A postcard from Taiwan Photos and stories from the book Tajwan. Piękna wyspa...

What you see...

More than once, I've joined teams picking tea leaves and coffee cherries. Both activities carry risks. To cut tea branches, you need to attach incredibly sharp razor blades to your index finger using a band-aid. A moment of distraction for the untrained can result in a cut. I gave up tea picking after an incident in which I almost severed my fingertip. Pickling coffee cherries presents a completely different challenge. Snakes, including some venomous ones, like to hide in the crowns of trees about 2 meters high. After twice finding a molt in the thicket of twigs, I tightened my preventative measures. Snakes are frightened by the sound of human activity. The trick is to give them an opportunity to escape – although I'm not sure that's the right word. A good way is to stomp your feet loudly while walking, and call out to others... My own solution was to listen to movie music through a loudspeaker – mainly Star Wars. And here's some news for you! After a few days of working together, an elderly woman in her seventies learned to recognize John Williams' style and distinguish it from the rather similar music from Basil Poledouris's Starship Troopers, which I listened to on rotation. Respect. Coffee Picking with a Million-Dollar View. Fortunately, snakes in Taiwan aren't aggressive – but you still need to be careful. When picking coffee, you should be especially careful in the row of trees closest to the forest edge, but this isn't always the case. A safety measure used by locals is to bang on the treetops when they appear in a coffee orchard. However, often no one bothers to do this. I've only had a few confrontational encounters with a live snake. He was sitting (I know he was "lying") in a tree just closest to the jungle. When I parted the outer branches, he looked at me, and I at him. He was about 150 cm long, with a head the size of a man's thumb, so he was small. He wasn't (probably) venomous. Venomous snakes have a triangular head. The snake calmly turned around and headed towards the forest, and I slowly let go of the parted branches. Just then, I was the first person to enter the coffee orchard, somewhere far away, a few kilometers from the tribe. In a group of a few people, there was a minimal stir. We shook the branches off two rows of trees... and that was it. Off to work! I had a similar experience on another occasion – while picking beans. I was the one who spotted the tiny snake again, slightly larger in diameter than a cigarette. None of the other people dared to catch the reptile. The owner of the vegetable garden called a man who wasn't afraid. The guy came, took a look, grabbed the terrified snake, walked away with it a few dozen meters, and rudely threw it into the roadside thicket. And that was it. Speaking of snakes, I'll tell you the best story. I call it "Frequent washing shortens life." In 2012, I lived in a building right on the edge of the forest. I was sponge-washing the front door frame… when I saw a snake rushing towards me at high speed, chased by the property owner. The snake didn't see me in time… and it darted in. For a second, I was in a cubic meter with a panicked, two-and-a-half-meter-long reptile! I didn't even have time to be scared. My processor resolution was just enough for utter astonishment. The snake hid behind a bookshelf. Luckily, the owner had experience. With some difficulty, he pulled the snake out by its tail, carried it out, and threw it into the bushes a few dozen meters from the building. It smelt its scales for the next two days.

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