Two days ago, I was up in the hills above Pingtung, at the Mountaineering Story House (登山故事館), in Taiwu 泰武 township. The Story House is a museum of mountaineering, run by Taiwan’s famous mountaineer Shào Dìngguó (邵定國), who usually goes by the name Shan Yang (山羊), which means Mountain Goat.
It was an unexpected visit. That morning, I had been down at the foot of the mountains in nearby Zhutian, where I was attending an event run at the Taimei Children’s Library. The event was a lecture given by one of my Burmese students from Parami University. She was talking about the history of children’s literature in Burma / Myanmar, and introducing a storytelling project that she runs, working with some of the country’s most educationally disadvantaged children. It was a fascinating and deeply impressive talk.
The lecture wound up around lunchtime. We ate together, a small group of friends, and after lunch, we all decided to take a trip up the mountain. Our friends from the Taimei children’s library called ahead, and when we arrived, Mr. Mountain Goat and his wife were there to welcome us. They were incredibly gracious hosts. We drank home-roasted coffee, snacked on tree grapes, and talked. The conversation was wide-ranging, from Taiwan and Myanmar, to mountaineering, to storytelling, to philosophy. We talked about Mengzi, Laozi and Confucius (who is said to have claimed, mysteriously, that “the humane take delight in mountains, the wise take delight in water” 仁者樂山，智者樂水). And we talked about the loss of indigenous traditions of philosophy in Taiwan — Mr. Mountain Goat’s wife is indigenous Paiwan, and she told me that while she still honours the mountain god, when it comes to philosophy, her ancestral tradition is broken, so for this, she goes to the Chinese classical tradition instead.
I am not a mountaineer — I like to contemplate mountains, and sometimes, if the path is easy, I like to stroll among them. But I’m not really a scaler of peaks. Nevertheless, that afternoon in the Mountaineering Story House — with its beautiful views, warm friendship, wonderful conversation, and strong coffee — made for heady stuff. We talked, and joked, and cooked up plans for the future, and there was something magical and wonderful about being there.
But then, some time in the afternoon, news started to filter through about the earthquake in Myanmar. My student’s phone started to buzz, as did mine. We checked online to see what was happening. The earthquake, by all accounts, was a big one, but the initial reports were vague and confused. For the rest of the afternoon, we kept checking to see the news as it came in, to see how our friends and colleagues were doing.
Over the couple of days since then, the news from Myanmar has only got worse. The extent of the damage, and the loss of life, is still not clear. But already, I know that many of my students, colleagues and friends have been directly affected. Some have lost homes or loved ones, and some students are still not contactable. Meanwhile, the regime has called for international aid, but there is no confidence that any aid received by Myanmar’s ruling junta will go to those who need it. Instead, it may be diverted to help fuel the regime’s relentlessly brutal campaign against Myanmar’s own people.
Fortunately, there are smaller initiatives working directly with communities affected by the earthquake. If you are interested in helping out, consider donating to Parami University’s emergency fund to help staff and students in the affected areas. And the Better Burma campaign is also a reliable way of getting funds to those who need it most.
But as I continue to absorb the news, it seems to me that there’s also something about the earthquake in Myanmar that brings home again the sheer instability of the world. I don’t want to turn the earthquake into a metaphor. It is a real, and appalling event, one that has already had an enormous impact on my students, colleagues and friends. But it is also worth remembering that this is not just a natural disaster. It is also a political one. Myanmar’s fractured and failing infrastructure is a symptom of shockingly poor governance — what has been, since the coup of 2021, at best a profound indifference to human well-being, and at worst, a sustained campaign of active cruelty. When disasters such as this hit, good governance can mitigate the harms and the loss of life. But poor governance multiplies them exponentially.
Looking further afield, it’s hard not to feel a growing despair at the normalisation of bad governance, and its attendant cruelties, elsewhere in the world. In particular, it’s difficult to watch the horror that is unfolding in the US — as Trump’s odious, thuggish regime is rapidly dismantling the systems and institutions that are put in place to protect us all, sending the world teetering towards ever greater insecurity.
We are living through terrible and unstable times. But for all this, I have faith in the power of community. For the last few days, I’ve been exchanging messages from students and colleagues affected by the earthquake. I’ve been receiving messages from concerned friends elsewhere in the world. I’ve seen people sharing grassroots funding campaigns. I’ve watched videos of students in the wreckage in Mandalay, sharing tea-leaf salad and friendship. My friends in Zhutian have been in touch to say that they have shared the Parami fundraising appeal. And I find myself thinking back to two days ago, up at the Mountaineering Story Museum, just before the news hit. When I recall this sense of fellowship, openness, curiosity, kindness and community, I realise that these things are not trivial. They are the stuff of life. They are the brazier of our common humanity where we come to warm ourselves. And when institutions fail (whether by accident or by design), they are our best hope.
The other day, before the earthquake, I was exchanging emails with a friend about the horror of what is happening in the US, and how it was hard not to slip into despair. I shared with her a passage that I love, taken from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It’s a passage I return to a lot. Marco Polo is talking to Kublai Khan about the infernal city, to which, “in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us.” Polo replies:
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
If you want to make a little more space, in this current inferno, here’s that link again. Any donations you make will go to support Parami’s students, staff and communities in these difficult times. Myanmar Earthquake Emergency Fund.
