Not very far from the wine bar and Birthday Park and not far from a very busy night market is the swimming pool I frequent. I go there both for swimming and to watch the parkouracle competitions.
To get to the pool from the wine bar you’ll need to pass through the night market. This means dodging the pedestrians, bicycles, motor scooters and cars which - despite its name - seem to descend on the market at all hours. On the way through you’ll pass by stalls and restaurants selling so many different foods it’s impossible to list them all.
Dumplings, beef noodles, baked sweet potato, gua bao, oyster omelettes, fish ball soup, shaved ice and other Taiwan delicacies are sold as well as stinky tofu, the smell of which permeates the area like a just-opened jar of vegemite.
Depending on the time of day, your arrival at the pool might coincide with that of the garbage and recycling trucks whose approach is heralded by the playing of Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska’s A Maiden's Prayer.
Amongst the people who are there to dispose of their household waste, you might see some people standing beside piles of sodden cardboard. When the recycling truck arrives they’ll load it with the sodden cardboard and collect any dry cardboard from the truck.
The cardboard is a form of eco-friendly waterproof corrugated board which in various shapes and sizes is discarded by one of the beverage companies the trucks have been to earlier in their round.
The pool’s somewhat faded art-deco facade is partly hidden by metal siding additions and the use of the forecourt as both a parking area for motor scooters and bicycles and as a place for making boats and storing cardboard, cardboard boats and boat-making equipment. On parkouracle competition days this area is extremely busy with people folding and shaping eco-cardboard into the parkouracles used in the boating competition. Post-competition it then becomes a storage area for any parkouracle boats that have become too sodden for further use.
Behind the facade and the changing rooms is the pool itself. It was not a beneficiary of the same architectural attention that the facade or even the changing rooms received. The bottom and sides of the pool have been roughly painted and the lane-lines hand-drawn. The tiered seating is also hand-painted concrete and the pool itself is covered with a cheap metal roof and acrylic siding on two sides. A third side is formed by the changing room area and the other side has been left open. There are clusters of bonsai and small flowering plants at points around the sides of the pool.
The open side of the pool adjoins the next door school's playing area and it is not uncommon to see some of the older students climbing up on each other’s backs in order to peer into the pool and admire some of the swimmers. Some also use the opportunity to watch the movie playing against the changing room wall.
It has been rumoured that when the pool is closed, some people secretly enter the pool this way and, in the semi-dark with only the light of nearby street lamps or the moon, clandestinely swim or paddle parkouracles.
The pool’s staff do more than just provide basic receptionist and lifeguard duties. One of the lifeguards brings Tens electrode pads to the pool and helps parkouracle competitors massage stretched muscles, another assists with the film showing and another officiates during the parkouracle competitions.
At the pool it’s not uncommon to see the wine bar owner. She is one of the many Taiwanese who can’t swim but she is attracted by the ambience of the pool. For despite - or perhaps because of - the mismatch of architecture, the piles of cardboard and the boat-making activity in the forecourt, the pool has a homely, welcoming feel about it and is very popular with locals.
On non-competition days the bar owner plays the erhu while seated on the topmost row of the tiered seating. From there the sonorous sounds permeate the pool surrounds to the pleasure of the non-swimming audience - the lifeguards, pool attendants, the occasional sunbather, the students peering over the unenclosed wall, spectators, dogs in prams and the son of one of the lifeguards who sits beside the wine bar owner, adopting the same pose, but reading a book.
The wine bar owner provides him - and any other children interested - with reading material. This is always an edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass which she brings with her from the wine-bar. While they read she plays the erhu and sings songs from one of those books. She sometimes also sings songs inspired by the books such as White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and I Am The Walrus by the Beatles.
When she sings the Jabberwocky one of the life-guards acts out the song. Some children are frightened by such lines as “One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!” so in anticipation, the wine-bar owner brings bags of Australian liquorice and doles out a few pieces of liquorice to any tearful child. Sometimes, with a smile, she gives them a Vegemite sandwich.
Because the pool can become very crowded in summer, the wine bar owner, with assistance from one of the lifeguards, nowadays projects episodes of Skippy the bush kangaroo onto the back of the changing rooms. Children sit on the tiered seating to watch which decreases pressure on the pool for a while. She hopes to show the 1972 film version Alice's Adventures in Wonderland but has yet to obtain a copy.
The dogs of the pool’s patrons usually sit in the higher tiers of the seating area or in their prams adjacent to the pool. Though very few if any of the dogs bark or make any noise there is one though that gives a slight but noticeable howl when its owner effects a particularly good tumble-turn at one end of the pool. It’s become such a feature of pool-life that some of the people not swimming, including any peering over the wall call out 加油 (jiāyóu）- meaning “come on” or “go for it” - in unison with the dog’s howl.
An unusual custom at this pool is that some people swim around the pool rather than swim laps up and down the pool. It’s not uncommon for swimmers to bump into each other when one is swimming laps and the other circles. Another unusual custom - now banned - was that parkour was allowed in the pool during swimming hours.
At one time a parkour jumper [correctly called a traceur or traceuse depending on the person’s sex] had timed a jump from the top of the seating tier into the pool to avoid people swimming lengths. The jumper had not, though, accounted for the one person swimming around the pool.
The jumper spied the swimmer at the last millisecond and managed to change both trajectory and plan and instead of landing on the swimmer bounced over to the desk used by one of the lifeguards, landed amongst the lifeguard’s lunch and then bounced through an open doorway into the school grounds where, coincidentally, a trampoline had been set up. The jumper then was able to jump onto the trampoline and from that up to the top of the wall on the open side and from there into the water.
Parkour as a standalone activity was then banned but after some imaginative thinking by patrons and pool staff was incorporated into the activity which is now known in English as a Parkouracle - a portmanteau word from parkour and coracle. In Mandarin it’s called 跑酷越艇 pǎo kù yuè tǐng which is a portmanteau word from the Mandarin for parkour, Vietnamese and boat. Sometimes it's just expressed as 跑艇 pǎo tǐng.
This activity has brought together existing elements of the pool culture - swimming, parkour, music and film and the dogs - and so has involved a lot more people than the other activities such as octopush might have. To these have been added a type of boat which allows non-swimmers to participate in activities at the pool.
The design chosen for the boats is based on the Vietnamese basket boat. It’s a circular-shaped boat originally made of bamboo and is powered by one person with one paddle. They are very difficult to overturn and so are safe for non-swimmers to use.
At this pool the coracles and paddles are all made of the recycled waterproof corrugated board collected from the recycling truck and in order to fit in the pool, have a strictly-enforced radius of one metre. Enough for one rower, a dog and a parkour participant.
The rules of boat design include that no glue and nothing other than recyclable paper-based products can be used in the creation of the boats. Consequently making a boat is almost an exercise in origami.
A Parkouracle competition involves teams comprising a coracle with paddler and dog and a number of parkour participants. That last number might vary depending on the availability of participants on the day but every team will consist of an equal number of participants. The dog assumes the manner of the flagcatcher in a dragon boat, sitting forward of the paddler.
This signal for the start of the first race in the day’s coracle competition - the point at which point the parkour participants begin their movements - is when the wine-bar owner, from the topmost tiers of the seating, commences to play the erhu. At about the same time one of the life-guards starts to project Celine and Julie go boating onto the changing room wall.
Each parkour team performs the same sets of movements but the order is chosen by lot. The moves vary from quite simple to a very complex series of moves but the final move in the sequence, if all is performed correctly, will see the participant land in a predetermined spot in the pool. Exactly when depends on the number and nature of moves in the selected sequence.
When the participant lands in the pool the team’s parkouracle races from it’s set location on the opposite side of the pool and paddles as fast as possible to retrieve and carry the player to the side of the pool that the boat departed from. To be carried to the other side the player must get in the boat but can only do so if first tapped on the head by the boat's dog.
Once deposited on the side of the pool the boat can then leave to collect another player provided there is one in the water. If not, the boat cannot depart.
As the participants progress their moves children will call out a line from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass. These might include such lines as You are old Father William if the participant has even a shred of grey hair, Can you walk a little faster if the participant seems unduly slow, or, for the same reason, slithy toves did gyre and gimble. Speak roughly to your little boy might be called out if the flagcatcher dog doesn't manage to tap a player on the head or a boat is slow to reach a player.
The race ends when all parkour participants have completed their moves and been collected. The winning team is the team which collected all it’s parkour participants in the shortest amount of time.
On any one day there is usually a series of races with the finish of Celine and Julie go boating marking the end of the day’s races. At this point - as the film’s credits roll - the dog which howls, howls and all the participants, the spectators in the pool area and any looking over the wall all howl in unison.
The wine bar owner then gives a prize to the winning team. It’s invariably an edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass and invariably over the course of the next week somebody surreptitiously returns it to the wine bar.
The wine bar owner also gives the children a few pieces of liquorice and sometimes a pink musk stick and the winning coracle gives them free rides. The children, usually still eating liquorice or musk sticks, then have their pictures taken with the winning coracle team members.
By the time the competition ends, some boats will be unusable having become misshapen through hitting the side of the pool or other boats or by having become water-logged. These remains are loaded onto the recycling truck when it next passes by.
Should you wish to see an event, timetables for the Parkouracle events are usually posted on the Kaohsiung City’s cultural activities website along with video highlights of previous competitions.
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