Father Josef Eugster may not be the best evangelist for converting people to Christianity. He may not have touched the hearts of millions of Taiwanese, but he's easily Taiwan's most famous and influencial foreign priest for having touched people's feet. He declares his pioneering foot massage in Taiwan to be "God's gift."
"This is Chang-pin Catholic Church, I'm Father Wu Ro-shih," 62-year-old Eugster said in fluent Mandarin when answering a phone call from the Taipei Times. Actually, Father Eugster's accent is more Taiwanese because the first language he learned when arriving in Taiwan 30 years ago was Taiwanese.
PHOTO COURTESY OF FATHER JOSEF EUGSTER
Back then, a shy young man from the Swiss village of Berneck came to Taiwan's east coast town of Taitung, where people pray in shrines and Amis Aborigines hunt and hold ceremonies by the sea. The only plan he had in mind was to serve God. But how?
PHOTO COURTESY OF COSMAX PUBLISHING
"It is really difficult to try to preach to Taiwanese!" Father Eugster said. He recalled that during his first few years in Taitung, his sermons always made people doze off. "I prayed to God, asking him to give me a good method for preaching, and then He made me sick," Eugster said. Now he says he's grateful that he was troubled by arthritis -- if he weren't, he would not have read the book about reflexology and began massaging first his own and then other people's feet.
When an old man was leaving the church following mass, he looked uninterested in my sermon and complained of a headache. "I grabbed his feet, saying `please give me five minutes,'" Eugster said. "I showed him, `here is a reflex area for your headache' and began massaging it for him." Like that, Eugster found his new method of preaching. Unlike other Western priests, who often bring rice or flour to remote villages, Father Eugster brings his hands.
His Taitung Catholic church has been packed ever since. There are often even hundreds of people lined up at the door of the church at midnight. One time, Eugster was too exhausted from doing massage and fell ill with nephritis. "I was hospitalized and couldn't do any massage, so I asked them to go to the beach to find pebbles to step on," Eugster said. This became the origin of "pebble paths" meandering through many of Taiwan's parks.
"Ninety percent of the people came to the church just for their health problems, only 10 percent were interested in the spiritual," Eugster said. But he never gives up hope. "Maybe in 10, 20 years, they will want to listen to God's words," he said.
Fame has brought its share of trouble. In 1980, people abusing his name began prescribing medicine. His taxes were checked and the Department of Health charged him with practicing medicine without a doctor's certificate. "I even received calls [from people] threatening to kill me," he said.
Eugster took an eight-month leave to study in Jerusalem. "I was actually suffering from neurasthenia and couldn't sleep at nights. I needed a break to find myself again," he said.
As foot massage became popular in urban areas, with his name and picture widely printed on clinics' signboards, Father Eugster returned to Taiwan's remote villages. Back from Jerusalem, he was transferred to Chang-ping, a small village at the border between Hualien and Taitung, distancing himself from money and fame.
"This is the most beautiful place in the world, with mountains and the sea. I have a farm for growing vegetables and I often go swimming in the sea, and sometimes fishing," he said.
Now with his schedule packed with speaking engagements, visiting a circuit of churches Amis tribes and practicing massage, Eugster has managed to find some time to learn the Amis language.
Surprisingly, even after 23 years of having massaged celebrities and politicians, his charge remains a modest NT$350 for a half-hour massage, lower than in most clinics.
Despite his fame, Father Josef Eugster remains a simple man. "Two months ago, I was given an air-conditioner, donated by disciples. It was my first air-conditioner," Eugster said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby