The librarian of the English library at the US Consulate in Taiwan was an old friend of my husband’s Lin ho min had taught my husband to scuba dive. Ho min was a good 15 years older than my husband and perceived him as a son He had helped teach him to speak Taiwanese and appreciate the Taiwanese culture. Now my husband after more than 20 years had returned as the Consul general to our US consulate. Ho min wanted to continue introducing him to his favorite culture. He arranged for us to attend the initiation of a new temple. First a miniature Paso much like the ones in Spain was carried over coals. Two men in bare feet carried a wooden carved god in this little wooden carriage like thing. One was in front and one was behind. They walked across the coals in their bare feet. There was some trick to walking over the goals that I didn’t understand but anyway that was one of the events for the opening of the temple. Then there was Chinese music being played with a combination of er hus, flutes, cymbals and double reed instruments as well as drums. The next part was the hard part. The people at the temple had hired a man to flagellate himself like one sees in the old pictures of Christianity. He had a ball like thing with nails coming out of it. He would hit himself and drip the blood in the temple to chase the evil spirits away. As we watched this blood dripping everywhere Ho min fainted. When he came to he vomited. He couldn’t handle it. One of the elders of the temple went and got the man who had been paid to flagellate himself to make sure he dripped his blood in every corner of the temple. The elder man didn’t think enough blood had been dripped in the temple. Six months later there was a knock at the door. The young man appeared at our house bearing the gift of the tool he used to flagellate himself. We politely accepted it and offered him a cup of tea. I don’t know what ever happened to that tool but we didn’t forget the experience!