The Rivers are the Flowing Pages of a Book, She’d Kept Turning and Turning, Guiding Me to Reading………
Yao-Ming Gang: the Symbols of the Rivers are the substances of Taichung
Chong-Jien, I’d recently got into walking the rivers, I’d walked alongside the rivers in Taichung, the spring and the autumn were both great seasons, the weather is cooler and milder, and, there would always be something wonderful that are waiting for me at the turn of the corners. Since the start of Japanese rule, Taichung’s buildings were modeled after the edifices in Kyoto, and it’d gained the rep of “Little Kyoto” too. And all the rivers like the Green, the Plum, the Willow, they’d all kept the Japanese-Chinese Character for “river”. There were over a hundred cities in Japan that took after Kyoto, and had received the reputations of “little Kyoto”, and there is just, Taichung in Taiwan. And the name of the city of Taichung were named by the Japanese too.
The imageries of the river in Taichung is the contents of the city. After the gerrymandering and redistricting again and again, the originally farming lands became cities, and all the tree-shaped estuaries of the rivers are all filled up by the hard concrete too, leaving only, the main rivers. Based off of the government, these rivers are known as “water relief pipes”, and the water relief pipes are known for their having pollutions, and, from time to time, you’d find, the garbage fish, living in the pools of the declining levels of water in the tanks, living their lives really hard, and they’d needed to surface a lot, to get more air, and seeing how these fish that can tolerate enough pollution are all, lifting their heads, begging for air, you can get, how polluted the environment had become.
not my photo…
It would be next to impossible to get closer to the rivers now. The liquids that people are producing in the cities are dirty, and they were, expelled into the cemented ditches. And those who are willing, to walk into the ditches are the young volunteers who are fighting to bring back the older days, or maybe, it’s a sort of a proclamation toward the crowds coming from the train stations, the prides of those originally clear rivers can be rebuilt, and, it’s not far off in the distant future. I walked the rivers, on the sidewalks, flatter, better to stroll on. The streets in Taiwan lacked a conscience toward the public, the spaces between the buildings had stairs built in, were often, closed from passing through, and, the sidewalks were all taken, by the motorcycles and those who hoarded the rights of ways. The only place you can walk freely would be the sidewalks by the sides of the rivers.
And so, this is very sad, as people are still, abusing, overusing the resources we’d been given, killing OFF the other living things that we are supposed to be living in harmony with, sharing this environment with.
Chong-Jien Lee: It’s a Wonderful Thing, to Be Embodied by the River
Yao-Ming,
On the subject of river, I’m too close to it as I was growing up, I’d wanted to, spend EVERY single waking hour, soaking up in the dried up creeks, that small stream, from the start of my childhood, became a place where my dreams were hid. The dried up creek was located on the edge of Taichung, that, was a focus of my life, as I’d grown up, its influences, still apparent to me, the rivers you’d strolled next to, at the end, were grouped as “dried up creeks”.
As I walked out the backdoor of my childhood home, there was the embankment of a river, the stacked up rocks were wrapped up with the steel wires, I’d often stood atop the fortress by the embankment, lost in thought, or, gazed into the distance, on the left side of the embankment are the residential places, and I’d often seen the smokes, rising out of the chimneys, the river pass on the right was several meters wide, and, the flow of the water had been mandated by the precipitations, and the droughts and the monsoons seasons were very, clear-cut, and it’d gotten that rich biosphere in it too.
not my photograph still…
As a child, I’d not understood the enjoyments of taking long strolls, and the stacked-up rock by the embankments weren’t fit for walking, besides, life is more interesting, if you get immersed in the rivers, the shrimps, the crabs, the mudfishes, along with an assortment of river eels, other fishes, tortoises are all over in the rivers………and, as the rivers became almost completely dried up, those playful children would, head into it, one by one, it was, more enticing than those computer games, or playing in the cities too, I could, bask in it every single day of my whole life.
So, this, is comparing your childhood years, with the childhood years of this modern day world, and, surely enough, you’d had, a more enriching experience, because when you were growing up, the world had not yet become, so industrialized, and there are, tiny critters that roamed the world back then, but now, as the cities become bigger and more advanced, the natural world got sacrificed, and, there’s just not that much of the wilderness to be explored compared to way back when………
Yao-Ming Gang: the Stories of Ghosts in the Rivers Stemmed from People’s Fears
Chong-Jien Lee: The River Inside of Me Had Never Flowed Away
Yao-Ming, the spirits and the contents of the river stemmed from their rich and continuing sources of life which were found in them. The dried-up creeks that I’d known, on those dried up river banks, there are still, life, the ants were, digging up holes on the oases; the birds, resting, on the bushes above the dried up rivers, and naughty children took the birds’ eggs, and lined them next to the snakes’ eggs; there aren’t just those playful children on those dried up banks, there were also, chickens, ducks, and geese hanging out, the eggs they’d left alone carelessly became the treasures we sought after, and, if we were able to discover the eggs of a turkey, then, it’s comparable to getting our hands on the Holy Grail.
That river not only brought the children close to it, even the neighboring lady, who’d pulled off the weeds, to help children heal from the heat, and she’d also, stripped off the weeds, tied the strands up, made it into a broom of sorts; and, not to mention how the ladies would, take all their laundry to the river to wash up.
The water level that’s dried up in the summers rose up quickly, the mountain rains brought the floods down the mountains, the adults stood by the nearby banks, watched the water level rise, and, all of a sudden, this dried up river expanded to over a hundred meters in width, and rose up over fifty meters in height, and it’d also, brought the driftwoods from upstream. The adults used their homemade fishing poles, and caught the pieces of wood to burn as fuel, which was the Taiwanese idiom of “picking up the pieces of broken off wood when there’s a flood”.
I’d gone visiting the Dadu Creek, the Daan Creek, and the Danshui River, I’d always walked to the side of the river passes, and stood there, and even, gaze by the rivers, and, compared them to those dried up streams and creeks of my childhood years. It seemed, that the river in my mind had never really, flowed away at all, they’d kept, running and running inside my mind, they’d become, a mark there now.
So, there are, many, many, many childhood memories that were, tied to those rivers, and, you’d carried that nostalgia you had when you were younger when you’re playing and interacting with the rivers, to your adulthood years, and when you’d come across a river of sorts, those childhood memories became, activated again.
Yao-Ming Gang: People and River Alike, are Active in the Same Frequencies in the Cities
Chong-Jien, I’d never thought about trekking the rivers in the countryside, my biggest adventure was making a raft, and flowing down the rivers, into the oceans. That, is the dream of EVERY single child who lived in the mountain villages. And now, living in the city of Taichung, the rivers became, so distant from me, and, trekking on the rivers is a way, of making up for that missed part of my childhood.
Walking the rivers is a lonely exercise, a philosophy of using a slow-down speed, to hold that conversation with the city. I’d found, that the speed which the river is flowing is equivalent to that of how fast people are walking, four kilometers an hour, a leaf that’s fallen into the rivers, or a trash bag, can accompany a walker for a couple hundreds of meters ahead, until it’d got caught. Man and river are moving on and about the same speed in the city. But there was a very limited number of people who are just strolling, I’d not met someone who shared my interest yet, this was so totally different, than walking along the banks of the larger rivers in Japan, am I to be happy, that I’d gotten the river ALL to myself, or, be depressed at how the river had, turned away all of my possible companions. At the end, the river, it’d just, flowed off on its own.
The rivers in Taichung are very lonely, looking around and you will see, that the people don’t seem to want to get closer to it, like how curing an elderly person would take up too much resources, that the government reduced the amount of work put in, causing this sight of “a ditch within a ditch”. Toward these rivers, I’d often felt so bad that I couldn’t, follow along on their journeys, seeing the old bodies off, through all those extravagant-looking buildings, I’d wanted it to stay, but not known what I can say to it, it’d become, hard for me, to embrace these leftover rivers, or to see them in disgust.
And so, you were able to, note the changes in the environment, and how those changes had, affected what used to be, and, there is nothing you can do, because urbanization is taking over the city, and, everybody wants the newer technologies, and, nobody wants something that’s so outdated, like that small river that you once remembered…
Chong-Jien Lee: Being Able to Run Atop of the Rocks in the Rivers, is the Most Basic Skills One Needs in Order to Survive
Yao-Ming,
I’d once visited your bamboo forests and your streams and creeks, the waters were very clear and it nourished me, the fishes, the shrimps swam freely there, the flowing clear creeks reflected how leisurely your childhood must’ve been, that, was the very first time I’d actually, gotten so close to a river as an adult. Back then, we were, running fast to and from the rocks, hopping and running, with absolutely NO worries tying us down, you’d looked upon my swift movements, and, you’d managed, to tell the stories of my histories, growing in the rivers, that, was a code that signified the coming of age for me. If, I’d not been familiar with the life on the rivers, and couldn’t be able to run about freely atop those rocks, and if I’d, missed a step, and fell in, that would be, the ability one would’ve acquired, rolling in the wor5ld.
My walking the rivers actually occurred in the banks, not using the codes of beauty, to decipher the sights, instead, enjoying the processes of, playing in the rivers, from gently tapping on the rocks upstream, walked downstream, from the downstream, circled back upstream again. The children in play are never tired, using the larger rocks as pillows is also considered, a form of play too, hearing the stories that the rivers tell us, falling asleep, underneath the big quilt of the blue skies, and, when we woke, we thought, that our slippers had, drifted away, like those, wandering ships.
There’s this deep attraction to play in the rivers for children, and, walking these rivers doesn’t just include by foot, you’d wanted to, make a raft, and flow downward, I’d once, lived this amazing dream personally. I’d taken of the Styrofoam that came with the delivery of my fridge, and, strapped my feet onto the pieces, and waked on the embankments upstream, as for flowing down the river for an adventure, that, was as far as that went in my childhood.
The rivers in Taichung now had become, so estranged now, the dried up rivers had already gotten reduced by the numbers, and the government had filled up these narrow passes with cement and stone, and the river could no longer attain what it’d contained back then anymore, but it is a riverside that I encourage anybody who come to walk on. There’s no Seine, or the Thames, or other larger scaled rivers. Other than the expectations that I’d felt so awful over the rivers, I’d not dared, looked upon the goings on around it, gazed upon, and understood, that every river had its significance, its own characters. Every time I’d gone strolling in Kyoto, walked across Shirakawa, Takase River, or the lakes, the same small rivers, and the rivers in my hometown just, doesn’t quite, measure up.
You’re having difficulties embracing and talking down on your hometown, and what I felt awful about was, those memories long ago, seemed to have, drifted, too far away from where I currently am too!
So, seeing how much had changed in the environment in your hometowns, you’d felt that scent of unwillingness, that sense of loss, over those good ol’ days………
Life, the Obstacle Course 