“It’s under here,” I reply. “Look to your left … that hole in the sky used to be a mountain. It’s been redistributed across the valley.”
“Perhaps it could teach us how to redistribute the national health budget,” someone says, and others chortle.
I ignore the comment and ask myself aloud: What’s stopping the next onslaught of water from digging up the contents of this rootless landscape and sending them crashing down the river?
“Let the merged Kaohsiung government deal with it,” I catch one of you saying.
Enough idle speculation. Let’s paddle on. This place is very hot and sticky; it stinks and there is no shade and altogether too much noise coming from those people wailing over there and the monks attending to them.
On we go; the rest of the trip is less spectacular in terms of mountain scenery, and everywhere there is ruin. Roads, bridges, farms, houses, levies, crops — all destroyed. And that there, bobbing along behind us — is that a human limb?
“Call the Coast Guard!” someone says, to much laughter.
Eventually we pass the main village of Jiasian Township (甲仙), then Shanlin (杉林), then Cishan (旗山).
As our canoes shrink against the vast widths of riverbed, we see less damage on shore and concentrate on the transformation of the riverbed itself, with new channels dug out of the mud and others jammed with upstream refuse.
Here the Cishan River meets the Erchong River (二重溪) — ushering in water from both the massive Laonong River (荖濃溪), all the way from the northern flank of Yushan, and the Ailiao River (隘寮溪), whose tributaries start close to 3,000m above sea level to the east — to become the Kaoping River (高屏溪). And although the riverbed grows ever wider, we see massive new waves of debris.
Onward, onward. Under the Formosa Freeway’s landmark cable-stayed bridge, past Pingtung City to our left and then to the sea at Linyuan (林園) and Donggang (東港) townships. As the sun sets, we admire the duplicated Shuangyuan Bridge (雙園大橋), severed like a ribbon by floodwater, presumably.
“Like I say,” one of you opine as you point at the doomed structure, “reconstruction plus concrete equals progress. What a beautiful thing to behold.”
So we have reached our destination. It was a splendid trip, if a little unsettling in places. But I should tell you, if there are any among us who feel responsible for not quite pulling our weight and helping out the rest of the team, they might just find themselves returning to this river — in their dreams. Particularly one dream, in which a decomposing body suddenly rises to the surface of the river, right before your eyes. Or maybe two bodies.
Or maybe hundreds.
Got something to tell Johnny? Get it off your chest: Write to dearjohnny@taipeitimes.com, but put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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