Hiragami's Box

By William Gentry

When Evan Underhill receives a mysterious music box in his flower arranging class, he has no idea what he has been charged with carrying out. Join Evan and Taylor on their various misadventures through the southern parts of Taiwan.

Evan left college in the United States to seek out adventure and work as an English as a second language teacher in the east. After teaching for a year in Japan he decides it is time to return to his home. However, a strange turn of events has led him to partaking in an Ikibana class where he is asked by the instructors father to carry a music box with a letter to its original owner in the southern city of Hengchun, Taiwan.

Evan meets his friend Taylor for one last adventure through the mountains, the sky and the sea. Taylor and Evan make their way south from Kaohsiung, and get into odd situations along the way. Evan has no idea what he is carrying back with him, nor the ramifications of his task. The box has a dark history, and Evan will find out its story upon delivering the box.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Gentry
• Release date: Oct 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301015993

William Gentry

I'm originally from Oklahoma City. I currently write travel articles for Costa Rica Monkey Tours, and for the Hotel Villas Playa Samara in Samara, Costa Rica. I currently live in San Jose, Costa Rica.

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Hiragami's Box

By William Gentry

Copyright 2013 William Gentry

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1: A Stranger Returns

Chapter 2: Revisiting The Ikibana Class While Dreaming

Chapter 3 To The Mountains, To The Sea

Chapter 4 Sailing On The Sky

Chapter 5 Touching Down At Sunset

Chapter 6 A Locals Bar

Chapter 7 A Fight Breaks Out

Chapter 8 The Last Encounter (Unconscious)

Chapter 9 Waking Under A Palm Tree

Chapter 10 Around The Coast and To The City

Chapter 11 A Revelation

Chapter 12 Heading Back

Chapter 13 In The Terminal Lounge

Epilogue: A Tale of Two People

Evan Underhill A Brief History

The Life And Times of Izumi Hiragami

Pronunciations And Translation Guide

About The Author

Other Titles

Dedication

To my father. You are what you are, and I am what I am. And I love you.

Foreword

All of the characters in this book are fabricated, and the places and events are written in as a part of this fictitious story. A portion of the book is drawn from historical facts, and the life experiences of myself, William Gentry. Although the book is a work of fiction; much of the information concerning the occupation of Taiwan by Japan, and the culture of Taiwan is accurate or thereabouts.

The areas around Kenting and Ali Shan Mountain, in Taiwan were in fact places where many Japanese soldiers killed themselves after hearing that opposition forces were closing in on their encampments. The culture and people of Taiwan have been observed by myself for five years, and are the interpretation of those observations. The people of Taiwan are on the whole honest, hardworking and friendly. Taiwan, like any place on Earth, has good and bad people living in the country.

In Taiwan, I can recount at least a hundred times of leaving my keys in my motorcycle without noticing what I had done. After returning to the bike from being in a restaurant, store or someplace else, I always found my bike in the same place with the keys still in the ignition. This kind of situation I believe could be solely something that happens here, and is one of the reasons why many foreigners living here have coined the term, Only in Taiwan. I could be wrong about it being the only place where this happens, but I find it to be an exemplary phenomenon that shows the character of the people to some degree.

It is not that theft doesn't happen in Taiwan. For instance, you can take into account the following example. People it would seem are very likely to take several dishes of food in bags with them from weddings. I once attended a wedding for one of my coworkers from a school I worked at in Taiwan. There were local political candidates that got up to campaign at the wedding, which I found to be a completely random occurrence. In Taiwan, it is a regular thing for political candidates to campaign at large weddings without any prior knowledge of the people holding the wedding. There were at least three to four hundred people at the wedding, and the families seated around multiple round tables grabbed everything left on the table to take home. This is most likely not really considered theft by people in Taiwan.

Real theft in Taiwan happens on every level of society. It is not common in the more rural and less developed areas where I spent most of my time in Taiwan. With the buildup of a society, those left behind become subjects to their environment. It is a cruel truth everywhere, but it doesn’t mean that the educated masses aren’t subject to greed or corruption as well. Former president Chen Shui-bian provides a great example of political corruption, and general thievery. In the end a thief, is a thief, is a thief. If only the same kind of punishment were brought to bear on the political and corporate criminals in the United States as was done to Chen Shui Bian, but then again he might have just been a fall guy.

This book doesn't fully capture the entirety of life in Taiwan, but shows a perspective which is unique to this unique place. The majority of Taiwan's population occupies a large swath of land from the north to the south on the eastern side of the island. The complexity of life is multi-layered, and someone could write and probably has written tomes on the subject. The west coast and mountain region is mostly inhabited by indigenous people that someone could and probably has written tomes about.

Although my experience in Taiwan has been brief in relative terms, the impact of living in Taiwan has been immense. I have at times felt like an outsider, felt a certain kind of racism, felt an inherent welcoming attitude amongst its people in contrast and so much more. There are many contradictions in the small albeit stately island. I am sure you will find a little bit of the