Got up and the first thing I did was to sit down and play Plants VS Zombies, which was as unproductive as I can get. Counted my remaining food stock and was reminded that I would be heading home after next week, and I had mixed feelings about it. Classes won’t start till September which means I would be doing absolutely nothing for 2 whole months. Headed out to see the Mudan’s boss to read out the article I wrote for him and his brown sugar cakes after brunch.
They were in the midst of sitting down for lunch when I turned up, so was invited to have lunch with them which was tempura which they bought from Zhudong, and corn for dessert. The corn was very different from the usual ones, and his wife explained that it was called the ‘glutinous-rice corn’ due to its sticky texture instead of the crunchy ones. I’m not very used to having my corn tasting like this, but the boss wife helped made eating it easier by rubbing some salt onto the corn. Got a hot cup of purple tea from them to wash it down. The tea did not had any smell or taste, but they said that it was good for our liver.
Explained the article which I had wrote out for them in English, and to my relief he was happy with it. It does feel that he can be rather demanding at times, but maybe because it was done in English, so he wasn’t too picky about it if compared to Chinese. His wife was then complaining about how expensive Hong Kong was, because they had just returned from a tourism exhibition fair there, but also mentioned that their next stop might be Malaysia or Singapore. They gave me bananas just before I left to head back to my hostel along with some of the corn.
Our dinner was all from 7-11. After being trapped up in the mountains for a month, we finally ran out of meal choices and have relented to straight out of the microwave meals and Patrick Starr buns. While watching the news as we were having our dinner out of the packets, they reported that Taiwan would be experiencing a lunar eclipse tonight, so we made up our minds to head out to the large hanging bridge later the same night to witness it for ourselves.
At around 12 midnight, we packed our laptops and snucked quietly out of the hostel through the backdoor, making sure not to wake the lady boss or her husband, and walked out to the large hanging bridge at the bottom of the hill near 7-11. It was crazily windy out on the bridge at night, and we picked a spot a little far out, but was still able to receive the wifi signal from 7-11 so that we could spend some time surfing the internet while waiting for the main event to start.
After almost an hour, a little dent in the moon began to show. However unlike the fast forwarded ones we use to see on television, it was a slow affair, but nevertheless entertaining.
Within half an hour, the eclipse was more prominent, and my laptop had ran out of battery, leaving me with no entertainment but just the moon. At one point, the wind blew very strongly, and the bridge rocked a little which was scary. However, we then hear footsteps and the bridge creaking, but there was no one else but us, and it freaked us out.
Deciding that we had spent enough time on the bridge, we moved up to the 7-11 instead, where there was still a staff manning the place and it was a lot less scarier. By now it was almost 2.33am, and near the peak of the lunar eclipse.
The moon had turned red completely, save for a very small bow of moonlight peeking out from below. It was the first time I had witness such an amazing show. It was worth the time and braving the cold wind. It felt so hauntingly beautiful, yet surreal at the same time.
At 3.30am, the 7-11 truck came by to make the day’s delivery. Both the driver and the staff joined us outside in witnessing the sky’s show.
Dawn was breaking near 5am, and our breakfast was from 7-11 which we brought back to the hostel before the lady boss got up because we didn’t want her to know that we had been out all night.
この長い旅で 