Some of you who know me will know that I had an older brother Jonathon, who was killed in 1993 by a drunk-driver whilst he was working in Taiwan with the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan (hereafter referred to as PCT). My parents and I went out at the time for the funeral (we decided to have him buried there as he loved the country and the people so much) and I have only been back once with my mum since (in 2000). This and the next two posts on my blog are my (belated) attempt to document our trip – my apologies for the names I get wrong or miss out as I can’t remember them all (I’m so bad at names!). If anyone spots any errors or omissions, please let me know and I’ll correct them!
This year is the 20th anniversary of his death, and for that reason the PCT decided to have a memorial service on Easter Sunday (which was coincidentally exactly 20 years to the day since he was killed) at the church that he was working with out there in PingTung. The PCT then extended the very generous invitation for me and my mum to go out to Taiwan for the service at their expense which we were very humbled to receive and very glad that we were able to take up their offer.
Because of my work and my entry into the London Marathon, we were not able to go for longer than 8 nights so we knew it was probably going to be an intense and busy trip, so we were a bit apprehensive going out but we needn’t have worried as we couldn’t have been better looked after whilst we were out there by everyone from the PCT.
We flew out from Heathrow with EvaAir and the flight was long (16ish hours with a stop in Bangkok for an hour and a half) but relatively trouble-free apart from a little bit of turbulence. We left on Wednesday evening and due to the time difference arrived Thursday evening, so we were very glad to be met at the airport at 10pm by a driver and taken to our hotel (the Y) in Taipei (the capital of Taiwan).
On our first full day in Taiwan we had breakfast in the hotel, and then were picked up by Joyce (who would stay with us the entire time we were in Taiwan) and taken to meet the Rev Yang (the General Secretary of the PCT) and a few others at the PCT head office in Taipei and they took us to lunch at a Greek Restaurant. My mum ordered Milk Tea which turned out to be cold tea with a straw – we learned quickly to ask for black tea hot!
Jet lag was kicking in by now, so we were taken back to the hotel for a much needed rest after which we had the rest of the day to ourselves walking round the nearby shops (there were 3 different shopping centres under the nearby main train station!) and having dinner at the hotel again. They had a special dessert offer on Waffles with Apple & Oolong tea sauce – very nice! I did take a picture on my phone but when I went to check it after we’d eaten it, it hadn’t taken – dagnabit!
The next day after breakfast we were taken to the train station and met Joyce again before boarding the High Speed Rail train down to Kaohsiung. As common for all of our journeys over the next few days the trains were very busy as it was coming up to a national holiday. We were met at the station by Mei-Li (President of the Pingtung Presbytery), Maurice (an American missionary), and Louise and YiHsin (a couple who are youth workers in Pingtung where Jonathon was based) – the latter was to be our chauffeur for the next few days. Having seen a bit of the area, we were taken to a special Chinese restaurant for an all you can eat lunch with other members of the church. The food was very nice, though we didn’t always know what we were trying!
After lunch we were driven around the local area and the old harbour before being taken out to the memorial chapel and garden where my brother’s ashes are now. He had originally been buried nearby, but due to a land issue with the government his (and other remains) had had to be moved last year and they are now in beautiful marble urns in the memorial chapel. My brothers urn is in the section that is looked after by the PingTung church as they still remember and honour his memory, so we know that it is well looked after. Maurice kindly gave us some flowers to lay and after a brief prayer they left us to our own memories.
We took some pictures of the memorial chapel and garden and the area – it really is very beautiful and peaceful – also of us with everyone, and then they took us to the Sandimen Aboriginal Township where we went into the Dragonfly Bead workshop and were given a talk and demonstration on how the beads were made which was very interesting if a bit hot with the heat of the burners! On the way out I bought myself a bracelet (something that unfortunately I lost only a week after coming home sadly – stupid me!), and unbeknownst to us Maurice had brought us each a present too which was very kind and thoughtful of him.
Next on our tour of the area we went to a Paiwan (one of the original tribes in Taiwan) church, where we were given tea and shown around the church that had only been built in the last year or so. A lot of the wood used was driftwood from the last big Typhoon that struck Taiwan, and had also been the cause of them moving the church to its current location. The minister told us the story of the church and showed us the way they remember events in the church history in tiled scenes displayed in the walls surrounding the church.
My mum and I were getting pretty tired by this stage, so we were glad when we were taken to the church in central PingTung where we would be staying for the next 2 nights and had a bit of a rest. We were the first people to stay in their guest rooms which had only recently been finished and were very nice. They had wanted to take us out to a special restaurant where the meal would’ve taken 2 hours but as we were so tired we just went to a fast food place instead – if you want there you can have a whole chicken and they give you gloves to eat it with your fingers!
The next day would be the memorial service itself which I have written about about in my next post.
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By the way, you can find all the photos in these posts and others that we took on the trip on Flickr here.