn’t go hungry since we had more noodles and oatmeal at the apartment, not to mention an unspeakable number of moon cakes.

Sunday is the Moon Festival (Zhong Qiu Jie [Mid-Autumn Festival]) which marks the occasion of when a lady was sent to the moon in order to fulfill her wish of living forever, I think. The Taiwanese celebrate with barbeques (not sure how traditional this is), going out in families to gaze at the moon, and giving friends, family, and coworkers moon cakes. Moon cakes are round pastries that fit in the palm of you hand. They are filled with green bean paste, red bean paste, egg yolks, some kind of marzipan-y pineapple paste, mootchie (thick gelatinous stuff), dried meat filings, etc. They are packed in boxes in rows of three, and, depending on how upscale the box is, may come with an assortment of other cookies, candies, bars, and moon cakes of a different shape—circular but flat, and almost as large as your hand. They are high high high in fat content. You absolutely must offer the people around you moon cakes, but while many will happily accept them, a good number flatly refuse and back away, saying they don’t want to get fat. The moon cake exchange ritual reminds me a lot of mishloach manot. You are socially compelled to offer food to everyone around you. Nobody really wants so much junk food. And yes, I will admit it—I have cake recycled. But only once! I was holding a box with three or four cakes left (I’d had 12 to start with) and went into an office to give a fellow English teacher a cake. Inside were three teachers, and I couldn’t very well give to one person right in the face of two others. I think the teachers might have even said something about thanking me for bringing them all cakes. So I handed them out, though one of the teachers might have turned down my cake. (Just so you know, having your moon cake turned down does come with a sense of rejection.) I now had one cake left. The English teacher, however, extended a box of moon cakes toward me, and I gratefully accepted a chocolaty-looking one. Still not enough for the rest of the English teachers at Wu Jie. So I headed back toward my office instead, passing the nurse’s office on the way. Inside were two people. Aha! I thought. This was a good opportunity to speak with someone whom I’d previously only waved at through her office window. The two women inside were happy to receive the cakes and to chat with me a bit (“Oh, you speak some Chinese! We can practice our English—it’s pretty rusty…”). So that was nice and I only felt the slightest guilty twinge at the origin of the chocolate moon cake.

Back to Sinlaku…I was originally supposed to join my landlady and dean (that’s one person) on Saturday with my roommates for a Moon Festival celebration, but all such celebrations have been canceled due to decidedly inclement weather.

Nell and I returned from our shopping spree (done in two stages, since we dropped off our first purchases with the building guard and went back for the bakery and kaorou) quite wet with rain. The typhoon takes some time to pass. On Friday, we felt light rain and wind from the outskirts of the storm. The ride home from school was mainly uneventful, but a bit unnerving since my scooter was pushed a little to the side by the wind on 2-4 occasions. Anyway, we felt pretty prepared with our typhoon supplies, and were set to do as Dr. Wu had advised via email: settle down in our apartments for the weekend with a good book.

The next morning, more tape had to be bought for the windows. We have large windows around two corners of the den, and a roll of tape goes pretty quickly. The building guard told us not to go outside since it was dangerous, but we were worried by the prospect of shattered glass. The building guard and his friend offered us tape, then rain gear when we said we wanted to go out and get our own, and then would probably have lent us money, as well. He had on his raincoat and wanted to go with us to make sure we’d be ok, but we told him that wasn’t necessary. Someone from my suite went with an ETA from another suite. Outside was rainy, but no too windy. Some shops were open, including the shop Nell and I visited, a fruit mart, a home appliance center, and the 7-eleven. There still wasn’t enough tape in the end for all of our windows, but the building guard came up to check out our apartment and said it was ok, since we only needed to tape up the front-facing windows in the den.

Throughout the day, we kept looking out the windows and venturing onto our balcony. It rained with some gusts of wind. What a lame typhoon, we said, and egged it on. This was quite unnecessary.

At around 10:00/11:00 pm, the storm picked up. Wind howled and whistled—and sometimes shrieked like a frightened girl—through the trees, the palm trees bent to the side, their fronds whipped up into balls of frenetically waving leaves. A thin layer of water on the street in front of our apartment undulated in small ripples. Green ground plants moved in the wind, not rhythmically enough to be like the ocean, but like some kind of muscled, scaled creature. A few birds flew through the air during the day, and I wondered if they were insane. Cars and motorcycles are still out on the road (it’s almost 2:00 am now), and I know those people are out of their minds. The wind throws the rain about and drives it up the street, herding it in misty gusts away from my apartment. When the wind picks up, the mists swirl about over the asphalt. There are patterns and tiny waves on the street. The palm fronds wave about as if they are thinking about coming loose and leaping away in a crazy tribal dance. Our green den curtains blow in the wind supposedly locked behind the glass doors, and the doors themselves reverberate in the wind. Faith, Nell, and I ogle at the scene below us and take pictures, then leap away (sometimes with a small shout) by turns. Rain has leaked from our air conditioner, from a spot in the ceiling by the windows, and from under the window in Nell’s room. We have towels on the floor to soak it up, and have unplugged all wires from the wall (thus losing our internet). If it leaks more tomorrow—and I’m guessing it will—we will have to use clothing to stop the water. Where are all the people in cars and on scooters going? Did they get caught in the storm, or did they do this on purpose? The three of us in my suite agreed it would be rotten to have an emergency this weekend. Then we heard ambulance sirens. Crazy motorists involved in an accident? We were scared to go to sleep, but the other two already bit the bullet, and soon I will to, trusting my windows to stay intact. Laughing and mostly joking around, we determined that our entryway would be the safest spot in our apartment, since it has no windows and is partially blocked off from the den by a shoe case (that’s like a bookcase but for shoes). It leads out to the hallway, which should also be rather secure since the door to the stairwell has been closed for the first time since we got here, presumably as a precautionary measure. (The stairs are open in places to the outdoors.) So if the windows blow in, that’s where we’ll go. While the three of us discussed these issues and dropped towels on the leaks, I rescued my computer and gift box from the coffee table in front of the den windows. Because we know what the caption will read in the worse-case scenario: Three Girls Buried Alive for a Week, Survive on Moon Cakes and Their Own Urine.