Nothing new can come from those who do not know themselves.

Kawabata Ryushi

In this chapter, I…

• Visit Hualien and Taroko Gorge with the Korean volunteer
• Continue to struggle with body dysmoprhia
• Realize how strong yet weak my relationship with pain has grown

26 March 2024

• 13:10-15:35 Taipei main station to Hualien station limited express
• Walking from Hualien station to Hualien port along the river (1h)
• Dongdamen night market

Hualien

Today’s weather was supposed to be 31 degrees and sunny. Overnight, it had changed to 24 degrees and blustery.

I took a limited express train with Jeong-Ho to Hualien after his shift. Every Taiwanese I’d spoken to had praised the east coast as the most beautiful place in this country.

With zero sightseeing in Hualien bar Taroko, we walked along a river from the station to the port for one hour. It was drizzling softly; barely anyone was out and about. The tall grass was lush, and the quiet inviting.

An Overly Sensitive Stroll

A leisurely stroll made way for a heavy conversation. Body image continued to dominate our discussion.

On the one hand, I could talk to him about deep issues, while enjoying his patience and respect. Even when we disagreed on passions, beauty ideals, or lifestyle choices – where to travel, what to eat, how much to plan, whether to exercise or get a laser eye surgery. He preferred his daily coffee-and-gym-routine to a digital migration. There weren’t many countries that seemed to draw him. On the contrary, he looked forward to returning home. If I was working remotely like him, I would become a nomad, and visit every country.

On the other hand, I grew too comfortable around him to filter my flaws. He revealed insecurities that I had neither noticed nor agreed with. It got to a point where one complained about features that left the other unfazed.

“There’s a lot of things I can talk to you that I can’t with others,” I said. Things raw, intimate, and deep.

Exhibit A: twins or triplets dynamic. In middle school, he had envied his twin brother for being smarter and more good looking. The latter would always make comparisons between them.

“My brother did the same,” I said. “I was the taller, smarter one.”

“But now, look how the tables have turned,” Jeong-Ho said. There was nothing he envied anymore.

Both my siblings were doing objectively better than me.

“Next time your brother makes fun of you, tell him to fuck off,” Jeong-Ho said. “Tell him he’s short and that he’ll never be able to change that.”

I objected.

“You’ve never told him that?” Jeong-Ho asked. “After everything he’s done to you?”

“Why should I?”

We reached the stormy sea. Waves were crashing on a bed of large rocks, unique to the east. (Beaches in the rest of Taiwan were always covered in black sand.) This had produced a tender, explosive sound, like twisting a bubble wrap made of stone.

The rocks he threw into the water splashed farther than mine.

“Come on, do it like you mean it!” he said. “Like you want to hurt someone.”

“But I don’t want to hurt someone,” I said.

I knew perfectly well how to do it. How to recognize someone’s Achilles heel, and what sentences to utter in order to destroy their self-esteem. Knowing how it felt to be the receiving end, I didn’t see the point in retaliating.

Perhaps life would be easier if I strove toward Jeong-Ho’s balance of toughness and sensitivity.

“When I first saw you,” he said, “I thought: he looks like the guy from Where’s Willy.”

Quick Googling had corroborated my uncanny resemblance to this wimp.

I sighed. Last week, atop Yushan, I’d prided myself over my vulnerability. I’d been seeking pain, while Jeong-Ho had no trouble causing it.

I sat on the rocks and watched the waves crash. At that moment, I already felt pain.

“One time I went to a beach and saw a woman wailing hysterically,” Jeong-Ho remarked.

“I remind you of a caricature and a wailing woman?”

We continued toward Dongdamen night market. Palm trees and old low buildings reminded him of childhood in the Philippines.

“So you hate yourself?” he asked after a few minutes of walking.

“I have a good boy face,” I complained. Last month, a guy with a face that screamed swag and sex told me how much he’d envied it. I’d envied him in return.

“But that’s completely changeable,” Jeong-Ho said. “Sorry for being blunt, but you can sweep your hair back, get rid of your glasses, grow a beard, and hit the gym, and you’ll lose that image.”

That wasn’t blunt. In Israel, it was polite.

“Some people think change is a good thing,” he said. “Some undergo makeovers.”

“I kind of did that already,” I said. Video calls to family during this trip had elicited reactions on my unrecognizable appearance. “I can follow your list,” I added. “But then I would become someone else.”

Here lay the problem. I wanted to be someone else physically, but not mentally.

Glasses, for example, had been part of my identity since I was eight. I couldn’t imagine myself without them.

Dongdamen Night Market

We entered the market just as it opened at 18:00. I dropped the subject, adamant to avoid becoming a whiny cartoon. I was sensitive, but I would never let anyone call me weak.

Dinner was a pineapple and shrimp coffin toast (sweet and savory, the way it should’ve been done in Tainan); turkey rice; shrimp roll; and red tea. Then we walked for 35 minutes back to Hualien station.

I mulled over his suggestions while we crossed dim streets. Perhaps someday I would feel more open to them. Maybe even hit the gym. I asked him why he was so fond of it.

“You feel the pump and see yourself changing in real time,” he said. “You focus on the pain, and that destresses you, and distracts you from life.”

“But life is pain,” I objected. “I need a distraction from the pain!”

Exercise was an activity too monotone and repetitive for me. Moreover, I felt embarrassed daring it with arms people had described as a “five-year-old’s”, and making a fool of myself.

I supposed that for now, a “good boy” aura fit the goals of my personality. I ought to accept it and the fact that that I’d never be as cool as him.

At night, we checked into our hostel by the station. It was my first time booking a room with someone on this trip.

When he saw me without glasses before bed, he called mine out of fashion.

“Mine are so much better for you,” he insisted.

My style of thick, see-through, rectangular frames was fashionable in the West. Yet the round and wiry Asian spectacles?

“They don’t work with my bone structure,” I said. “People would just call me Harry Potter as a slur.”

“You look twenty times better without any glasses,” he said.

We went to sleep at 1:30. I wondered how people could get along despitee looking and holding such conflicting opinions.

Today’s highlights: walking along the river; pineapple and shrimp coffin toast; shrimp roll; red tea.

27 March 2024

• 6:30-7:40 Hualien bus station to Swallow Trail (Yanzikou) bus number 310
• Zhuliu old trail – going up (1h)
• Zhuliu old trail – Cliff Outpost (20m)
• Zhuliu old trail – going down (45m)
• Swallow Grotto (30m)
• 13:45-15:00 Swallow Grotto (Yanzikou) to Hualien bus station bus number 310, 16:30-19:05 limited express to Taipei main station

Zhuliu Old Trail

I woke at 6:00. Roosters’ calls were audible inside the room.

The bus to Taroko Gorge zigzagged up a mountain. Light-gray rock formations, misty mountain peaks, and lush trees. Even on this cloudy day, the water looked magnificently turquoise. It was the most pristine and vivid body of water I’d seen, outshining Hokkaido’s Shirogane Blue Pond.

I alighted at Swallow Grotto and crossed a long and thin suspension bridge over a ravine with a roaring stream, an omnipresent sound in Taroko. Zhuliu Old Trail was the hardest in the Gorge, and the only one requiring a permit.

For a place known for its beautiful walks on flat roads, the trail wasn’t too challenging. I hiked alone through a humid forest with crickets, black butterflies, and songbirds. Dew clung to spiderwebs on branches, while the grass smelled wet.

In liue of any interesting distractions on the trail (just like in Yushan…), I brooded over delicacy and stoicism. Over the past year, I’d learned to shed my Israeli walls and soften. By doing that, had I crossed the interpersonal Rubicon?

After one boring hour, I reached the Cliff Outpost. It was a bare, narrow, cliffside trail, devoid of any protection. One could easily fall into the ravine.

It was the adrenaline rush I’d grown to expect from my escapes to nature.

I returned to Swallow Grotto vigorous with content. Even on overcast weather, this trail was rewarding. Too many people were ascending it now, however.

Then I ate and drank for the first time today while sitting on the road for an hour and a half. I was waiting for Jeong-Ho to come from Shakadang trail.

As I replayed our conversations in my head, it hit me that it might have been emotionally mature of me to welcome and withstand pain, yet emotionally immature of me to flaunt this. The latter invited others to belittle, or worse, hurt me.

Should people be aware of the influence they had over you? Their ability to completely make or ruin your day?

Vulnerability, I realized, was better done in secret.

Swallow Grotto

The sun came out when Jeong-Ho arrived. It illuminated a canyon with marble-white cliff walls, grey and pale brown boulders, water gushing out of potholes, and a turquoise stream roaring at full speed. We marveled at this landscape while walking the Swallow Grotto, a short stretch of a flat road that was also the most beautiful and famous trail. Indeed, Taroko was the finest slice of nature in Taiwan, unrivalled by any other.

“People don’t care about their appearance in the Philippines,” he said as we passed a Korean group tour, explaining the differences between the two countries to me. “They wear whatever they want, even if it’s unattractive.”

“That sounds liberating,” I said.

He scoffed.

“At least in Korea, everyone strives to look good.”

I recalled how he’d described this constant pressure as brutal and suffocating.

“Better to be pretty and miserable than ugly and carefree?” I asked.

“Absolutely.”

It was interesting to note that his hiking outfit consisted of a miniscule pouch fastened around his waist. No bag, no UV straps, no walking sticks, zero gear. The complete opposite of every Korean I’d witnessed hiking.

The next trail on our list, the Tunnel of Nine Turns, turned out to be inaccessible by foot. Since it provided more of the same, Swallow Grotto had proven more than sufficient. There were many more trails one could venture into around the Gorge, such as an exciting suspension bridge, or the waterfall temple. But without a car or a scooter, it was too complicated. Plus, the weather turned gloomy again anyway.

Returning to Taipei As a Changed Person

We took the bus back to Hualien and limited express to Taipei. Throughout yesterday and today, he had been teaching me how Korean friends amiably addressed each other using curse words and slurs.

“Now I know I can talk to you like a Korean person,” he said.

“After living my whole life in Israel and doing a degree in creative writing, where everyone tore my work apart…” I began, “I assure you that nothing you say to me will ever be too harsh or blunt.”

Last night, he had mentioned visiting Israel during his military service. At a bar, an Israeli man had exclaimed, “Hey, you! Come here!” in a seemingly angry manner. I had assured him that this wasn’t intended to be rude. It was how some Israelis talked.

“I think you should take the personality test again,” he said. “You’re not the ‘feeling’ type.”

“What do you mean?”

“After two days with you, where you corrected my grammar and incorrect things I said, and criticized friends and family members who let their emotions get the best of them, I realized: this fucker is a T!”

I took the test. Back in 2016, my F was 56%. Now, my T was 54%.

In the UK, I’d re-taken the Hogwarts sorting test and discovered that I’d grown from a Ravenclaw to a Gryffindor. An identity crisis had ensued, until I’d grasped the reason for this change.

Now, I wasn’t so sure. The only fact I accepted was Jeong-Ho’s acumen.

“Maybe two days with me changed you,” he joked.

I recalled my two days with the French pâtissier in Seoul, in which he’d gone from intense sheepishness to teaching me French slang and curse words, ice cream recipes, and Taekwondo moves. I hadn’t transformed him – but he had opened up to me, offsetting my first impression of him.

“I give the impression of being quite delicate,” I told Jeong-Ho, “don’t I?”

Deep down, I wondered if he had a point. The best people had the power to do so.

Today’s highlights: the scenery in Taroko Gorge; Zhuliu old trail; Swallow Grotto with Jeong-Ho.