It was one of the most abidingly sad, haunting images I have ever seen. A lone camel pulling a cart through the roads of my remembered childhood, The abandoned creature shuffling through the leafy suburban streets. That swinging shuffle, mesmerizing the creature, Its eyes staring straight ahead but surely not seeing, The weight on its […]
Archives for April 2016
derision
I was looking at the scene as I walked by. Out of curiosity, not pity, but that’s how I tend to view events, people. And hate. Hate? No, more like derision, and not aimed at the person in question, but at the kids laughing at him. You laugh at someone else and you are a […]
nell
Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park is a funny institution. The characters standing on their chairs, soapboxes, ladders, smattered around that little corner of the park, were eccentric enough, and so were the hecklers. The strangest thing, however, was that they were there every week, the same speakers, the same hecklers, and sometimes heckler became speaker, […]
da
The following anecdote I wrote soon after the fact. Christmas Day 2011 Dad took the dog for a walk after dinner and had him a tumble. A local man appeared at the door with the dog and said dad was down the road but not dead, he had somehow punched his own face with the […]
crowds
We had no idea what was going to happen. We’d only entered the temple at this late hour to use the facilities. There was a great crush of people trying to get in, deferring only slightly to the greater crush of people who were trying to get out. Bottle-necked in the arched entrance, there was, […]
aberdeen
I went to Aberdeen in 2007 with my partner at the time, to stay with her family. Funds had been exhausted in the move back to the UK, and it was a struggle for either of us to get our respective projects off the ground. The initial plan was to measure the Aberdeen stay in […]
chair
The road leading to the Chaotian Gong was now cleared of the carnage of spent firecrackers and fireworks from the previous day and night. We were walking back to the temple, exhausted from a lack of sleep but nevertheless curious as to what would happen that day. Although we were sure something was planned, advice […]
waiting for the noise to stop
In November 2010 I turned 40. It seemed a significant age, and for some months prior I had been thinking about how best to mark it. An image had formed in my mind: sitting on the top of the Bayon in the Angkor Wat complex near Siem Reap in Cambodia, in the cooling evening under […]
Chan and Weng 詹與翁
Kick-wheel potter Chan Kuo-hsiang (詹國祥) tells a story of how late president Chiang Ching-kuo was puzzled during a visit to the old pottery town of Yingge. BMWs and Mercedes parked along streets lined with dilapidated buildings; conspicuous wealth amid ramshackle abodes.
baishatun matsu 白沙屯媽祖
Baishatun’s Gong Tian Temple was already packed with pilgrims late afternoon when we arrived. The pilgrimage was due to start at half past midnight. We were waiting in the space between the main altar and the stationary palanquin in which Matsu would soon set off for Beigang.