![]() Possibly having never put my energy into a career. Also, what will I regret on my death bed? Probably some woman. It was time for a a truly fuck-it list decision- honestly, I would tell myself, was I going to lie on my death bed and regret taking the expensive high speed train down to the south of the island to see a once in a lifetime event? This is the rhetoric I often use with myself when I am making a foolish decision- I'll say, am I going to say on my death bed that I wish I hadn't gone to the Himalaya and spent all that money trying to kill myself on Pumori? The answer will be no of course, but the rebuttal would be that many of these decisions could lead to an early death bed. I had a bad cold and I hadn't slept in awhile. I had been meaning to ask my Taiwanese friends at work about it, but when we had that rare time in between classes, most of us just chose to stare blankly at the wall and hope that some reserve of enthusiastic energy could be summoned from our inner being to the top of our parched throats so that we may survive another bad Asian kindergarten rendition of "The Yellow Submarine." I didn't get around to asking for a long time, and when I finally did ask, they had the unfortunate response of "it's tonight." This was unfortunate because as it was on the far south end of the island, I was 6 hours away by car, and I got off work at 7. Anyway, I read that the festival is held only every three years and that it was to happen this year. Such "inspection tours" take place on a regular cycle of a set number of years. A temple that houses a Wang Ye is generally called (daitian fu: "palace representing heaven") and the Wang Yeh's visit is known as (dai tian xunshou: "hunting tour on behalf of heaven"), the object of the "hunting" being disease and bad luck. The customary belief is that Wang Ye, or Wang Yeh ( wángyé: "royal lord"), are divine emissaries who tour the world of the living on behalf of the celestial realm, expelling disease and evil from those who worship them. Wang Yeh was a scholar who was swept out to sea and became a deity. Months ago I had read about an event that happens every three years in the Autumn in Southern Taiwan- the burning of the Wang Yeh boats. ![]()
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