A Nihilist's Guide to Sun Moon Lake

Our trip through Taiwan took us to Sun Moon Lake last month, one of the few places in Taiwan that I'd never actually visited. While mostly due to circumstance, I think there may have been in my lengthy reluctance to visit the place an element of my own contrarian nature - every Taiwanese who'd every mentioned the place did so in fairly gushing terms, so I worried it wouldn't live up to the hype. Furthermore, I'd often heard long-time western expats disparage the place as being overdeveloped, touristic, or simply damned with faint praise.
Several members of the latter group took the time to opine on my Facebook page about Sun Moon Lake, complaining of their own visits having been unsatisfactory due to over-development (which I found to be the case in some places, but overall easily escaped), questioning the tribal bona-fides of area merchants (said bona-fides seemed, well, bona fide in Ita Thao where we spent three nights), and talking the place down in general.
I suppose this was for the best, as it triggered my aforementioned contrarian nature in two ways:
First, I decided that I was going to absolutely love the place. This proved to be anything but a challenge, as Sun Moon Lake turned out to be the epitome of loveliness. Stephanie and I both wound up writing lengthy chapters about what we loved - and what we learned - during our stay in Sun Moon Lake, which we extended by an extra day. These chapters are currently being edited for our book, Formosa Moon.
Second, being a comedy writer, I decided to use the juxtaposition of being in an absolutely lovely setting and seeing comments disparaging the place on my fairly innocuous social media posts about the area to write some comedy.
I doubt the resulting essay - A Nihilist's Guide to Sun Moon Lake - will make it into Formosa Moon. We're already way over word count for Nantou, and anyway, the essay doesn't quite fit the overall theme of the book. If it does, I'm going to do everything in my power to have the story read in the audio book version by Werner Herzog. Which is how I suggest you read it.
Without further ado…
A Nihilist's Guide to Sun Moon Lake
Sun Moon Lake: Dreary and Inevitable
Driving through the mountains and valleys of Nantou County, we pass through towns and villages scarred by natural catastrophe, stopping to visit a plaza containing two ornate houses of worship. The first had been destroyed in an earthquake, and the second was built afterwards to house idols rescued from the first. Both are without meaning.
In a nearby market, villagers sell local fruits, teas and tonics for health, unaware of the futility of their industry for buyer and seller alike. After brief repast, we drive to the lake itself.
Thought by some to be among the most beautiful spots in Taiwan, Sun Moon Lake was formed by a cataclysmic strike coming without warning from the endless and indifferent void of space. The blow likely as not destroyed most of the island's life at the moment of impact, itself a mercy.
Over millennia, the crater filled with water and slowly trees and plants grew around the damp hole. At some point, humans arrived and thought the place pretty. Then as now, this was merely a mental self-preservation construct designed as distraction from existence's ultimate futility for whatever time it takes to ensure copulation, thus ensuring biological continuation of the ghastly charade. These days, there are many hotels diminishing the lake's beauty while simultaneously providing a place for human sexual encounters. Contemporary social mores require such encounters be conducted indoors. 
Why is this?
We stop to visit the Wenwu temple overlooking the lake, inside of which ornate statues represent various folk deities. Local people pray to these idols, but their prayers go unheard. God is dead. On the third level is a temple constructed to honor the sage Confucius, who died alone as do all men. In the attached gift shop, foodstuffs can be purchased.
On opposite sides of the lake lie two collections of buildings, clustered in futility, seeking solace in number. We head to the smaller of these for shelter from the rapidly approaching night, pausing to watch from the pier extending timidly over the water the setting of the sun. The same star that gives our planet life will inevitably destroy it. This is inescapable fact.
Now it is time for evening sustenance.
There are many restaurants, but we choose instead to eat smaller items of foodstuffs from vendors who have set up small stalls in the alleys and streets of the villages. Village vendors wear clothing signifying belonging to the local tribal group, whose ancestors came to the area before those of the island's current-dominant culture arrived in response to a multitude of political and social pressures in their own homeland, quickly exchanging the mantle of oppressed for oppressor. If the vendors are aware of various theories stating that their ancestors played a similar role with a previous indigenous group, the very existence of which is now lost forever, they make no mention of it. We who enjoy sticks of pork grilled over flame despite our own awareness of the sentience of pigs can hardly judge.
For desert, we eat shaved ice served with crushed fruit, served to us in a shop in which a young girl happens to be sitting stroking a pet cat. In the natural course of things, both cat and girl will die, yet if the cat outlives the girl it will be considered tragic.
Why?
We return to our hotel room to bathe and though procreation is not our goal, we copulate. 
Despite the presence of road and futility of man's every endeavor, tomorrow we will take a boat across the lake.

~ Fin ~