Our regards and respects having been duly conveyed to the good brothers, the crowd dispersed. We gave the Dutch guy and his girlfriend a ride back to Taipei, and in some sense this was where the true meaning, the larger benefit, of the evening, was revealed to me. The Dutch guy, you see, is a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica, and although his girlfriend is about to start teaching English at one of the best colleges in Taiwan, located in central Taipei, still they are living out by the Sinica, way over on the swampy eastern edge of the city. Asked how he likes the Sinica, which, as Taiwan’s leading research institution, is very famous in a very vague way, he replied that the best thing about it was the gym; and at this point a light went off in my head. I also, of course, am a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica (if you’re a phd student there’s really no reason not to be, since they let you take books out of their library and take care of your visa extensions for you); and although one of the reasons I had been feeling crazy and out of control ever since I’d gotten back to Taiwan was no doubt that it was ghost month and you know who were out you know whatting, still another, smaller, but more tangible reason was that I had nowhere to jog that was not outside on the pavement in ninety degree heat. I’d completely forgotten that Academia Sinica even had a gym. So around the 16th day of ghost month I went and got myself a gym pass, and thanks to the good brothers and the Dutch guy I am now once more a regular jogger.

And a couple of days ago, as I said, was the last day of ghost month, when the gates of hell are closed once again and life can go on with only the usual amount of chaos. This year, though, the Jilong ceremony that officially closes the gates of hell was delayed for a day, to the first day of the eighth month. There was a particularly bad typhoon here over the past week, a very strange typhoon that didn’t really fit the normal pattern: for one thing, it formed over Taiwan itself, rather than coming from somewhere else as they usually do. (“So you see, we have the strength to attack other people too!” was one interpretation of the phenomenon that I heard.) For another thing, in the first day and a half of heavy, pounding, unabating rain, there was almost no wind at all, making it technically not really a typhoon at all (the “phoon” in typhoon is風, feng, wind) but a freakishly heavy rain. The night this started, the civic association in the neighborhood I study had their monthly meeting, which, as usual, lasted until the middle of the night. (These people have incredible meeting stamina.) I’m living on the other side of the city now, around a thirty minute drive by scooter if there’s no traffic at all, and driving home that night was like driving through a waterfall. It rained like that from around nine that evening to around five the next morning, and then it kept raining, intermittently and at different intensities, for the next three days. Eventually the winds started and it was declared a typhoon; but whatever it was it had already done the damage.

There was flooding in several parts of the city, and although it was not as bad as it had been the first time I’d come back to Taiwan during ghost month (in 2001, when a big chunk of the subway was put out of commission for months and much of the city lost electricity, and I waded out from my apartment through knee-deep water to get to a friend’s house), still it was the worst it had been since then. So naturally people started worrying about transportation, not only for themselves but for the good brothers. Scattered about all over the island, would they be able to make it back in time for the closing of the gates of hell? What if they were delayed by the flooding and the gates closed while they were still out? That sure would not be good, not for them and not for us. So the ceremony of the closing of the gates of hell was delayed by a day to give the good brothers a chance to come back safe and sound and without being in too much of a hurry. According to Jennifer, this demonstrates the humaneness and generosity of the Chinese people. “Next thing you know they’ll be buying them train tickets for the return trip.”