The older you get, the more unpredictable life becomes, and, strangely, the more wonderful it seems. You never know what will happen in the next moment. For more than forty years, for instance, I never expected that I, someone most uncomfortable with caterpillars, would one day develop an interest in them, and more to the point, would enthusiastically take up rearing them! 

In order to obtain my supply of caterpillars, I make trips to specific sites not too far from home to observe and catch them. In this way, for two or three months, I have been hanging out in a ‘wild’ zone adjacent to the hills and lakes of the city of Taipei. In the peak season for caterpillars, every time you enter this zone there is almost too much for your eyes to take in. You emerge with a new load of caterpillars, often in less than half an hour, so that there are constantly ten to twenty caterpillars growing at home. Naturally, as you are looking for caterpillars you can’t help encountering moths or butterflies, the adult forms of caterpillars. You won’t miss arthropods such as spiders and centipedes either. And the birds, of course; the lot. To raise caterpillars you have to learn about what they eat: a herbivorous diet. So, you need to learn about plants, too. In this way, every day there is new discovery, as well as new problems. Each day, I study under my teacher: nature; the only tuition fee is curiosity and perseverance. Like an earnest primary pupil, I report punctually to school.

Even now, when I report for duty in a country lane through lakes and hills, I attract people’s attention from time to time; and judging from the look in their eyes, I seem strange. 

I must be strange; after all, who has ever come across a woman catching caterpillars? But this is not what those expressions – mainly in the eyes of men – truly mean, because these men don’t necessarily know what I’m doing. Rather, what intrigues them is my trespassing on a men’s zone, and alone at that. But while they challenge the legitimacy of my existence here, I, in fact, am as surprised by their presence as they are by mine: how come you don’t have to work? And the query is not without irony: who says that this zone belongs to you men alone?  

It’s true that most of the people who come here are men, and most of them are anglers. There are some who gather here to gamble: in a pop-up gambling den in a small temple, on lottery games or dice. Once in a while women show up on this not-so-quiet country trail, but mainly to go for a stroll or for exercises, with their husbands or lovers. Some accompany their boyfriends on their fishing trips. This last group of women is, to me, most pitiable, as their visit is sacrificial more than pleasurable. 

I remember one particular instance. On an excessively hot day in June, when the sun was about to set in the west, I hurriedly finished my observation duty, and, besieged by fierce mosquitoes, dragged my sweat-soaked body along the path to escape the heat. I saw a young woman on my way, standing by a motorcycle and scowling miserably at a man fishing by the lake, pleading, ‘No more fishing, please; let’s go, okay? You said only ten more minutes, but it’s been more than half an hour! The mosquitoes are biting me to death. I’m done here. No more fishing, let’s hurry up and go . . .’ She started putting on the man’s raincoat to defend herself against the mosquitoes. Just looking at her new armour was enough to make me swelter and melt, and yet, from beginning to end, the man didn’t utter a single word.

Apart from those mentioned, there is another group of women who come here. They are quite different in that they bring their children or even the whole family to the lakeside to have barbecues and play. A lot of them are indigenous women. In short, there are rarely any women strolling here alone.

The men’s surprise and disquiet at finding me here is therefore understandable. Usually the reactions take several forms. Some, mostly elderly men, will gently enquire, ‘Are you collecting herbs?’ or ‘What are you looking for?’ The younger ones will express their curiosity more bluntly: ‘Is Miss looking for something? Need some help?’ And my answer usually disappoints them. Some even go on to ask where I work or where I live, meaning: ‘What are you doing here instead of going to work? Are you a bit lonely and needing a friend?’ The most unpleasant kind is the plainly rude man who stands there staring at you for quite some time, then walks away shaking his head, and then turns back to look at you a few more times, before murmuring a few words as though he had just met a lunatic. However, in general, these reactions don’t stop me from what I do, except by distracting me to argue against them in my head. This, though, prompts me to think of an issue that I have been pondering for a long time: women’s space.

If humanity’s cultural arena has already been divided into the public domain (outside home) and the private domain (inside home), and all the while men consider the public domain their own territory and the private, women’s, how should we define the zone of nature? In nature, which parts belong to men and which parts to women? Or is it that nature, being outside of home, is a public domain and therefore belongs to men? Whichever way we look at it, I have personally tested the boundary and my conclusion is: a woman in nature, as long as her actions do not involve any implication of power, and even without the company of men which has unofficially been accepted as a permit, still enjoys her freedom for the time being – even though this freedom may sometimes be challenged by the gaze of men.

Taipei, March 2000

Wang Rei-shang is an academic, translator, and nature writer who has written extensively on ecology and nature. She holds a degree in philosophy from the National Taiwan University and a masters in anthropology from Ohio State University.