I had no idea I would be marching until my feet bled with 300,000 people when I came to Taiwan, and yet here I am, having checked out of my hostel and gotten on a train so packed to the gills that there was literally no room to shift your weight for more than 2 inches in any direction. All the seats were taken, clearly, and every other space was used for people to stand or for their luggage, which few people had because they knew damn well there wouldn’t be any room. And every one of them wearing high-def colors, hats and bandanas, some matching, others close but different, but all of a kind. It was like being in a neon pastel tourist brigade who had bought out the entire train for themselves. It was very uncomfortable to say the least, especially since I was the tallest person there, and standing in a nook with my neck crinked for 2 hours…
Once we arrived in the starting city for the march I was taken aback at just how many people were involved with this thing. Not only was there the infrastructure to support 300,000 people in a small town, but there were hordes of watchers who added to the sense of culmination. I’ve never been to a tour de France or the like, but It seemed to me that this was even more of a big deal just because of the number of participants involved. It took me a good minute to get my bearings.
I found a 7/11 in the mix and from there I was able to communicate with Zoe and find out where she was. Apparently, she and her boyfriend had gotten on a later train which was even more packed, so they were running late. There were so many people yelling and using their phones I was getting irritated, apparently loud noises are not my favorite, but stereo audio from a phone just pisses me off. A guy offered me some crackers while smoking two cigarettes at once, all I was thinking was;
“Forget the crackers, Jack, hand me that death stick!” yet I held my tongue, took the crackers, and thanked the man. Many more people came to offer me gifts, but not because I was 1 of maybe 3 white foreigners there, but because that is the spirit of the entire ritual of carrying the fisherman Sea Goddess of salvation on a tabernacle across many cities for three days.
I was told to march a while since their train went to the next train stop, and I found them at a gas station and was immediately in an unending conversation with Zoe’s boyfriend Mili, a Czech man who told me his entire life’s story and then some, I tried listening to him but it was hard to hear with all the commotion, he was so set on talking to me that when we lost track of Zoe he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest and kept talking. We found her eventually, but then lost her and found her again. That was the cycle for the entire 15 hours of walking we did from 11 PM to 2Pm the next day... I have never wanted to walk in silence more in all my life. I have never met anyone capable of ceaseless exposition like this man I walked with in Taiwan.
During one of the many long stints that Zoe vanished we were stopped by two young girls named Lilly and May interviewing participants for their high school, they stopped me and asked why I was there, how I had heard about it and the like. Their English was very poor, so Mili translated, as he was an English teacher in Taiwan, originally from Czech.
Eventually we did meet up again with Zoe and at that point everyone was pooped. Feet bloody or almost so. We got off the main road and went into a cafe with the two high school girls who had followed us because they had stopped us in order to interview me.
We got a ride to the main train station and went to where they both live in a city nearby. We had a meal and watched a movie Zoe was in called Human Surge 3, about travel and destiny, a homemade film by some Indian producer. Zoe made us dinner, we ate, took naps, and then it was time to take the bus to Tainan, a famous city in the south known for beaches and good food.
On that night bus there was a man blasting stuff on his phone, I told him to turn off and he lost his shit, I just ignored him. I simply cannot fathom how so many people are clueless as to how wrong it is to generate unignorable noise from a device while surrounded by others. I went from a sea of strangers worshipping the Goddess of the Sea, only to go towards another sea of people, worshipping the Goddess of Love...