Guest Blog: A View from the Top

Since I have been so busy lately, my husband, Mike, decided to write a entry about his recent trip to Taiwan. There will be more from me soon. In the meantime, Mike...

“When you come out of the train station, look for the tallest building.” I was doubtful about the helpfulness of these directions for finding my accommodations in Taipei. I had come to this part of Asia to visit my Mom of all people. I had seen her only once since my wedding five years ago, so I jumped at the opportunity to see her when I found out she would be presenting at a conference in Taiwan. She and her friend Sharlene agreed to my idea of staying in a hostel in Taipei – Sharlene was actually quite excited about it as her family runs one in Miami. The hostel was located in a high-rise next to the Shin-Kong Life Building, once the tallest in the city.

The directions foreshadowed one of the surprise highlights of our visit. While we enjoyed the spectacular Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, dined on wonderful street food at the night markets, and were fortunate to be in town during the annual dragon boat races, the Taipei 101 building, which replaced the Shin-Kong as the tallest, turned out to exceed our expectations.

As someone who is skeptical about superlatives, I am always curious how people reach their conclusions when they claim "biggest", "tallest", "fastest". By my own research, the Taipei 101 currently holds title to the tallest building in the world, but will soon to be surpassed by three others already under development. The building is modeled after a bamboo stalk, the sides flaring about every 10 stories. The elevator ride up to the spire was the first surprise – the fastest elevator in the world (not confirmed by research) was amazing – 87 stories in 37 seconds and pressurized in such a way that your ears don’t pop.

At the indoor observation platform, we were directed to get headsets that provided a guided tour from 14 points around the deck - complete with views and exhibits about the building, the city, and the Taiwanese culture.

Living in Asia has made me realize how little I knew about the cultures in this region before I arrived, and how amazing they are. What I discovered at the Taipei 101, is that MOST of the tallest buildings in the world are in Asia. In fact, 10 of the 12 highest buildings in the world are located here – notable exceptions are the Sears Tower in Chicago (#5) and the Empire State Building in New York (#10). A few months earlier, I had visited #3, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, which was already familiar to me because Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones went sky-diving inside it in “Entrapment”. But I had never heard of the others in the top ten - 3 of which are in Hong Kong, and 4 of which are on mainland China.

With all the talk about how Asia is going to overtake America in terms of global leadership – this experience makes me wonder if they already have.

A Different Kind of Burning Man

Having just read “Island of Bali”, a classic on Balinese culture published in 1946, we were able to appreciate some of the nuances behind the cremation of three men that took place in Ubud last week. To our naïve eyes, the ceremony we saw paralleled what we learned from that text, even though it was written more than 60 years ago.

Tourists and strangers are welcomed at what Westerners would consider a somber event. In Bali, though, a cremation is a joyous occasion where participants play music and cavort through the streets. The spectacle feels more like a party than a funeral because this is the day when the soul will be released to heavenly realms and the day that the family’s obligations to the deceased will end. Since the death, family members had been required to perform daily rituals to transfer the soul to an effigy, “clean” it of impurities attained during life, and protect it from evil spirits.

On cremation day, a huge procession moves through the streets from the final resting place of the body to the cremation grounds. First come elegantly dressed family members carrying the effigy that contains the soul. These are followed by an enormous and beautifully constructed animal-shaped coffin - on this occassion, bulls - carried by dozens of men. Although hollow at this point, the coffin is where the body will be placed prior to cremation. And finally comes an elaborate tower consisting of three sections – the earthly realm at the bottom, a middle limbo that holds the body, and heavenly tiers above, the number of which is governed by strictly-observed cultural rules.

Once the procession reaches the cremation grounds, rituals are performed over a few hour period that eventually result in the body - and the soul - being moved to the coffin where everything is finally set aflame. Unlike India, where wood is used and cremation can take 3 to 4 hours, the three cremations we witnessed were over in less than an hour. The Balinese use kerosene lighters to torch the coffins, and they tease the bodies should they take too long to burn. Firemen are on the scene to safeguard the situation and the thousands of viewers.

On the surface, the Balinese funerary practices are significantly different from what we observed in Sulawesi a few weeks ago, but what struck me were the similarities between the underlying values – the extraordinary concern regarding safe passage of the deceased, a willingness to virtually bankrupt a family to cover the cost, an expectation that hundreds if not thousands should attend, and the high level of familial participation.

When the cremation ends at sunset, the families gather whatever material remains. They wrap it with great care, carry it to the nearest water source – a river or the sea – and release the final elements back to the earth from which they came.

Where a Yurt is Not a Yurt

When most people hear the word "yurt", what place do they think of? Mongolia, of course. Quite unexpectedly, however, in Mongolia, these nomadic homes are referred to as "gar" - which, when pronounced, rhymes with "care" rather than "car" as expected.

Mongolia is vast, sparsely populated outside the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, and highly unpredictable.

Last Saturday was a warm gorgeous day, and I was anxious for some exercise. Just before setting off on a long hike, I snapped the top picture from the door of the gar where I would be spending the night. The next morning as I woke in my toasty gar, kept warm by a small stove that was stoked throughout the night by the evening watchman, I stared in disbelief at what appeared to be snow falling through small openings in the top of the structure. When I stepped outside, the scene in the bottom image greeted me. More snow had fallen that spring night than had fallen throughout most of the winter months.

According to a Mongolian colleague, when a person's temperament is volatile or erratic, they are said to be like "weather in the spring". How apropos!