The white lighthouse had nothing deeply mysterious about it. Disarmingly elegant, it stood tall in imposing splendor on the end of a long arm of a breakwater that extended far into the Hualien harbor. The people who originally designed this lighthouse were truly of remarkable ingenuity, for they thought to construct it on the pointed tail of the breakwater. I had already gotten used to the sight of the white lighthouse -- actually, I only looked on it with concentration -- and was under the impression that all lighthouses must have been placed atop breakwaters. This was the only way for them to look good. But these years I've taken some trips, only to discover that the majority of lighthouses are situated on prominent points in the vicinity. They rely on mountains that they may rise aloft. They come with a little room attached, to serve the lighthouse superintendent with a place to live. Having seen the other lighthouses, all the more did Hualien's white lighthouse frequently produce in me feelings of the lovelorn traveler. I felt that its color and bearing and the way it is situated were all special, making it tops in the world. Although there were not more than a few lighthouses to compare with the loneliness with which it stood at the far extremity of the breakwater, yet Hualien's white lighthouse was correct, and all of the other lighthouses in the world could not help being wrong.

Everyone who was born and raised in Hualien naturally knew that there was a lighthouse in the harbor, and that when you mentioned it, for certain you were to call it "the white lighthouse." There was nobody who called it "the lighthouse." Perhaps this was because we had another "red lighthouse," and confusion was not to be permitted. Outsiders were unaware of this, and to heck with it, call it "lighthouse." There were even some tourist pamphlets that compounded the error, a cause for pain. Actually, in Hualien, if you were to say, "Right outside Hualien Middle School is the lighthouse," people could immediately determine that you were a guest from outside lacking acquaintance with the local custom. This was a bit amusing. But in situations generally prevailing, were you to use Mandarin Chinese to say, "Right outside Hualien Middle School is the lighthouse," our negative reaction would be rather mild, because this is the way all the teachers who had taught us Mandarin had said it. If you were to use Taiwanese with a Taipei or Kaohsiung accent, saying "Right outside Hualien Middle School is the lighthouse," we'd surely be stealing laughs at you. Nevertheless, the white lighthouse does in fact lie outside the Hualien Middle School upon the Pacific Ocean. When we were going to elementary school, we felt that the harbor was far, not a place to which one could easily go over and play. The white lighthouse was far away, as was the Hualien Middle School. But if you went east from downtown Hualien, crossed over the railway, and bounded over the breakwater -- that is, if you were not whistled to a stop by the soldier standing sentry you would reach the shoals. Standing on the strand, you could also see the white lighthouse out beyond the crashing of the emerald waves, with nothing to limit the elegance and beauty. Look to the south, and there was the starting point of the mountain range that formed the Taidong coast, its color of fresh green. The shoals were mostly made up of pebbles, and it was only as you approached the swirling waters that there was white sand. Aside from the occasional patrols of the coastal defense soldiers, there were only the people out to catch fish fry. Returning your gaze to Hualien, it lay within the breakwater. No wonder that on a winter's night, no matter how you might try to bury your head in the covers, you could still hear the angry roar of the Pacific Ocean. At times like this, when you thought of the white lighthouse standing all alone in the middle of those waves, it could not help but give rise to wild imaginings. I would guess that any child who grew up in Hualien had probably had all kinds of feelings regarding the white lighthouse. These feelings were not readily given to definitive description, but with imaginative powers matching the breadth of the ocean and the sky, imaginative powers striking with all the power of a storm, and imaginative powers putting out light, a lot still came from our observations of it, and our love for it.

When viewed from the Hualien Middle School, you suddenly got the feeling that it had gotten much bigger. Excitedly did the first-year school boy take himself off to the middle school by the sea. He felt that the wall at the school entrance and the hoary old cedars and banyans behind the wall represented tradition and pride -- during the Japanese period this middle school was call "Karenko Middle School" -- and when looking down the corridor past row after row of Japanese-style classrooms, the big ocean lay at the end, its royal blue framed around on all sides. The little school boy naturally could not restrain himself from walking toward the framed blue and the great wide open. With the eminent white lighthouse right before our eyes, we lay upon the wall looking up at the vast expanse of the clear sky, at the emerald waves beyond measure, and at the white waves that converged one after another at the foot of the lighthouse, never resting. Sometimes the breakers reached such a height that they would pound upon the top of the breakwater, while the lighthouse stood there all by itself, not moved in the least. Once I started going to middle school, I learned that the white lighthouse was not a fairy in some childhood fantasy, but was a mammoth and brave building. We grew up together with the lighthouse.

In the six years of middle school, the higher your grade, the closer your classroom got to the ocean. When you reached the third grade -- it's up to you whether you believe it or not -- the classroom was right beside the ocean. From whatever vantage point in our classroom, so long as you looked to the right, there was nothing but ocean outside the window, and from the ocean surface stood tall and erect the eternal white lighthouse. I don't know what my other classmates felt about this study environment, but while I was in the classroom, the time I spent gazing at the ocean was probably not less than the time listening to the lesson. I'd look at the water, look at the boats, look at the sky, and look at the white lighthouse. It was not easy to skip class in those middle school years, but I think it was not only once that I "escaped" pure and simple, most likely owing to some emotional spat or perhaps adolescent troubles, and I was unable to continue to sit there like an idiot in class, or like some duck listening to its master thunder away. But sometimes I also played truant under the spell of the sea. It was some kind of call that could not be resisted, inciting me to abscond over the wall, and to dash at high speed down the road, slide down the slope, cross the tracks, and roll down to the clean strand, even taking myself to the opposite breakwater -- that is, if I was not discovered by the soldier standing sentry -- walking all the way to the end of the breakwater, there to sit and gaze at the white lighthouse opposite, separated by a narrow strip of water. It was at this moment that the courageous countenance of the white lighthouse was most imposing, even to the point of being a little overbearing in its arrogance. It was both a little unfamiliar and a little familiar. The poet Chen Li is also a graduate of Hualien Middle School, and after finishing university went back there to teach. Not too long ago he wrote a poem, entitled "The Classroom on the Coast," and it turns out that many of his students were also caught by the spell of the ocean water and breakers' spray, themselves crossing the tracks and walking to the lighthouse. I don't know how people who were teachers handled this matter, but in the past I had been reprimanded for looking at the ocean, so if I were a teacher, I too would scold. But, leaving scoldings to the scolders, the sea just had to be seen!

So all the more, so all the more we would not even have dreamed of it, there would come a day when the white lighthouse would be destroyed with a single blast.

I learned the news of the white lighthouse from reading the paper. But so impassioned was the reporter when venting rage over the foul fate of the white lighthouse, that the date of the deed was never explained. But by looking at the photograph I was able to speculate that, based on the deep blue of the sea and the drifting white clouds, it looked to be like Hualien in the summer. So I discovered that it had taken place not too long before, and maybe even very recently. The charmingly beautiful, grand and imposing white lighthouse had been blasted to ruins, but I still could not find out the date of its fall, so was unable to pay my last respects. My pain can be imagined. The newspaper said that the reason that the white lighthouse had to go was because the harbor was to be expanded, and the original breakwater would then be a restriction on the channel. It seemed that it had to somehow be moved out of the way. So this is how it was that the white lighthouse which had stood erect on the breakwater for half a century had to first take the fall before construction work could proceed. It was said that with the leaving of the white lighthouse, a bigger and taller one would take its place. I had thought that light houses were to be found not on hillocks but on jetty-points, where they would provide a most beautiful spectacle for the whole world to see. Now I discovered that it was precisely its special location that brought on its foul fate -- destruction.

White lighthouse, white lighthouse, had you known that such as this was to befall you, you would have sighed just as I have. Of course your existence was intended to illuminate our harbor, and to indicate our harbor's location, and, by your bright indicator to the ships out on the dark ocean, lead them as they beat the waves back home. And now, for the sake of our harbor, you are brought crashing down to dirt. After waiting for the expansion of the harbor and deepening of the berths, then we will witness the other lighthouse, bigger and taller, that will come to replace you -- what a hopeless sacrifice! I believe that you are fully imbued with nimbleness, so do not make frightful complaint. I can only manage to hope that humanity can be like you too -- like you harboring nimbleness -- and will not choose to dump you into the freezing-cold sea. I hope that they will remove you to some rocks facing the sea, plant coir palms all around you, with a pleasant little path of marble and a carpet of green, green grass. And even if your light does not shine forth again, you may still stand on Hualien's coast, and, as in the fifty years just past, let us admire you from a different perspective. And, just as before, just as we did when we were little, we will love you and worship you. And when we walk up to your side, we will not make a big ruckus, so as to better let you quietly rest.

First published in 1982.