Translated…
Back when I was younger, I’d heard my grandmother warn us: remember, you two, there are TWO things that you mustn’t do, first, you can’t go to work on the high seas, and, you shall NEVER get involved, in politics………
“In this half-a-century that’s gone by, ahhhhhh, how, do I say it………”, the generation born in the fifties, is now, in the stage of looking back, and retrospection here.
A little more than half a century had passed by, over fifty years, for the earth, of geography, it may be, meaningless, but, for the hundred-year-old lifespans, we’re all, marching toward, our elderly years here.
If time is the passing tides, all the scenes that flooded past us all are dampened, and, we’re all, already, passed the heights of our lives too now. And now, we’re all, going, downhill, like an almost broken car, the days passed by in the clicking and the clucking sounds, and we feel, we’re, on this, slippery slope here.
Our bodily organs, and organ systems had, gone WAY passed the dates of insurances now, the hairs turned gray, eye problems too, every place on our bodies had, lost that elasticity, becoming loosened.
not my photograph…
And, it’s not entirely negative either, after all, we did, all, walk past half a century, this long winding pass, walked, and looked around, experienced everything, and learned, and, more or less, we’d, understand the meanings behind these changes the time had caused.
We loved playing outside as children, catching the dragonflies, fishing for frogs, etc., etc., etc., and now, all of these, “bio domes” are all located in the creeks, the fields near by my house today.
Back then, these sites rich in biodiversity are all around, we’d normally gone barefoot all over these fields, or, walked to and fro, on these muddy paddy patches.
The guppies, the carps, the loaches are, everywhere, we’d only needed to, take along that dust pan, and a bucket to the ditches, and, we’d swiped that dust pan toward the sides, then, we’d caught something, accidentally.
not my photo…
There were, an assortment of dragonflies too, recalling how there was this about six-inch-long, with light blue chunks dragonfly, something we’d called, “Silver Maya” all over the fields. All we needed to do was to catch one live, then, we can use it as a live bait, tie it onto the cotton strings, and it’d flown around in circles overhead, and attracted another one to come, and, we were, able to, catch several more of this kind of dragonflies by this methodology.
And by the fields back then, it was easy for us all, to catch a few frogs, we’d grabbed at one, put it out cold, tied it to the thin cotton strings, used it as bait, and surely enough, very shortly thereafter, there would be, a bigger, frog that came to take the bait.
And now, ALL of these, once rich in biodiversity creeks, fields, and streams are taken over by the tall buildings and the hard concrete roads, and, all of these small forms of life that were regulars in this area had become, extinct, for several decades already.
Back then, the parents felt at ease to allow their young to play and wander in the rice paddies and the ditches too, and now, the parents are constantly worried about the kidnappers, how the intersections are too dangerous for their young.
I’d heard my grandma warn us: you brothers need to remember, there are TWO things that you shouldn’t do, first, don’t work in the oceans, second, never, get involved in politics.
Later on, I’d understood, that this island society lacked the knowledge to get closer to the seas, to understand it, and became, separated, from the oceans, causing this, unreasonable form of sea island society. Although, in reality, we’re, completely, reliant on the seas for living, we’d held that, unexplained fear toward it.
And, because of the events on February 28th, we’d lived under prohibition for a very long time, the white scare, it’d made us all realized, that politics was the fist and the bullet, are both, dangerous like the flood, and the fierce, ferocious beasts.
Since the breaking of the ties between U.S. and Taiwan, the issues with the Beautiful Island, the martial law, the farmers’ movements, it’d given me a chance to think, that what the schools, the society taught me so far, a lot of the facts, were, omitted intentionally it seemed; the knowledge of this society that I live in, surely, wasn’t, at all, complete.
What, is the cover up about, why cover things up? This had, caused me, to turn my interest toward the political realm.
I’d gotten involved in several larger scale movements on the streets, saw the members of the public, at standstills with the police, saw the police sticks, the rocks, flying all over the places, saw a ton of local citizens getting beaten up.
Being right there doesn’t necessarily give me a closer look, but at least, being there, it’d, allowed me to compare. For instance, the Sunflower Student movement that happened two years ago, I was able to compare the past events to this one, I’d realized, that the younger generations were not only able to utilize and make good use of the media, to quickly, express the purpose of their movements, and the students had also, added a ton of creativity too, plus the orders of the scenes, are more advanced compared to the movements onto the streets in the past. I’d also found, that everything IS advanced, but, there are, government organizations that took a backward handling method that was still over twenty years ago.
When I was younger, I’d often gone to the harbors, or the fishing villages, to see the ships return back to shore, I’d recalled seeing a four-meter long swordfishes, and fifty-centimeter long lobsters too. After I’d turned thirty, I’d gone out to sea to fish for many years myself, but I’d never seen, all those larger organisms as I’d done in my earlier years.
Gladly, I’d gotten involved in the end of a somewhat resourceful fishing trip.
Back then, there were NO oil-operated machineries to pull up the nets, strictly reliant on the fishermen’s strengths, and so, each and every trip, they’d not caught that much fish, they’d not put out that much baits. Back then, there was, no GPS onboard these ships, in the oceans, the fishermen needed to rely on their past experiences, their senses, to locate the ships, to decide on the waves, to decide where, to cast the rig lines, and when to pull it back up again.
Later on, the equipment on the ships, and the machineries improved, allowing the modern day fishermen to effectively, sail farther off, and put down more baits, more nets a time. In the past, they’d needed to, watch the skies for weather changes, and now, they’d tuned into the weather reports.
not my photograph…
Comparing to the unautomated days, the efficiencies of the fisheries are increased, but, without the proper holding back, or the proper management in the fishing industries, when we had, long-term, taxed out all the resources, naturally, becoming out of fish is the inevitable end.
With the modernizations of the ships, but, the amounts of fishes caught didn’t increase by all that much, and the modern day fishermen had lost all of their abilities to read the seas, to decipher the skies.
Before I’d worked as a fisherman, I’d once worked in the political realms of my local area, mostly, did the advocating.
That was when the martial laws were lifted not too long ago, when the party not in power still got smeared and suppressed by the media, this sort of a group, is usually, misunderstood by the Taiwanese public, and there’s a shortage on human resources too, so everybody needs to know everything.
I recalled, that for the advocating essays, we’d written the drafts ourselves, and, printed them out according to the fonts, the sizes fitting to the occasion, and after we’d gotten our drafts printed, we’d had to, cut and paste by hand, and then, take the finished articles to the printing shops to be printed and pressed.
After we’d gotten our printed materials back, we’d still had to, fold them into envelope-size, and send them out by hand, delivered these pages by hand to the mailboxes, and for the last portions, we’d headed to the public, and handed them out.
This article is the writer’s recalling the past versus how things are currently, and surely, there are, a TON of advances in technologies today that saves us a lot of time, in delivery, in making of these flyers, pages, periodicals or whatever, but, at the same time, there’s that scent of carelessness, that scent of not putting everything into what we’re doing now.