Guo'ing another Nian, and a Volcanic Lesson from God

(Title: Guo (過) covers a range of meanings including "crossing/passing over/through" and having experienced something before, and Nian (年) in this case means "year." The phrase Guo Nian (過年) in Mandarin could thus be translated "crossing over to the next year," and refers to celebrating Chinese New Year. It could also be translated as "Enduring/Surviving Nian." According to ancient Chinese stories, Nian was a legendary monster that attacked villages once a year, killing many people. One way to survive was putting red paper on the door posts of your house. Nian didn't like the color red, so if your doorposts had red on them your house would be safe. Sound familiar?)

It has sounded like a revolution is underway the last two nights here, with mortar-style fireworks going off every few minutes. Last night included machine-gun-like strings of firecrackers throughout the neighborhood too. Having friends who have worked in real war zones, I can be thankful that in this case it is only celebrations for the Chinese New Year.

Burning paper money on Chinese New Year's Eve at midnight.
Paper money is burned in little firepots like this in front of homes and businesses
on spiritually significant days of the month (using the lunar calendar, like Jewish holidays).
It's an offering to ancestral spirits. Lots of people were doing this last night in my neighborhood.

A huge part of Chinese New Year is the shared meal on Chinese New Year's Eve.
The family I'm staying with graciously included me in their family celebrations,
which included this amazing supper.

And continued with lots of fruit and snacks.

I last posted on my little excursion to visit a Baptist seminary in Taipei for a church-planting seminar. (Actually now that I think about it, I suppose going to seminary for a seminar only makes sense...)
If you didn't read that (you probably didn't, based on what blogger tells me) and still want to know about me finding my way to the downtown area and finding what was definitely a hidden urban ninja village, read it here... it's a quick photo essay.

Since that day, our little team here in Xindian has prepared for and successfully completed a week-long, all-day VBS. That was exhausting, but went well and we had about 70 people in total show up for the week-end performance, quite a few more than we expected. In the end, lots of kids heard about God, and we made a few more connections in the community.

I have lots of pictures from this VBS, but I assume most people know how those go. (Games, lessons, crafts, food, etc) People seem to like pictures of people (not to mention cute kids), though, so if you want me to do a photo essay of the VBS leave me a comment and if a few people mention it I can throw those up on another post here very quickly.

2014 Winter Break VBS!
Behind us is the community center where we had the VBS and hope to have a church.

By the end of the week I'd also picked up a sore throat and fever, probably from one of the kids, and am just now getting my voice back today. In the meantime, some Taiwanese American friends of mine from Texas invited me to join them in climbing to the summit of Seven Star Peak, the central mountain of Taiwan's highest dormant volcano, Yangmingshan.

But I almost didn't get up there...
After finding out that the trail was less than 2 miles up to the summit, I assumed it would be easy. I didn't realize that it was basically stairs the whole way, becoming more and more steep. After about the first kilometer of stairs I told my friends to go ahead, I'd catch up. I should have, I was realizing, actually eaten breakfast that morning. (And later I realized I hadn't eaten supper the night before either.)

Taiwan actually does have some of the world's most venomous snakes, though I haven't seen one yet.

The innocent-looking trailhead...

Over the next half kilometer's climb, I berated myself for being so out of shape, and wondered how long I'd have to make my friends wait at the top, at the slow rate I was going. I had also drunk all my water previously, and was sweating it out pretty quickly. After vowing to never call myself a martial artist again if I quit, I pressed on until I reached a pavilion and asked the Taiwanese people resting there if they'd seen two guys go past. "Yep," they replied (except in Mandarin), "they went on up."

My friends then called, to let me know they'd gotten to the top. I assured them I would be there soon, as I only had a kilometer left to go. (haha...) I then tackled the next section of the climb, which turned out to be the steepest portion. I am extremely stubborn, but my body suddenly didn't have any water left to sweat out, and it had been 8 years since I climbed this many stairs in a row.
As I rested, a little Chinese lady overtook me, walking slowly but steadily upwards. I could only console myself with the knowledge that I outweighed her by a good 80-100 pounds. Finally, after a hundred more stairs or so, I "gave up," and called my friends so they wouldn't have to wait on me any longer.

But despite good signal, my call didn't go through due to "network problems." I decided I'd get water faster going forward rather than back down, so I pressed on a little further. After a few more flights of stairs, I found a nice rock to rest on, and called again, even praying that they'd answer, so I could get some water which I needed rather badly by this point.

The stairs started out in a friendly sort of way

One dozen stairs are nothing. One hundred stairs are easy.
Thousands of stairs are very tiring.

The call still wasn't going through. And I didn't feel much like moving. But I couldn't just sit there and let them wait on me until they finally decided to come down and see if I was ok. And the water was ahead, not behind. I struggled up a few dozen more stairs, then a few more, and suddenly noticed the trees had begun to part, and a panoramic view began to open up in front of me:

A glimpse of Taipei from above

I'd "given up" just a few yards from the view I'd been hoping for when I started the climb. Had my friends answered the call, I'd never have climbed just a little higher to see it. The lesson couldn't have been any more obvious had God sent an angel to spell it out for me with flashcards...

The previous picture was taken from where I'm standing in this picture.
The place where I had planned on stopping was that shaded rock in the middle of the picture.
Wouldn't that have been sad?

And just a few dozen steps higher...

Now with a cool mountain breeze assisting (And also carrying the rotten-egg stench of sulfur from the slumbering volcano's fumaroles), I climbed over half of the rest of the way. In the middle of a steep section I was feeling seriously dehydrated and about to really stop, when I heard my phone ringing, it was my friends. I told them where I was, and they said I was nearly there, but they'd head my way with the water and I could meet them halfway. I began to do so, when suddenly the trail leveled and the sky opened up overhead. I'd finally reached the top.

"And those happy climes that ly
Where day never shuts his eye,
Up in the broad fields of the sky..."

Highest dormant volcano in Taiwan, check.
Jade Mountain (Highest in Taiwan at roughly 13,000 feet), on the to-do list...

Taipei and the Danshui river.

I love Taiwan.

Friends from Texas

Some very active sulphur vents. Here's hoping this volcano never wakes up.

Some friends we made at the summit. Went to eat American-style burgers with them afterwards
and had a good conversation which touched on spiritual matters as well.

Lesson learned? I hope so.
I hate to think of all I might miss the next time I'm tempted to quit just a little too soon...

Bonus Picture Post! #3 - A Walk Through My Community, Part 2

My walk continues as I pass by the street I live on, and head towards the renovated area around the new HTC research center. (HTC is a Taiwan-based smartphone and tablet manufacturing company, their HTC One phone was relatively popular in the US as well)

I live down this way

Recycling truck on the move

Garbage truck. There are no household garbage cans to put on the street in Taiwan, or streetside dumpsters.
If you don't live in a highrise, you take your garbage directly to the truck and toss it in there.
They run on a daily schedule and play music (like an ice cream truck) so you know they're coming.

I have no idea what this is, except I think it's a plant and not an alien life form.

Coming out of the residential area, towards HTC. Notice the drying clothes blowing in the wind.

HTC's new research facility, a big boost to the local economy.

HTC built a corporate park for their employees, it's quite nice.
That stuff in the water is fountain equipment.

Some team of architects/designers is proud.

Kids playing in the park area under the watchful eye of their father (offscreen).
The apartments to the left have one of the most interesting uses of empty space I've seen around here.

Sweepers making sure it stays picture-perfect. Note the mountains in the background, they're never far away in Taiwan.

It's a very nice park, and for community use as well as HTC employees. Looks like the perfect spot for a quiet time to me!

One of several schools in our immediate vicinity.

Many areas lie behind gates in Taiwan, access is restricted to those who have a reason to be there.
It's a good metaphor for the barriers to ministry here; relationship is the key that unlocks them.

Another school, this one right behind the community center in Part 1 where our church will theoretically be meeting.

It's getting later in the afternoon, time to head back home.

In my current (temporary) residence, a floor above my Taiwanese coworkers.
This is the view out the front...

And this is out the back.

Well, this concludes our little exploration. As you can see, we have everything in Dapinglin, from affluent community parks and high-tech global companies along expanding subway lines to Chinese traditional markets and alley mazes along concrete drainage canals. It's a diverse and growing community, and I'm excited to be working here.

Bonus Picture Post! #1 - Orchid Island

Dear readers, I have discovered that facebook uses strange methods for determining what thumbnail picture options it offers when I post links to articles here. Apparently it only likes the smaller ones. (If anyone has more technical info, feel free to leave me a comment)

What that means for you is, I include lots of pictures in this post, to test which ones FB lets me use, and some readers might notice me changing the sizes on them.

For starters, here are some from one of the most interesting side-trips I got to do during my year in Taiwan (that wasn't an unplanned visa run!). In August, some of my Taiwanese fellow gospel camp volunteers and I took a ferry over to Orchid Island (Lan Yu) off the coast of Taiwan for a couple days of camp staff retreat after the summer camping season was over. We also had a mini-camp for the kids on the island, I might post some pics of that later if people are interested. (Basically that means respond if you want to see pictures of cute kids, Taiwanese camp volunteers, and one white guy)

Leaving the harbor

Arriving at Orchid Island, with oddly-shaped mountains shrouded in mist...

The view from our "hotel." I believe the large building is a government-built school.
Years ago Orchid Island was selected as a location for a nuclear waste dumping site,
but the local people were told it was going to be a fish cannery and tricked into agreeing...
so they got lots of government-paid-for infrastructure by way of a belated sort-of apology.
(I don't know if this story is entirely accurate, but it's what I was told)

A concrete model of the local people's traditional seagoing canoes.
The native people of Orchid Island are not Chinese, but Pacific Islander.
Many anthropologists believe that Oceania was populated largely by ocean-going
peoples who island-hopped from Taiwan thousands of years ago.

A quiet moment by the sea, at sunset.

We quickly found the real rulers of the island were wise-looking goats.

We woke up very early one morning before dawn, to get to the top of a mountain and watch the sunrise.

The pre-dawn scooter ride was exciting

We assemble at the mountaintop observatory area

Dawn approaches over the Pacific, beyond the lights of a fishing village.

Roughly the same picture, a little later

The locals said the farthest rock peaks rising from the ocean used to be one long ridge,
but during WWII in the early morning dark the Americans thought it was a Japanese destroyer and bombed it.

Fun with perspective

I got some National Geographic quality shots on this trip, it's really a beautiful island.

Alright, I have four albums from this trip on facebook for the especially curious. (and for people who prefer to look at pictures with people in them) But I think this is a good enough set of pictures for one post.
We'll close with a picture of my most interesting meal of that trip:

Flying fish noodle soup!

Stay tuned for more random picture posts in the future... I have thousands of Taiwan photos and I'll post a few up now and then. If you are interested to see pics of any particular kind of stuff (People, Cities, Food, Nature, etc) feel free to leave a comment and let me know.