Taipei: Day 1, part four

I'm back in Hawaii now, but I've got tons of stuff written down about my Taipei trip. I'll be posting entries about once a day until I run out.

The tour bus picked me up 20 minutes late, the bus was kind of run down, and the microphone that the tour guide used kept cutting out, but hey, it only cost $1200. First we had to make the rounds to pick up the rest of the people. The crowd ended up being me, an elderly Vietnamese woman that lives in Washington D.C., a Japanese woman and her mother, and 4 Korean guys here for the tech show. Our first stop was Hwahsi Tourist Night Market. This place was pretty neat, basically a bunch of stands selling food, bobbles, clothes, but it had kind of an underworld feel to it. There was a place that sells drinks with snake blood in it, and I got quite the show there…

A man with a microphone taped around his neck spoke in Chinese and stood up on a platform. To his right were two dead snakes hanging from little rope nooses, to his left was a sign that said “No taking pictures.” He continued talking while he crouched down to pull a live snake out from a cage. He held the snake right behind the head and showed it around a bit. This snake was definitely alive… and then within a blink of an eye, he shifted his grip toward the back of the snake and swung his arm downward as fast as he could. SMACK! It was such a sickening sound and I wasn’t fully aware yet what it was… It was the snake’s head smacking down onto the floor. He quickly brought the snake back up and hung it from an empty noose. The tail end of the snake coiled up on itself, still somewhat alive. The man grabbed some scissors and cut into the underside of the snake. He peeled back the skin and gently pulled out a giant vein. While pinching the vein, he snipped it in half, then pointed the open vein into a glass. The glass filled with blood as he raised the tail end of the snake above the glass. So gross… I feel kinda sick right now just typing about it.

After we walked through the market, we walked over to the Lungshan Temple. The temple was beautiful, and it felt kind of wrong going inside. There were so many people inside meditating and burning incense; this was their place of worship and I was going to walk around gawking and taking pictures? But there were lots of tourists in there, so I went in and tried to be as respectful as I could while intruding. As I entered, it felt like I was being transported to a different time and place. The air was thick with incense and it smelled so good, there was chanting music playing softly, I started feeling drowsy as the environment lulled me into a relaxed state. Periodically I’d hear a CRACK sound, and I noticed that people were throwing pieces of wood at the ground.

The left the group for a while to wander on my own, but when I returned I asked the guide what deal was with people throwing wood pieces at the ground. He grabbed two pieces (they looked like orange wedges, curved on one side and flat on the other) and showed them to me. He said you make a request to the appropriate god and throw the pieces of wood to the floor. The god communicates an affirmative message if the two pieces don’t match (one curved side up, one flat side up). He handed them to me and told me to try. I threw the pieces down, and both flat sides came up. He said try again, you get 3 attempts. I threw them down again, and got the preferable mismatch. He then passed them around and everyone in the group also got mismatched results. Now, I’m no statistician, but I’m pretty sure the odds of seeing a mismatch on one throw is 50%. And if you get 3 attempts, the probability of an affirmative result is .5 + (.5*.5) + (.5*.5*.5) = 87.5%. Those are pretty good odds at getting your wished fulfilled!! (If my math is wrong, let me know… I really don’t remember much probability math any more).