Elisha Gray - The Wildest Man in Taichung

                                                   Elisha Gray

The Wildest Man in Taichung

Elisha Gray is one of the “wieners” in Taiwan. “Wieners,” as I like to call them, are “winners,” Taiwan English accent being what it is, and success being quite subjective here. He looks like a winner.

This writer understands what his friend, Thomas Watson, said when asked his feeling about a story I’d written about his friend: “I'm not sure if I agree with your concept of winners and losers, because I believe that everyone has the potential to be a winner with a bit of personal effort.  On the other hand, I love to support other writers and people who want to be involved in society. I don’t want to get involved though,” he explained. “I want to keep a low profile.”

Let me tell you the story of one person who is a ‘wiener’ because he gives as much to the people of Taiwan as he takes from the good people of Taiwan. His name is Elisha Gray.

Elisha isn’t the first person to try and bring Taiwan together in the Age of Aquarius. There was a local musician who created festivals to “bring the youth of Taiwan together” but he had fame in mind and political motives with fascist leanings; he exhorted security to arrest concert goers who climbed over fences to see his band play. And there was a British spy from China, Jacob Zhu, who misled youthful students of Taiwan University in Taipei against the World Trade Organization and created an anti-American movement, for China’s sake, clinging to defunct Chinese communism better than localism or independence for the wise islanders of Taiwan. They are both ‘losers’ in my book.

Elisha Gray is from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he was born in May 1974. He grew up playing hooky from school and hockey in the park instead. He graduated from a vocational institute in Guelph and studied marketing when he wasn’t studying women and having good times. He knew he wanted to specialize in having fun. While he was becoming interested in living, he was becoming interested in life, wild life.

Finding a job for someone with those specialties is difficult anywhere in the world, especially in neo-liberal North America with no full-time jobs and no security. By the turn of the century, Elisha was twenty-six years old. Why Elisha left Guelph is a mystery to me. Guelph is consistently rated as one of Canada’s best places to live. Guelph has been noted as having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country throughout the 2008–2012 global recession and has ranked at the bottom of Canada's crime severity list for the past five years.

 But it was becoming obvious to him that he had to go somewhere outside Ontario. The cold wind of the Canadian winter makes everyone think of the tropics and Elisha was no different. He had a spark for life and thinking about the tropics wasn’t enough; he had to go. So he got some cash together and took a plane to Hawai’i to live the life others had only imagined. He loved the beaches, drank beer and loved the women, but he wanted something more than having a wild life.  

He’d seen a TV show about Asia and was smitten with the fever to go east to continue his pursuit of love, and life. He returned to Ontario to go back to college, Mohawk Community, to get his TESOL teaching certification. There were teaching jobs in Taiwan, he’d heard. So in 2002, after graduating, her packed up his bags again and flew to Taiwan to meet up with his childhood friend, Thomas Watson. Tom had gone to Taiwan to seriously study Mandarin and to teach TESOL. There was a room in the boarding house where Thomas was living. Tom told him to come.

The beer was good, the women were better, and Elisha was great in Taichung, Taiwan where he found a niche in the expatriate community.

With his friend Tom, who anchored his parachute, he roamed Taichung finding pubs and pitching his entrepreneurial ideas for restaurants and clubs with Huan-Dan.com (a marketing firm he named and directed) and he made friends with the ladies he met on the job. He loved the easy wild life with them.

 “Bottoms Up” is the pub where expatriates of Taichung meet to share stories, get job tips, and a decent homemade pizza. Lisa Chu knows what to do with foreign brew lovers. She and her American husband, Tom Watson, had returned to Taiwan after their business in Hawai’i dried up with the economy. Elisha invested in his friend’s pub.

“What can I get you,” Lisa said as she ducked under the counter to go behind the bar. “We have a special on Buffalo wings; six for one hundred NT.”

“Are they hot? Are they from Buffalo?”

She responded to my wife in Mandarin.

“They’re not so hot but you can put pepper sauce on them. Try them, you’ll like them.”

“How big is the pizza?” my wife asked.

“About this big!” She held up her hands like she was holding an imaginary basketball. She looked over to me for approval. I nodded.

“Enough for one person,” my wife said with a serious smile. “Okay. We’ll try them and the pizza.”

 “Good. Beer too?” I nodded again and Ms. Chu handed us two bottles of Taiwan Beer Classic, ducked under the counter, and went into the back room kitchen to cook. My wife and I munched on the peanuts on the counter and watched a few seconds of American football on the TV screen there.

“I haven’t seen any wai-guo ren, yet. I wonder if Elisha is here or just left the t-shirts,” my wife said.

 The shirts were a gift for a 500NT donation to TaichungTAIL, the organization Elisha and Thomas had started to help stray dogs and cats on the mean streets of Taichung; Tom’s idea. I had donated $100 to the TaichungTAIL website from back in the states, enough for six t-shirts; we only asked for two in the e-mail I sent to Tom a few days earlier. He said he couldn’t make it but Elisha usually shows up at Bottoms Up after nine o’clock on Taichung Tails Fund Raiser night; 10% of the bill goes to the organization to help strays. Tom’s idea, too. Just then, an orange tabby walked past the door. We called as it casually walked on.

“Must be the pub’s cat.”

“A few come by; they live in the neighborhood,” she said overhearing us as she returned to behind the bar to chat with a foreigner who just walked in. “What a nice woman,” my wife whispered to me.

“Wonder if that’s Elisha,” I said when a short blond man walked up to the bar but I kind of knew he wasn’t, somehow. The man from Oz ordered a Fosters.

We were just finishing the last chicken wing when Elisha walked in.

“That’s him,” said Ms. Chu, but we kind of knew when he spotted us at the bar and smiled broadly.

“How did you like the pizza?” he said as he joined Ms. Chu behind the counter.

“It’s good. Real homemade taste,” I responded with gusto.”The beer was even better!” I went on, “You only give 10% of the profit to TaichungTAIL?”

“It works out well. We’ve had some good Thursday nights here. The weather’s been bad though,” he said as he ducked back under the counter. He went around to an adjoining dining area. He came back with three or four t-shirts in clear plastic casings.

“Which ones would you like?” He took out a colorful red and blue t-shirt. “This one is nice.”

“Yes. I’d like that one,” my wife said. “And I’ll take the gray with orange lettering.” It was the only extra large, anyway

And so we chatted, the seasoned ex-pat and the new ex-pat.

“You’re welcome to come to the animal sanctuary this Sunday,” he said as he popped open a can of Best beer. “We’ll meet here at Bottoms Up and take the van together.”

“Well, I don’t know if we can make it this Sunday,” I replied. We were supposed to be having dinner with my wife’s family Sunday evening.

“We go out there and bring gifts for the dogs and volunteers. Nice people out there. Hope you can come,” Elisha said sincerely.

 The charity felt real, and that was his message; TaichungTAIL was for-real and we were welcome as much as our donation. It was a great feeling being new in town, new in Taiwan, and meeting such a real nice person, no strings attached, no religion, no alcoholism, and no funny business.

“How is Lulu?” I asked. I had read about Reese on the Taichung/ TAIL website

“Lulu is doing great.” Lulu was brought to The Sanctuary, which is a shelter run by Seth McLick (founder of Animals Taiwan, Taiwan SPCA, and Taiwan Animals SOS). She is a mature, feral cat that been living in the Taichung Veterans Hospital/Tunghai University neighborhood for many years and has many litters.

“One day, she was hit by a car on Taichung Port Road. Some youngsters saw her in need, and blocked traffic until help could be found. It just so happened that Tom and Savanna of TaichungPAWS were in that traffic jam. Tom jumped out with a Costco bag and scooped up the dazed Lulu. We rushed her to the National Vet Hospital on Fu- Ke Road where she received emergency treatment.” Elisha went on like he was talking about a human being!

”There was immediate response to our request for help. Another customer in the hospital gave a small, anonymous donation to help her out. That was followed by many other donations to cover her bill. Donations came from Taichung, other parts of Taiwan, and even the USA. Lulu was able to receive treatment for her injuries (a fractured jaw with missing teeth) and able to recover in the vet. Once she had recovered from her injuries, she was able to be spayed and vaccinated.”

My wife and I sat and listened as Elisha poured out his heart and poured himself a beer.

“Because she had been away from her territory, we were worried that she would not be able to go back to her neighborhood. We were also concerned that she might need a special diet because of her still-recovering jaw. Tom placed her at the Sanctuary. He said they would give her a safe place to live for as long as she needed. A generous friend of ours offered to pick her up in Taichung and take her to the Sanctuary. There are other animals in need like her.” He looked at me and my wife.”Now she is safe and comfortable. Thanks so much to everyone who helped out to make life better for Lulu!” Elisha seemed relieved that Lulu was okay; like a recovering friend.

That’s why Elisha is a ‘wiener’ in Taiwan; for all the friends and volunteers he has brought together. He’s not wasting his life only working, studying, or teaching like so many other displaced foreigners here. He’s not high and mighty sitting in some office that he’s not qualified for. Elisha is exactly qualified for what he is: a protector of his wild life in Taiwan.

Along with Savanna Sawyer, the founder and website designer of TaichungTAIL, and Thomas Watson who just finished his dissertation on Volunteerism in Taiwan. They have taken Taiwan by the horns and brought community involvement to foreigners and natives alike. They have brought love and dedication to neglected dogs and cats that roam the busy scooter-choked streets of Taiwan, all from a Facebook page and a pub.

“Although animal abuse is not a new problem to Taichung, there has come to be an increase in the reporting and awareness of animal cruelty situations here in Taichung,” Savanna explained on the Facebook page. “Most recently, there have been several reports of poisoned or mutilated stray animals in the Da-keng/Beitun area. As with previous reports,” he went on, “the most common situation is that farmers or citizens will put out poisoned food to kill the stray animals. But there have also been reports of mutilated animals. Previous locations where animal poisonings have occurred include Feng Yuan, Beitun, Tunghai Art Street/Metropolitan Park area, and throughout the city.”

“TaichungTAIL believes,” the Facebook page says, ‘that the solution to the stray animal population is through kindness, not cruelty. The solution is adoption of homeless animals rather than buying pets from breeders or pet shops, humane education for the next generation, and catch/neuter/release programs with follow-up neighborhood feeding and caring programs. TaichungTAIL finds the organized killing of stray animals, either by government or society, abhorrent and unacceptable.” Good for her! At least Savanna is sincere.

On the second floor of Honey’s Friends Pet Services pet hotel and shop, owned by Savanna, Elisha tried to use the room on the second floor for “educational activities and programs.” Patrons were invited to host activities there. No one came to rent it so they used it for storage instead. Everything Elisha, Tom, and Savanna did was to foster community participation and volunteerism. They said they believed in it; not because they were lonely or were trying to drum up business.

Earlier, when Elisha first came to Taiwan, after he used his savings to buy a share of a Best bushiban franchise invested in Tom’s Bottoms Up, he and Tom had other ideas to bring out the community spirit in Taichung. He started a weekly pick-up game of hockey on foot with Tom at Dong-Hai University where Tom studied. They bought the nets, sticks, and goalie equipment but only a few lonely Canadians showed up.

Elisha even started a comedy club in Taichung in 2008 and used TaichungTAIL and occasional newspaper ads to stir up some interest in what he called, “the hilarity, fun, and one-of-a-kind entertainment of Taichung Improv.” It was voted “Best of Taiwan 2009” by Waakao.com, a website he started himself, and he hasn’t stopped laughing yet.

Elisha was not a wild man. He loved wild city life as much as Tom and Savanna loved dogs and cats. That became the vehicle for community-ism and volunteerism.

“Welcome to TaichungTAIL,” it says on the excellent website. “We are a group of concerned people from various countries who have joined together to care for homeless animals in the Central Taiwan area. Each of us has different motivations and ideas about homeless animals in Taiwan, but we have one thing in common: that we all care deeply about animals. We want to see some changes in our local society. We hope that there will no more homeless animals in Taiwan. We hope that more people will adopt and care for animals. We hope that people will stop killing animals and choose TNR (trap/neuter/release) to control homeless animal populations. We hope that the next generation of Taiwanese will be more educated about animals and that they will have concern for animals as we do. We hope to solve the problems of homeless animals in the Taichung area through Adoption/fostering, TNR, and education.”

If only it were true, but it’s only the tail wagging the dog. Through all his trials and tribulations, the dozens of wonderful people he’s brought together and inspired with wild notions of street hockey and comedy improve in Taichung, his marketing directorship of a non-existent firm, his franchise-sharing at Good English Center, and co-ownership of Bottoms Up Pizza, nothing Elisha has done has come together to help pitiful dogs and cats of Taichung mean streets.

His love for abandoned people, on the other hand, strayed and discarded, moves no one but himself. That is why this writer calls this human the wildest animal in town, with other people’s wild dreams of collectivism, volunteerism, and community-ism, what a dream it is. If only it were true.

He never answered my personal e-mails.

He only sent invitations to his events on Facebook.

I never saw Taichung/TAILS at any local pet functions.

He never called to say hello.

He’s only a dog-gone businessman looking for some tail.