This blog is closed.  I won’t be checking back much with it.  Thanks for reading.

Tea at Cafe, Maokong Mountain

The first tea of winter is among the best, according to the Taiwan tea cognoscenti.  Didn’t even know there was a difference?  Me neither, till I joined a tea class in Taipei.  Now I can tell you, they’re as different as apples and oranges … and walnuts and peaches and chocolate.

Tea leaves fresh off the bush.

Taiwan’s well-made to grow tea — uniquely perfect, some would say.  It’s hot in the summer but never gets too cold; neither is it ever too dry.  The mountain slopes make the third dimension of a terroir: latitude, longitude and altitude. 

Some tea masters — people who have passed a tea exam — know the terroir by taste, so they say.  My palette is not so refined.   My tea teacher, Gail Chang, says she can’t pick a terroir either, but with her decades of work and study, I wonder if she’s just being modest.  She’s definitely a woman who can give a 16-hour course in tea tasting and culture without boring her audience.  She says, in fact, she has to leave out a lot in such a short class.

Anyway, Look, Smell, Sip, Repeat is how to “taste” tea.   You try several teas at a tasting, much like at a wine tasting.  You can do a tasting at a shop before you buy, or you can just do a tasting with friends to enjoy it like kaffeklatch. 

So, here’s how to appreciate a tea, Taiwan style.

First, look at the tea and appreciate its shape before it’s brewed:

"Snail" shaped tea -> a little wormy, cooked a little maybe.

Semi-ball shape tea, cooked dark and rolled into a not-so-tight sphere.

Flat green tea leaves

Ball shaped? Tea leaves rolled into a tight sphere.

All of these varied-looking teas come from identical or nearly identical plants; only six or seven species make up most of the teas we drink. What makes the difference is the terroir and the processing: how long each tea is dried in the sun then baked in an oven.  Generally, the darker the dry tea, the longer it was baked.  The priciest ball shaped teas are rolled by hand; for the others, there are machines.  At a tasting, the brewer will show you the leaf before she makes it. 

Now, when you receive your teacup, the first thing is to appreciate the color.  They’re quite different:

Green tea

The western preference: black tea to us, "red tea" in Chinese.

A tea from Maokong Mountain outside Taipei. Don't know what it was.

Then, take a sip, swish it all around your mouth, swallow and appreciate the aftertaste, the mouthfeel and tell the tea brewer what it tastes like. 

I tried some that taste like:  peaches, strawberries, clean straw in a barn, southern sweet tea, tannic acid and, ugh, like licking old dust off something in the Goodwill store.  If you don’t quite know you can just say it’s good.  Or if you don’t like it you can politely say it’s a bit strong or something.  It’s no offense because everyone’s taste is different.

Then finish the cup and smell the empty — seriously — there’s a fragrance.  To me, it’s the smell of cooking fudge or chocolate chip cookies after every cup, every tea, overpowering strong chocolate.  But it varies to other people:  flowers, honey, pollen, etc. 

There’s one more thing to look at:  appreciate the look of brewed tea leaves.  Green ones will look remarkably fresh.  Most kinds will still be attached to a bit of stem.  The stem’s part of the flavor.

Now, when the brewer makes the second steep of the same leaves, it will taste different!  So, look, smell, sip and repeat. 

Enjoy your tea!  請用茶!

Kuan-yin tea at Cafe, Maokong Mountain

Lin Tien barrel shop doesn’t sell your typical corporate barrel.  Nor does it look like a typical shop.

The shophouse is wide open to busy, loud, dirty Zhongshan Road.  Probably not more than thirty feet by thirty feet, it is dark, dirty and probably greasy inside.  It’s too ill-lit to tell, really.  A travel book claims it’s Taipei’s last barrel shop of this kind.

One oversized, long-fingernailed older gentleman delicately balances in an undersized office chair, head thrown back and snoring loud enough to be heard over the traffic.   In the front, a middle-aged salesman invites a prospective buyer  sit in a tub to try the fit.

But in the back, atop a pile of clean woodshavings sits an old man, measuring wood by hand.

He’s creating the treasure of this dark cave:  A towering mountain of golden, glowing, fragrant cedar barrels, all made by hand, in that shop.  From dipper to foot tub to big bucket to bathtub size, there they are, perfuming the street and enticing the passers-by.

But how many more buckets couldn’t he sell, me and my indefatigable travel partner Emily asked each other, if he didn’t promote a little bit, put up a website, sell online, brand himself, install some signs, put the sleeping guy to work, get a computer, clean up a little.  Why he could move hundreds of barrels!  Why not a whole luxury barrel empire?  A status symbol of cedar?!

But … later I reflect:

I don’t think the barrel man is in business to  move barrels.

Not move loads of barrels, just to move enough nice barrels, at the highest price the market on Zhongshan Road will bear.  The companionship of a snoring friend, the coziness of a dirty man cave; these inefficiencies might be eliminated and replaced with a brace of young journeymen making barrels for export to the posh shops for the eco/frou-frou/craftsman-minded.

But why would you do that when your shop is entertaining and profitable enough for you?  Relax, already!

Which takes me back to the tea center on Maokong Mountain.  It’s a government place, not private, but in its defense, it’s  an R&D place, not just a promotional center.  (Tea is more complicated than wine, my tea teacher assures me, and a few lessons in, I’m inclined to believe her.)

At Maokong, I felt a distinct lack of promotion.   They were as eager to promote themselves as barrel man’s snoring friend.  No shop.  Closed demonstration garden.  Nearly incomprehensible Chinglish signage.

But like the man and his barrels, the tea center is apparently in business to do its thing:  grow better plants, make more delectable tea, train farmers, whatever.  The government apparently finds it a good enough investment* without a brain-hammering money-maximizing corporate drumbeat.

Tea on Maokang Mountain. Not wholly the fruit of maximizing value.

I argue the barrel and tea folks are capitalists:  they get hold of some money (private in one case, public in the  other), produce something with it, and sell the results for more than was put in.   Yeah, clearly there’s some inefficiencies … but the value they produce is more than monetary.  It’s a pleasure to observe the barrel shop.  The tea center couldn’t let me in the garden but did give me a cup of tea.  There’s no cubicles,  just humans.

So, too much of this attitude makes your economy a turgid and rigid France, maybe not capitalist enough.

But too little of this attitude makes your people the captive of private megacorporations.  The corporate agenda is not — as they would have you believe — to make you happy.  It is to maximize profit for shareholders.  And whenever you start talking about setting humans to “maximize profit” while removing their personal liability, there’s gonna be suits beating each other up for the first chance to cross boundaries of ethics and legality.

So, anyway back up on Maokong Mountain, since I was closed out of the tea promotion garden, I meandered up the slope a wee bit into a cheerful family tea house called “Cafe”.  And what do you think I did?  Of course, I bought some of the local brew.  And I’m promoting it right now.

So the government’s investment has returned a “profit”.  Not the direct profit of maybe $7 or 8 they’d have collected if I’d bought tea directly from them.  But, they did get some revenue for Cafe (some taxes’ll come from that) and a wee little publicity.

Fine job, tea promotion center.

(PS, I’m also buying a barrel before I leave!)

——————–

Maokong Mountain is on brown bus route 15 from Wangfang Hospital MRT. Or, grab the skylift upward from Taipei Zoo MRT if it’s running.  The road snakes up the mountain and a host of marked, public footpaths wind down among small, private tea farms.  So take either the gondola or the bus to the top and walk down is my suggestion!

Lin Tian barrel shop is on Zhongshan Road about a block or two below Chang An Road.

I can’t tell you the operating hours for any of these places!

*Tea is an important export crop here.  I can easily believe that a tea R&D center is not all, or even mostly, a boondoggle.

Jim is like dozens of people I’ve met here — they’re part of a band of nomads — people who stay on the global road for years at a time, supporting themselves on odd jobs and only rarely stopping by parents’ homes in the US, Japan, Australia or Europe to do some laundry and head back out.

Here in Taiwan, the living’s fat for English speakers with a coveted North American accent: teaching English without a work permit earns $18 an hour and up, double and more what locals make. I’ve heard of tougher gigs: a Canadian hitching across Australia got a few days’ worth of money for skinning about a hundred kangaroos. In Dubai, an Australian slept on park benches for a few days until he befriended a local who took him in.

You can apparently stay on the road until you’re in your forties or fifties at least; here in my boarding house they reverently mention a 62-year-old traveler who “seems totally young.” They ask me where I’m going next; I say back home. They clearly think it’s an odd choice, but, in keeping with their code of conduct they still treat me like I’m cool.

It’s not backpacking. These people live overseas for years and years. They may stick in an apartment for a year or two or more and own televisions, scooters and pets.  Even more so is  it not being an expat.  These people by and large were not sent overseas by, ugh, a company; they don’t join the American Club, they’re generally not married, and they’re out for fun, languages, exotic dates and life experience.  They think it’s not really resume fodder.  Unfortunately they may be right.

English teaching bankrolls this life for native English speakers. In Singapore, I knew many travelers without really realizing that their class existed or that they were part of it. They were women young and less young who stuck in any one country for two or three years then moved along. Once she’d seen enough of Singapore, Laura left for Ukraine. Lindsay, enamored of Asia, decamped to Thailand. Kate, a Hong Konger unwilling to live under Chinese rule, was considering Spain.

It’s harder for non-native English speakers; they can’t fall back on the world’s desperate demand for English lessons. My Japanese housemate Taro actually has a Taiwan work permit but can’t find work. I asked him if he’d ever go back to Japan. The answer is heart-wrenching: “I don’t think I can get a job there. I think it is too late for me.” He’s 27 years old. His plan instead: “maybe go somewhere in Southeast Asia.”

The links between these people persist through years and hemispheres. The Australian and Canadian in my house know each other from some previous time and often laugh about a pair of traveling girls they knew here. The girls have since moved along to Argentina, from where, the unfortunate news lately came, they got robbed. A traveling friend of mine split to Costa Rica for a few weeks and “ran into” a girl he previously knew from the road. They cycled the country for a while together, earning their keep at restaurant odd jobs.

“I tell people back home that I live in Taiwan or backpacked Malaysia or that I’m spending two months in eastern Europe,” Boston Jim said, “but they don’t get it. They don’t even know why I’d do that. It’s like they don’t know what I’m talking about.”

It’s entirely possible they don’t know what he’s talking about; most Americans never get a passport. I had to arm-twist my mom into a trip to France. France! But (hey mom!) I think I can safely say she now knows what he’s talking about. If you can spare the money even for a little trip, do it; you won’t regret it.

You might even meet someone in the band. You might even join.

Two young women from Oklahoma and New York just arrived here, having given up public school teaching jobs they call “terrible”; here they also teach English but are not sure what to do next. Anecdotes came from all around the big dinner table where I met them: Slovenia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Japan, Russia.

“Wow,” said the woman from Oklahoma, “Y’all have been everywhere. That’s so awesome. We haven’t been anywhere.”

“Well, I’m not worried,” I said. “You’re just getting started.”

Sunset over the lake

Moonrise over a tea field

Blue green water

Sun Moon Lake, go there now!  Everything is beautiful, easy and welcoming.  It’s like moving the brightness slider up to eleven.  It’s like landing in Oz after Kansas.

The little lake is a pool of blue green that I’ve never seen outside of tropical oceans.  I’ll wildly guess the hue is the same Taiwan hydromagic that makes hot springs and jade-color rivers.

My indefatigable travel partner Emily and I checked it out the other weekend.  The travel guides say it’s not-to-

Our room at the Apollo! Pic by Emily.

be-missed and loathe are we to miss anything.  Well, Emily’s especially loathe.  I don’t know how she’s been so many places in the time we’ve been here.

Anyhooz, we ditched class to catch a morning bus and four dozy hours later we arrived in time for a late lunch in Shueishe, a perfect little resort town of about three streets and hotels from cheap to elite.

Lunch was some resort-priced fried rice, followed by a stroll on the lake perimeter.  And boy did it smell … wonderful!  White ginger ringed the shore in our neighborhood.  Nearly every nook and turn of the shore shelters a microclimate so thirty feet makes the difference between lush ginger or ferns or cork trees.  Poke their trunks, it feels like a corkboard.

Shueishe was once one of Chaing Kai-shek’s many country retreats.   We saw the Chaing Kai-shek rowboat and the Chaing Kai-shek guardhouse, now guarding the fortress-like wall of a swanky resort.

That evening, the  entertainment just below our window  most certainly felt familiar to the many, many mainland tourists.  A rainbow light show on the dock.

Sun Moon Lake is hip to helping Chinese-speaking and Anglophone tourists both.  The Shueishe tourist office is a sleek, newly-built little depot.   They also speak killer English and will totally help you get a bus, bike, hotel, meal or whatevs.

Prayers hang in the wind at Wenwu Temple.

On our Saturday morning, a lean, beaming  old man clad in cycling gear and high on endorphins greeted us at the tourist info desk.   He had, literally minutes ago, finished the fifteen mile circuit of the lake and hardly had a bead of sweat on him.  “It’ll be easy for you two,” he said.

Eh … I mentioned this place was in the mountains, right?  Like, with slopes?

Golden phesants nosh

Okay, so we didn’t make it all the way around.

The story is:  we had a wonderful trip anyway stopping at every attraction on the top half of the lake.

Temple-builders like Sun Moon Lake area because of the views from the mountaintops.  The first stop on our bike tour was Wenwu Temple, sacred to Confucius, the gods of literature and war and others.  Like at the Taipei Confucius Temple, people write prayers on little tablets and hang them in the wind.

A native Taiwanese

Ornithology, lepidopterology, both are at Sun Moon Lake.  The ”Peacock Garden” pheasants sport colors that make you understand why beautiful birds are hunted to extention for their feathers.   Further down the road, the China Youth Corps butterfly garden houses a collection of the insects living among lantana and scarlet milkweed.  The island is a major stopover for migrating butterflies; there’s a highway in the south that closes a few weeks a year for the creatures to float across.

Below the butterfly garden lies the ersatz-aboriginie village of Ita Thao where Han people operate a delicisous street guantlet of Southeast Asia-esque dishes.  I got a satay which had notes of the Indonesian/Malaysian in it.  And I got a bamboo ketupat which, lo, when I cut it open had rice _and_ meat.  We also got a fried sweet potato cake, something of fried millet, a pancake shaped like Spongbob Squarepants and also a Chinese empanada.  We got back on our bikes, I with about a pint of hot grease stewing in my stomach.  We’d gone about two miles.

I can maybe estimate how many people were cycling because it’s safe to assume all other cyclists passed us; somehow all the roads sloped up.  There were a few orgainzied groups — tight maillots and all — of 20 or 30 folks.  Plus numerous pods of families and friends.  The road’s curvy, hilly and belongs to the bikes as much as the cars.   Let’s say 200+ cyclists on a sunny weekend day.

Yet not all of them stopped everywhere like we did, not even at the temple for the guy who brought Buddhism to China.  Syuentzang Temple honors the scholar Syuentzang whose travels to India in the 600s became 1,000 years later the novel Journey to the West.  It’s a Chinese classic and it adds a kid-friendly fierce fighting monkey and a shape-shifting pig to the monk’s legendary entourage.  A relic of Syuentzang is on display.

Chiang Lao Ma

The road tops out at a pagoda sacred to, well, Chaing Kai-shek’s mother of all people.  He was able to see the monument to his own filial piety from his redoubt across the lake.

The pagoda is 1,000 feet above sea level; I felt like we’d yes, pedaled at least  that far upward.  The additional nine stories of pagoda were worth it:

Atop the pagoda

But the biggest payoff?  About a one mile high-speed coast back down the mountain!  Whoo hoo!

Oh, and we caught a tourist boat at the bottom which ferried us right back to our hotel.  We encountered a real staring culture carrying our bikes through the throngs of tourists on the docks.  You’d have thought we were Ladies Godiva … or Hesters.  Or tatooed cartoon aborigines with spikes through our lips and hair tied up with bones.  Whew!

I don’t remember where we went for dinner after that or what we talked about.  I just remember green and blue and clear, clean air.  Sun Moon Lake:  A+

I’m keeping track of this form.  I heard of some more examples under an underpass in Taipei…

First the slugs.  (Not so artsy)

What is this thing? I don't know! Eat it before it escapes!

Sea slugs, or some kind of giant mollusks anyway, are part of the day’s catch at Wanli, a working fishing town on the north coast of Taiwan.   Emily and I bumbled off an express bus there one morning, nearly losing our books and bus cards tripping over each other on a nearly empty bus.  I felt the local eyes rolling.  But anyway, a friendly cop sent us down a  side street toward the beach, but I reckon we’d have smelled our way due to the small wharf and a few seafood shops.

I purposely say seafood because it was mostly _not_ fish, but crabs and cuttlefish (not a fish?) and other miscellanea:

!!!

I could take no more pictures.   I am squeamish about sea creatures and was forced to grab Emily’s arm and hide my eyes against her shoulder while squealing.  Sorry Emily.  Thanks for leading me through.

The stones are better, even; not compared directly to a slug they look way better.

Yehliu Geopark

The rocks of Yehliu Geopark sit on a tiny cape where the wind and sea have sculpted them into odd forms.  Odd names too.  Tofu rock, fairy’s shoe.  The most famous is Queen’s Head, which is a de rigueur field trip for all Taiwanese kids.

A mushroom rock

A fossil sand dollar

A bridge out to the end of the cape (between the hordes of tourists).

The parallel rows of mushroom rocks continue on the other side of this lagoon.

And the last one, that’s a bit of sand in the lagoon.

Ahh, body temperature lagoon!

If you go to Yehliu, bring your bathing suit!  And watch out for sea slugs!

???

If a mountain hiking map is written by a subway company, consider it merely a suggestion.  For best results, simply walk upward.

After a breakfast of three giant pancakes topped with about one Taiwan kilo of mango (600 g, 1.3 lbs) on a day mercifully free from rain, it was time to walk upward for a while.

Taipei sits in a low spot ringed by green jungle-covered mountains.  It’s a good hiking country altogether, as such mountains cover most of the island.  I, sans car, picked an itinerary  from a brochure entitled “Taipei City Travel” printed by the city subway company which gives sites of interest for most metro stops.

The southbound blue metro line ends the edge of town where it takes about 500 yards for Chengtian Road to transition from 20-story hotels to hillside chicken pens.  I passed an old-fashioned house with a pond in front.  Similar to this house in shape.

Small riverside park

The brochure recommended Chengtian Temple, a Buddhist behemoth and Paulownia Park, the picture of which made it look like there’d be mountain hiking.   According to the map, the temple would be about 15 minutes’ walk from the train station; the park about three times as far and marked by a giant white gate. 

Fifteen minutes out, however, I found no trace of that stuff but instead a cute riverside park that offered a nice stroll instead of a trudge on a sidewalk-less road.  I saw a tiny yellow and grey songbird perched on the rocks looking for bugs, tiffany-iridescent dragonflies and butterflies seeming as numerous as the first day that fall leaves begin to fall.

I came out of that on a hairpin turn-y road with a giant apartment building nestled in each curve.  And I started upward looking for either that temple or that park, and as I trudge higher I got more vehement pretty much cursing the Chinese signage or the Chinese language or the map or, possibly, all of Taiwan.

About 45 minutes upward, gleaming white Chengtian Temple came into sight as did a tiny footpath.  Finally, I’d found the woods, yes? Apartments no more?  Check.  Giant ferns?  Check.  Tiny shrines perched on mossy green rocks with burnt-down joss sticks?  Check?  Ripening bananas?  Check.

Turns out that path was just the front yard of the temple.

This giant temple was nearly silent except a few shuffling feet, the wind on the mountainside and three sonorous notes from a giant gong to mark the time.  It is quietly elegant, mostly white stucco, dark stained wood, simple straight lines and very minimal burnished metal trim framing the room holding three giant statues.  The middle is Buddha, I’m sure; he is flanked by I know not whom.    An expert sculptor made them serene and made their serenity quite radiant.  Yeah, I think some lovingkindness radiates from that place.

Yet where is Paulownia Park?  Who knows?  The map shows it is three times further from the train than this place!

But on the way out from the temple, lovingkindness to all, I found an entrance to a forest!  The sounds of the city started to fade out and garbage faded from the scene altogether, replaced by bird songs and jungle.  Oh, and one barber.  Yeah, about ten minutes along this path in a clearing was a chair, a dresser full of barbering accouterments and a man reading the paper.  His sign said haircuts $3.   That’s about 1/3 the price of a city haircut, but parking’s a problem here.

Second fruit sighting. A lime grove on the dirt path.

Past the barbershop I found a sign (above) inviting me onto a dirt path.  My poor shoes have hardly been off concrete this twomonth so off I turned onto a silent, steep path.   Ropes along the steepest parts helped me up the slick rocks and earthen stairs.  It’s jungle plants here: giant ferns, elephant ears (actual size), huge bamboo and palm-y looking things and things unknown to me.  It’s Singapore foliage without Singapore heat since, after all, it is winter here!

After a half hour or so the dirt path linked back up with the rock paved one and led to the mountain summit.  I don’t know where I was at.  A post had these coordinates:  294044, 2760099.  But, as Taiwan has its own kind of kilogram, perhaps it has its own form of latitude and longitude (where longitude has one too many digits?).  Maybe my faraway Garmin could read it.

Anyway, a device I could read said a delightful 68 degrees atop Mountain X.  South Taipei sprawled out at my feet, but up on the mountain were some, uh, recreational structures.  A handful of shacks put together with junk and tarps plus an awesome playground with huge tire swings.   And workout stuff … like a bench press bench with:  a barbell with concrete weights and two bundles of bricks tied up in rusty wire.   So the families were playing around, sitting at cards in the shacks, doing weird stretching exercises.  It is like Pulau Ubin, a tiny island that is the only unmodernized part of Singapore.  Just country living, crazy lean-tos painted odd colors and some wild fruit trees and altar furniture and a little rusty trash.  It’s fun because it’s unpretentious, just like Pulau Ubin.  What an odd place for it.

Another barber shop, but this one the owner can drive her motorbike to.

But, my sugary breakfast worn off, I headed down on the main path, the one paved with rocks.  There were approximately 200,000 stairs straight down.  I felt like I was going much further down than I had up.

I passed a lot of traffic, including like I’ve seen on TV, two Buddhists crawling up the mountain and kissing the ground at every step.

Near the bottom, though,  lies, oh, only the most Zen place in Taipei:  nameless tea hut.  Oh nameless tea hut, would that I had understood your red flag before I ordered coffee.

Nameless tea hut

Nameless tea hut, I believe you are made from pallets from Malaysia because you are pretty clearly clad in pallet wood and one of them says “Malaysia”.  Nameless tea hut, I praise your tasteful owners for springing all of $3 for these fabulous yellow orchids.  Nameless tea hut, your giant windows overlook an inhabited valley through the trees but I cannot hear its motorcycles.  Nameless tea hut, your six tables and chairs are perfect and today it was 68 degrees.

Below the hut, commercial traffic picked up, mostly folks had unpacked clothing or grape juice or walking sticks or vegetables on the now-wide path.  Oddest thing:  this lady was sitting on a stool and this man was working over her head, slapping it with this loose bundle of little sticks like little wooden coffee stirrers.  She’d apparently paid for the treatment.

Soon I could hear the motorbikes and horns and I saw the end of the path and …

… the back of a giant white gate!

It was the entrance to Paulownia Park, what I’d sought, what the map said was three times further away from the train station than the temple.  I’d missed it when I took the detour into the little riverside park!!

This is not entirely my fault.  The map, after all, said the park was after the temple.  I was looking for the temple first.  The map was wrong, the park entrance comes first, about 15 minutes from the train.  The temple is 45 minutes from the train.  The map in the brochure reversed their locations!

And good thing too.  Otherwise, what, I would have trudged up the same path as everyone else, might never have found my silent empty path up in the woods.  I might not have found the temple.  I would have done all that upward hiking on stairs instead of on good, clean dirt.  I’d have heard chatty hikers rather than birds.

It is good and even preferable to fall off the map but it’s a hard one for me to remember, to do.  Something tells me  it’s scary and wrong if I’m  not where it seems like everyone else existentially is, where my mental map says I should be at:  income, location, title, assets, looks, etc.  I’m sure no one else has this problem, but just in case: if you find an incorrect hiking map, be sure to follow it.  You might do okay.

Let’s start easy.  Person =    人.  See, it’s kind of a person…with two legs, a torso, and, okay, no arms or head. 

There he/she is: 人.

Now, what if you were a person boasting about a huge fish you caught, like, holding out your hands and saying it was thiiiiiiis big?

So, you'd look like the word for BIG = 大。

And if you had to squeeze into an elevator with like 20 other people, with your arms down by your sides?

You'd be the character for SMALL = 小.

Okay, lesson two.  Here’s one of my favorites, though Emily, correctly, observes it looks like a devil a little. 

So, rain coming from a cloud with another heavy cloud plus a lightening bolt = ?

Electric!  A further example:

Electric + talk: this shop's phone

Here’s one for Betty Lipton:

Something is summoned to the sunlight and it becomes “apparent”.

Then, but you add fire (light) to the idea of “apparent”. 

Thus a _photo_ is something rendered apparent by light.

So this here is the photo- prefix.

It shows up in “camera” and “photograph” … this sign says something something photograph (照相） something.  Probably Kodak Express, eh?

This one I can’t find on a sign:

The middle is a bird.  Add some horns to a bird and you get an owl.  Perch the owl on a box-thing that’s just for sound, not for meaning and you get old.  舊.

Last one, what do your close relations have in common with a pig?

I won’t say, but this here …

Pig under a roof = 家, family.

All etymologies rendered apparent by http://zhongwen.com or my teachers.

Good night!