I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop - docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door.
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop - docile and omnipotent
At its own stable door.
On Friday I had occasion to go to Tainan again, and with a fresh set of batteries and a clean 1 gig card, decided to fill the blog with pictures.
If you are headed for points south, take the mountain line. It doesn't go through the mountains -- what a trip that would be! -- but it does go through some great rice-field-and-factory country, what I always think of as The Real Taiwan.
It was a dark, overcast day, rainy, but green and very clean.
Seated next to me was a brainy soil environment major from Chunghsing University.
An abundance of old San He Yuan houses can be seen.
The train was moving too fast to get a good shot of the supernaturally straight roads that criss-cross the area.
A pigeon coop, probably containing thousands of dollars worth of the valuable racing birds.
Tainan Train Station.
[Taiwan] [trains]
Great round-up as usual.
ReplyDeleteI've tried several times to post a comment on Daniel's Bananas and Onions post but it's not showing up so if you don't mind I'll put it here instead.
"A thought-provoking post. In my view Asians tend to become Westernized far more readily than Westerners become Asianized because of the Baggage Factor. It’s easier to lose Baggage than it is to gain it. Asians going to the U.S. for a couple of years for example may find the process of acculturalisation quite liberating because they can shed all that Baggage. For Westerners living in Asia, though, there is a natural tendency to resist being saddled with Baggage so the process of acculturalisation is inevitably going to be slower, and it’s often never fully realized. This is not an all-encompassing theory you understand, merely a factor, but an important one, I believe."
oh how i've missed the smell of the rice fields and the scenic railroad ride down south...
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