North of Taipei is a place where the devil comes out of the ground. RMJ and I walked up there and found a valley of boulders, cemented together, with a big metal gate of words that I could kind of read but not make heads or tails of. It was a hairpin turn road, going up to the top of a mountain, with ponds and staircases giong into the mountain's heart here and there. There were little fish ponds and artificial islands, on the sort of steep slope farmers were tending rice terraces nearby. This was a big place, and took a lot of effort to make. It had fake cement rails everywhere, sculpted to look a little bit like logs. There were spots of ripped and torn rebar and concrete, like at one time it had been a massive bunker for a mad scientist, high high up on the hillside. As we walked up, we noticed more and more staircases into the mountain, and suddenly rmj pointed out the weirdest part of all; if we turned around, we could see the expanse of filthy majestic Taipei below us, all the way out to mitsukoshi and more, and the cicadas were deafening, and this place was peaceful, but it was totally empty. Emptiness is creepy when you can look at a valley filled to the brim with millions of people.
We looked around for a minute and a man scooted down some of the hairpins from out of nowhere, cigarette in mouth, awkwardly sized pants tucked into big black rubber boots, and weird purple shirt tucked into the pants. He gave the universal sign for "stop" and pointed down the hill, with a plastic grin. We curteously accepted his invitation to leave. Later, we noticed his overlords looking down on us for various terraces hundreds of feet above. Even that far away, I could feel their eyes stare into me.
We took a picture of the metal gate, as evidence to try and solve this mystery, and the scooter man rode over and closed the gate.
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