Located in a small, typical Kaohsiung street down by the harbour and not far from the University is my favourite wine bar.
It’s on a street corner, next to an alley filled with 3 or 4 storey houses which locally are called “toutian” which probably literally translates as “penetrating the heavens”.
As you walk up the alley from the harbour you can see the plants lining the buildings' street frontages or in pots bunched into the boundary or between houses. The space in front of each house is given to parking motor scooters, bikes and sometimes cars as well as hanging bits of laundry.
There’s no footpath as such but a covered drain about a metre wide runs along each side of the street. This provides more space for scooter parking and plot plants. As a pedestrian you don’t walk on this, you walk in the middle of the roadway. The drain covers which have 5 cm diameter holes every two metres or so are used by Kaohsiung smokers to drop their cigarette butts in.
Turn the corner into the next street and you’ll find the wine-bar with its entrance just off what you might think is the footpath. It’s a lot wider than the drain cover in the other street. As is typical for Kaohsiung though, this in fact is not a footpath. What seems to be a footpath is impossible to negotiate as such.
Motorscooters, cars, furniture and goods for sales are parked in, are in use on, or are waiting to be sold on, the footpath. Even though this street is much busier than the lane you were just in, as a pedestrian you have no choice but to walk on the street proper along with any vehicles which might also be using the street.
Often this not-a-footpath space doubles as an extension of the adjacent house’s living area. In the case of this bar, it is used to house a swing and a couple of small chairs and tables for customers. It’s overhung by a large mango tree which is grown within the property’s boundary, not in a pot on the street as the other plants are.
On entering the wine bar you find yourself in what might otherwise be somebody’s lounge except that the dimly lit lounge is fairly large by Kaohsiung standards. It’s capable of holding about 20 people seated in twos or fours on sofas and chairs at the small, low tables scattered through the windowless room.
The wine bar only sells cheap Australian Viognier served as chilled as the household refrigerator will allow. No other drinks other than water and coffee are available. Occasionally a different wine is provided - maybe a Pinot Gris, maybe Riesling. This probably reflects problems of supply rather than of choice. Only Australian wine and only white wine is sold. That choice is probably the owner’s.
The owner is a Taiwanese woman who spent two years in Australia on a working holiday. She spent a lot of that time in a shed packing oranges and about three months picking lettuces. When not busy - which seems most of the time - she can be seen reading books on a tablet or using a computer. She does converse with customers but only occasionally. She seems to prefer her own company even when in the presence of others.
The books she reads are mostly English-language novels which have won some sort of literary prize. She says that’s the easiest way to choose what to read. She’s read the Life of Pi several times because the movie was shot in part in Taiwan.
The computer is used for solving spreadsheet calculation problems. She uses Google Sheets rather than Excel as she finds some of the functions of Excel lacking. She has no need for the solutions she finds but enjoys the intellectual exercise of creating the solutions and then refining them.
As with the wine, there is only one form of coffee available. It’s black Turkish-style coffee served in ceramic mugs. No milk, sugar or hot water is provided to moderate the flavour. Let the grounds settle before drinking!
No food is available on a regular basis but occasionally the proprietor buys some excellent French baguettes. These the Taiwanese describe as “very Q”. "Q" or "QQ" is a loan word meaning “chewy”. She gives customers slices of these very Q baguettes spread with butter and Vegemite.
There are bookshelves holding editions and translations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. They appear to be of no particular provenance. Apart from these, there is no other reading material on offer. Occasionally a newly acquired edition of either Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass is added to the collection. There is no fanfare so you might not be aware of any new arrival.
Over near the front door - so it’s not visible on entering - is an original of Tracey Moffatt’s Adventure Series 9, 2004. Though the interior of the bar is dim, this work glows in its place on the wall. This is the only art-work in the wine-bar.
On Friday nights and sometimes during the weekend French New Wave films such as Celine and Julie go Boating or Weekend are shown on a small inconspicuous screen set up behind a table which counts as the serving counter. It’s not particularly easy to watch the film due to the location and size of the screen but despite these restrictions, there are usually 5 or 6 patrons watching.
There is no live music played at the wine bar just recorded music. This mostly consists of Country and Western or Bluegrass - the Stanley Brothers and the McClymonts are current favourites. The music is played fairly unobtrusively but loud enough for some of the customers to start gentle foot-tapping when a much-liked song is played.
People inside the bar - a mix of university staff or students and people working on the small boats berthed in a nearby canal - only get a view of the bar’s dim interior but it seems being cut off from outside stimuli facilitates wide-ranging discussions some of which are intellectual and others more practical.
Sometimes the proprietor, using what would have been the blackboard menu writes up suggestions for discussion. These have included:
“Why 42?”,
“What is the meaning of 'right' when called out by a friend with whom you were just discussing how to find your right partner but who seems now to be warning you that there is someone standing on the right-hand side of a door on the right-hand side of the street with something in their right hand and who may or may not be your doppelganger?”, and
“Neither”.
People sitting at the few outside tables get a good view of the harbour, the big container ships coming up the harbour from all over the world and the Cijn ferries going back and forth day and night carrying Cijin residents to and from their home and visitors to and from the many many seafood restaurants on Cijin.
Not far from the wine-bar is Kaohsiung’s Secret Beach a small corner of which can be seen by those sitting on the swing when it reaches the highest point of its arc. It’s not clear why the beach has that name but some think it is because - due to drownings - the government has made it off-limits. So people secretly go there. Thus Secret Beach.
It’s from that swing - its highest arc - that patrons have sometimes seen somebody at the beach caught in a rip. They’ve had to grab a surfboard and get out to the swimmer and prevent a drowning.
When any drowning or near-drowning occurs the proprietor, without comment, places dried flowers on the bar-table. Some people think this is her feng shui symbol for the life that is very dear to us all. Others that she would like to play a Rolling Stones song but feels it might not be appropriate.
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