How do we experience the sun?
The Huesio Geological Museum houses two distinct suns, one is the “Sun of linguistics” that speaks to Melanie, an English teacher on Mactan Island; the other is the “Sun of Insomnia” that forms a bond with Fish, a villager in Hué-sio-tsng (Burning Village).
Since March 2020, the Mactan Island in the Philippines, a paradise for English-language learners, has been placed on lockdown owing to COVID-19 outbreak, and J J SCHOOL (anonymous) is one of the few foreign-funded schools that remains operational. With the intention of meeting the huge demand for distance learning during a global pandemic, J J SCHOOL manages to achieve effective collective actions by implementing comprehensive on-campus quarantines and surveillance systems, and by continuously conducting mass recruitment of unemployed teachers.
Being one of thousands of teachers labouring in this gigantic language-learning apparatus on Mactan Island, Melanie hasn’t been able to step out of the school gate ever since the lockdown started in March 2020. In fact, from dawn to midnight, she works on the computer to teach English to students from China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other countries as well as keep them company in a way. Back in the day, J J SCHOOL was famous for its scenic beauty near the seashore and thus attracted more students to enroll; however, nowadays the most important thing for Melanie is to lean out of the dormitory window to embrace the sunrise over the sea horizon at the beginning of the day, and to walk along the “tiny beach” on campus before sunset, despite the fact that the people she encounters, wherever she goes, are exhausted teachers wearing the same white uniforms with chest embroidery of the “JJ SCHOOL” seal logo.
Let’s return to the story that takes place in Changhua County, Taiwan. Fish is a villager of Hué-sio-tsng who has been suffered from obstructive sleep apnea for years, so, at this point, he has lost count of how many nights he has experienced insomnia. Having endured far too many sleepless nights over the past decades, he could barely distinguish between day and night. Yet, in the eyes of other villagers, Fish’s unique gait, standing posture and hand gesture resulting from physical fatigue became his signature look. Fish often sits on the floor in the living room, observing the changing positions of the sun in the sky over one day. Besides, he describes his “home” as an elaborate manifestation of the world that encompasses valleys, lakes and mountain ranges. When the sun finishes its daily journey, shining through the space between furniture; it also seems that Fish has completed a certain ritual to reconnect with nature, thereby recharging his batteries for a while.
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