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.
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
RSS