Christmas in Beitou 北投的聖誕節

We've just had our first Christmas in the house in Beitou 北投. Wow. It couldn't have been more different from every other Christmas we've ever had!

5:30 AM. The alarm goes off. Get up, get dressed, meet Santa Claus... no, wait. Check that. Actually, we went down to the pick-up point a few blocks away to join Baba and Mama to go to the memorial.
 Ping's fourth uncle died on December 25th, so our Christmas now includes this memorial service. Baba drives us up the mountainside to the temple 善光寺. The Japanese Buddhist monk chants while the extended family sits cross-legged on cushions on the tatami. We took the opportunity to just clear our minds and wish the world peace and goodwill. It was a very serene way to start the day.

Ping introduced Mark to everyone saying "this is my cousin/uncle/cousin/cousin/cousin/cousin/aunt/cousin/cousin/cousin..." You get the picture. It's not a small family, and they welcome Mark openly.

That's Ping in the white coat, talking to her eldest remaining aunt's husband (gesturing), a cousin (Mark forgets which one!) and Mama.

Yes, it was cold enough to wear Mountain Hardware outer gear! Mark loves the temperatures these days. They're down in the teens. Ok, it's Celsius, but it's still "down in the teens!"

The guy in the black cap is YuChi's 玉琦 dad. Great guy. Fit as a fiddle at 70+. Gotta love that! QiGong 氣功 and a good daily swim in the hot springs does wonders!

This is the outer building of the temple where we had the ceremony. Everyone has come up to take a look around before going home.

It was a beautiful start to a wonderful day!

Ping and Mark got dropped off at home, did a little this and that, and then decided to take off to find a trail Ping had heard about from one of the cousins who hikes here a lot.

This is the trail head for "the White House Trail 白宮山莊步道." (No, we did not meet the Obamas.) It's essentially 5 minutes from our doorstep. We know: it doesn't look like a trail head, but it is. We saw it first from over the fence at a dead end; we'd missed a turn. We doubled back and got to it just fine down the other alley.

Mark's still chuckling at the idea that you get to trail heads around here by going down the correct alley.

Not much later, we start seeing the amazing trees that live around here. The trail is going up, but it has not yet begun to climb.

We left one trail and joined another, then left that one and joined another one. This is typical in the mountains around here. The network of trails is pretty complex. Nice, though!

We have to ask directions to get to the trail that links up to where we want to go. We're headed for Zhongzheng Shan 中正山, the Chiang Kai-Shek 蔣介石 mountain. It's part of the wonderful volcanic complex that surrounds Beitou on three sides.

We find the bridge that crosses the creek. Now we start up the stone steps. They continued unabated for...ever.

Amazingly, when we get to the first shelter, we saw some people taking a break, including...ONE OF PING'S COUSINS! We'd said good bye to him only a couple of hours before... and he just happened to be climbing the very same mountain with his hiking club! (No, this was not the same cousin that told us about the trail. This was a different cousin. Please try to keep them straight.)

Typical of the Taiwanese hikers, they handed us steaming cups of tea and then literally stuffed our pack (Mark's Man Bag!) with fruit and snacks before they would even countenance our moving on!

Remember? In Taiwan, it's all about the food!

(By the way, those tangerines were awesome!)

 Somewhere near here, we realized the steps were not going to stop. We climbed through this wonderful world, right behind our home. The sun was shining, the wind blew mightily almost all the time, and it was quite cool! Still, it's a climb. In no time, Mark had soaked through his shirt. Thank goodness for layers, including breathable jackets.

Ping consults the map on a man-made ledge whose purpose is long since forgotten.

The steps just kept going relentlessly upward. What we can't show easily is how steep these are. 45 degree slopes were normal. Often it was steeper.

Alas, in the underbrush down-slope someplace are two green dates that sprang free from Mark's overstuffed bag and tumbled down the steps like kids out of school for the summer!

Sure wish we could have eaten those! Ping loves them and Mark's never tried them.

If we find date trees here in a few years, we'll know why.

It's Christmas Day and we get to see some Fall colors on the maples up here!! Hurrah!

Onward we went, with the sun glowing through the green canopy overhead and the wind whipping the branches to and fro with that wonderful rustling sound that reminds you the world is alive and breathing.

At some point, Ping said: "Even the air is smiling!"

Indeed!

Not long after this, Mark stopped taking pictures because the climb just continued relentlessly upward!

Step, step, step, step...until we made it all the way to...wait. Why are we going down? Where was the summit?

We had to look it up on Google later to make sure we topped out. It just starts getting a bit more level and then, down you go.

This was one of the more level areas. Those "fern trees," like the one off to the right, are huge. Each branch is easily 8-10 feet long.

We headed down about a hundred vertical meters and came to a road. There was a guy there with his wife and a little bitty dog. He was a member of a mountaineering club, and had a map. Judging from this map, he said we could just continue the trail across the road, do a little jog on the next road and follow such and such a trail back down.

Cool.

Key word: "down."

Downdowndowndowndown!
Down
Down
Down down downdowndown
Wowdowndowndowndownwow!!wowowowow!

The nice, neat steps from the previous section are now gone. Now we have a bit of rock sticking out from the mass of old leaves and dirt. It's a bit slippery so going is slower! Ping is not leaning back in that picture. She's standing up straight. If this were a luge or bobsled track, I think we would have hit Mach 1.6.

All along the way there are these magnificently odd trees.

Yes, we have to turn sideways to go down safely. Did we mention it was steep? We topped out at 820 meters for a net elevation gain of 780 meters from our house. We dropped about 700 of those in less than 3 km (2300' in 1.86 miles). That's conservative, based on the topo maps we looked up later.

Let's put it this way, if you stacked Empire State Building on top of Chicago's Sears Tower, we climbed the stairs from the bottom to about ten floors from the top.

(I don't think these stairs were "up to code.")

Um, still going down...

When we finally leveled off for a bit, we found ourselves deep in Tolkien's famed Fangorn Forest, or Mirkwood, or one of those! Mark said he kept expecting some elf-like creature to pop up out of the understory and say something in a in some ancient and indecipherable tongue.

Of course, that happens to him every day when some local speaks Taiwanese. :-)

Ping finally gets a bit of a respite from the knee pounding downhill.

This massive tree root system inspired someone to make a little stone "shelter" off to the right, barely large enough to house a cat. Mark is sure one of those elf-like creatures lives in that little cave structure.

Deeper into the woods, the light was even more magical. We had just crossed a small creek as the sun beamed through an opening in the canopy, casting shadows onto the boulders on the far side. We were so grateful to be there!

We had met no one else since we left the road. No car noise broke the stillness and even the wind couldn't find its way into this deeper rift. It was truly wilderness, except for the trail at our feet.

Finally, we knew we were back at civilization when we got to the cistern.

Mark still half-expected to find runes here telling him to "speak friend and enter" or some such thing...

We got home at 2:15 PM, 4.25 hours after we'd stepped out the door. That included the tea break and the tangerine break. We had gained and lost at least 2,559 vertical feet. Not bad. Time for a shower because we're heading to YuChi and Alices! Yay!

The best thing about having climbed like that is that you really feel like you deserve some of YuChi and Alice's cooking afterward! It was fantastic, as usual! They're way too modest about how the chili tasted (we thought it was great!) the ribs came out (yummy!), or the apple pie (delicious!), or the veggie lasagne (oh, how could I be full already??!). Vinh and Trouhm and their kids were also over, so we had a happy houseful at the Tsai's!

That's Vinh's head (sorry, Vinh!) Trouhm's arm (oops, sorry!), Alice, Ping and YuChi's mom.

Oh, and YuChi's hand. (I won't apologize to YuChi; he knows I'm showing his best side here.)

This shot was taken after we realized we were too late to take the bus home. We were having too much fun to go home. Finally, we did, after Christmas 2011 had already been in the history books for about an hour. YuChi drove us home, and we stumbled happily into bed. What a day!

Bless everyone! People have blessed us so much this year. It's been amazing year. We are so grateful.

Just wanted to leave you with this image from one of the hot springs hotels just up the road from our beloved Beitou Library. He's all dressed up for the holidays.

On Christmas Day, he was even wearing a Santa hat!

Merry Christmas, all!

Here's to a wonderful year to come!