This dispatch reaches you in your far corners of the world from the China Airlines lounge of Taipei International (or is there just one? cue Mr. Whitworth). There's a typhoon on -- it started in Manila and then followed me here to Taiwan. However, I'm told the typhoon's nothing compared to the might of Taiwan's very own national airline. Paper, rock, scissors, rain, 747. 747 beats rain; scissors beat 747 'cuz duh, pointy objects are verboten in the world of air travel. My split-end scissors are safely stowed in checked luggage.
The first thing you see when disembarking in Taipei, in glowing bold-face type is DRUG TRAFFICKING PUNISHABLE BY DEATH IN THE ROC. Flashback to Brokedown Palace and Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale, back before she was anybody, both sporting choppy prison haircuts that were actually angled and kinda chic, screaming obscenities through hoarse voices and pleading for their lives in prison (yeah yeah, that actually took place in Thailand, which is very clearly a different country than Taiwan, but it's kinda same concept, right? BEWARE, FOREIGNERS, YOU'RE IN ASIA NOW AND WE'RE STRICT HERE). I wended my way through the perpetually deserted, architecturally perplexing terminals to the strangely luxe, two-story lounge featuring a full-service noodle bar and, like, fifty different types of baozi and dumpling. I conclude that the entire airport population is here, because everything else is eery and empty. In 15 hours I'll be in San Francisco.
On my last day in Shanghai I hit up the last tourist location on my list, Chenxiang Ge nunnery, home to a handful of Buddhist nuns, right in the heart of Old Shanghai. Chenxiang Ge's centerpiece is a large statue of Guanyin, the gender-bending female bodhisattva of mercy who started life as a male, but sometime around 1100AD Guanyin imagery switches to female representation, and there it now remains.
The scent of incense hung in Chengxiang Ge's air, mixed with lotus blossoms and the stacked oranges that worshippers laid in front of the myriad gold Buddha statues for luck, offerings, etc. In every nook and cranny of the place, coins and red slips of paper were tucked away, offerings from visitors. The picture above shows two coins wedged into an urn's decor, with two visitors lighting candles in the background. The woman was quite pregnant, but nonetheless managed to kowtow (a ritual of kneeling, bending at the waist, and tapping one's forehead and hands on the ground) several times in front of every single Buddha in the temple. The nuns wore their heads shaved, just like Buddhist monks, but these nuns wore grey-blue robes instead of the traditional gold. They prayed with beaded strands that reminded me of the rosary.
Like every other Buddhist temple I've visited, Chengxiang Ge is riddled with images of the many aspects of Buddha, which apparently include the following:
Buddha eating french fries (other possibilities include tootling a harmonica and smoking a bowl -- no wonder he was so tranquil, right? STAY OUT OF TAIWAN, BUDDHA, DRUGS ARE REALLY SUPER ILLEGAL HERE!):

Buddha as Eve in the Garden of Eden (note serpent and apple):

Buddha as a character in the Simpsons (blue hair, yellow skin) (note tiny kowtowing child sporting braided queue -- and yeah, that's a DVD in his hand -- no word on whether it was an offering, or just a bootleg from his personal collection):

Picture-taking was only allowed in a few areas of the nunnery, to preserve sanctity and/or the privacy of the nuns. And maybe to prevent people like me from comparing Buddha to cartoon characters from the Fox network.
After Chengxiang Ge I ate pulled noodles in a hole-in-the-wall shop, and then visited the wholesale fleamarket where Dan, my ex-editor, new cyber-boss, and proprietor of Mudan Boutique supplies all his jade needs. It is a massive 5-story warehouse, organized by ware. Ceramics on one floor, mahogany and jade on another. The best part was tucked in the back of the fifth floor (read: least foot traffic, ergo least profitable section) labeled "sundries" which was essentially a garage sale, but in China, and old. Photo albums of PLA soldiers circa 1972, anatomy charts with labels to guide acupuncturists, bizarre wind-up toys, kites, chipped porcelain, ancient silk dresses, dusty Peking opera costumes, anything and everything decorated with Chairman Mao's visage... The funniest is when you see the tourist-seeking vendors on the street, who beseech you first with the usual PRADA! GUCCI! ROLEX! and, when you fail to express interest, will add CHAIRMAN MAO! COMMUNIST MANIFESTO! bcs they sell those, too.
I spy with my two little eyes... a disembodied foot.
Other neat-o thing witnessed in Old Shanghai: Cricket fighting. Actually, cricket fighting is really boring. Though the crickets here are less like insects, and more like miniature dinosaurs with the shrillest, most deafening scream imaginable ("chirp" does not apply to these suckers; Jiminy they're not), their "fights" are more like slow motion dances, with each cricket owner prodding his thumb-sized prizefighter incessantly with a wire until finally one cricket gives the other a lazy hippity-hop and sort of mounts the loser, and then it's over. I was hoping for insectivorism or disembodied with legs played like the fiddle (didn't Jiminy have a fiddle? and isn't a cricket's "fiddle" actually supposed to be his thighs? ergo, Jiminy was playing a pair of thighs?).
Excuse me, I have some very tasty noodles beckoning me from Mr. Noodle Bar of Joy.
Wo ai China Airlines.