This is kind of unintentionally ironic to post this in the “living in Taiwan” category, I suppose, but it’s been bothering me more and more the last couple days, and I don’t know where else to put it.
On May 6, I was in Danshui, and while I was walking near the Starbuck’s up the way, the one alongside the water rather than the one right next to the MRT, I half-noticed a zodiac boat (if that’s the right term for it) pulling up to the boat-ramp beach thing from the water. (As you can see, I’m not nautical-minded).
I looked again, and two guys wearing black wet suits jumped out, and they had Chinese writing (xiao fang something or other) on the back–something to do with rescue, I take it. They were pretty exhausted and lugging out something big and heavy. It turned out it was a body. His pants were ripped down and his back was exposed, but I think he was still wearing underpants. I couldn’t see his face because of the way they were carrying him. He looked heavy-set and his skin was pale.
They dropped him face down on the ground and he didn’t budge. My eyes were glued to him, but I looked around to see everybody else’s reaction, and although there were a lot of people around, it seemed like nobody else noticed what was going on. The divers threw an uninflated lifejacket or something over the back of his legs, which struck me as rather decent of them, and I suppose it was about then I decided that he was definitely dead.
Then I heard a woman slightly behind me start to wail, and I decided that that was probably my signal to move on. There was nothing that could be done to help, and I felt slightly embarrassed about staring.
So, I went to brunch (naturally), and when I came back a couple hours later, the body was still there, but now he was on his back and covered with a white sheet and a sign in Chinese which I didn’t bother to read. There was yellow tape around the boat ramp area, but other than that, everything was normal. That space behind the boat ramp was filled with tourists and performers, etc. There were no police visible, although near a coast guard station (that’s how I think of it), there was a guy in orange who appeared to be looking out over the water. The divers were taking a break further down the Danshui promenade I noticed on my way back to the MRT station later; I only noticed them, because they were still wearing their wet suits.
As an aside, I had noticed earlier that the boats on the Danshui River were throwing confetti-like piece of paper that appeared silver and white into the air when they crossed back and forth to Bali. I thought that it had something to do with the Buddha’s birthday celebration that weekend, but then I wondered if it had something to do with the corpse and ghosts, etc.
Anyway, to get to the point, there was a largish, dark crimson spot on the sheet over the man’s forehead (as it appeared to me) and there was a slightly lighter but thick line of blood running along down the sheet to the ground. It’s 10 days later and all from memory, so take it for what it’s worth, but I was surprised at how much blood there was. And, that the body was lying under the sun for a couple hours in a tourist area seemingly unattended.
What bothered me originally was cause of death. Why did he have a gash and was it because he was murdered? The back of his head was completely intact. Did he hit his head on something and drown? Did he hit his head when the rescuers dropped him face down onto the beach? But, I think I really missed what mattered. What has been bothering me is what I suspect might be bothering anybody who is reading this: was that guy really dead? I have watched enough CSI and so forth to know that dead people don’t bleed. But, then again, although I took a criminal forensics course a long, long time ago, I don’t know the first thing about that stuff. Perhaps something about bloated bodies and the heat would manage to push blood through an open wound on the forehead, even though he was on his back?
When I saw the body, too, the blood didn’t appear to be dried, but how long does it take it to dry on a sheet? The weather was sunny, breezy, and dry although not especially hot, as I recall.
I am hoping somebody will tell me that this was all perfectly normal for a corpse, because it makes me sick to think that that guy was dying on a beach in a tourist area while I stood there gawking and walking off an over-indulgent afternoon brunch.
