Photos from the historic capital on Taiwan's western coast...I took the train up from Kaohsiung City for a day trip here. Although it is famous as a culinary destination, I sadly didn't have much of an appetite on my visit and, instead, spent most of it just wandering around its historic attractions. Tainan is dotted with old Dutch colonial sites, as well as Japanese colonial-era buildings. In that sense, the history of Tainan is the history of Taiwan itself. Arguably, this city is to Taiwan what Kyoto is to Japan. It is the oldest city on the island and was once the colonial heart of Dutch Formosa, the capital of the Kingdom of Tungning, and a provincial capital under the Qing dynasty. It is a city of rises and falls, a city of revisions and restorations. Some cultural curiosities in the city include a former 19th-century merchant warehouse known as the Anping Tree House, named after the thick banyan roots and branches which have inundated the old structure. There is also the beautifully blue Tianhou Temple, dedicated to a Chinese sea goddess known as Mazu. She is popular throughout Southeast Asia and various coastal Chinese communities and is supposed to roam the open seas, protecting sailors from the perils of the ocean. A very handy deity for a coastal region of Taiwan to have. The Anping Old Fort is probably the most iconic attraction in Tainan. Also known as Fort Zeelandia, this was a 17th-century fortress of the Dutch East India Company. This ended in 1661-62 when a pirate leader and resistance fighter called Koxinga laid siege to the fortress, defeated and expelled the Dutch from the island and formed his own small, short-lived Kingdom of Tungnin. The Eternal Golden Castle is not particularly golden, not much of a castle, and doesn't feel terribly grand and eternal. It is the remains of a defensive fort that was built by the Qing rulers of the island to resist the Japanese invaders of Taiwan. It quickly declined in military value following the annexation of Taiwan by Japan in 1895. And lastly, I visited the charming Chihkan Tower. This was once the site of a Dutch outpost (known as Fort Provintia) before it was destroyed by an earthquake and rebuilt in a Chinese architectural style.
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Photos from a visit to the highly impressive National Palace Museum in Taipei Originally established in Beijing's Forbidden City after the last Emperor of China was expelled, the National Palace Museum was relocated to Taiwan in 1965. This museum has an immense permanent collection of Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks dating back to some of its most ancient dynasties, making it one of the largest of its kind in existence. Firstly, no trip to the National Palace Museum should be done without a visit first to the Zhishan Garden, a classical Chinese garden housed within the museum compound that incorporates many of the aesthetic principles of Song and Ming dynasty gardening styles. The history of this museum is 'interesting' to say the least. As the Kuomingtang (KMT) government under Chiang Kai-shek began losing the Chinese Civil War to the Chinese Communist Party, the KMT undertook efforts to evacuate as many of the museum's most prized items to the island of Taiwan. In all honesty, the National Palace Museum could be more accurately called the Best Qing Dynasty Loot the Nationalist Army Managed to Take with Them when They Fled to Taiwan After the Chinese Civil War Museum. Classy title, I know. The existence of so many glorious artefacts of Chinese civilisation is obviously a sore point for the People's Republic of China. Personally, I’m not terribly fussed. How much of it would’ve survived the cultural destruction of the Cultural Revolution, for instance? However, I was deeply saddened to discover that the museum’s famous 'Meat-shaped Stone' (literally a chunk of mineral carved into a slice of pork) was not on exhibit. Turned out it was on loan to the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia till May of that year! Oh no! And it just so happened that later in the year I had a chance to visit Sydney and duck inside the Art Gallery of New South Wales. And it was there! It was a monumental day in my cultural education. I am elated to have finally seen this masterpiece of Chinese art, having missed it when I visited the National Palace Museum in Taipei earlier this year. Behold! The famous Meat-shaped Stone, a piece of jasper carved into the shape of a delectable piece of pork belly. It is exquisite. It is sublime. It’s so beautiful I could weep. I feel like a pilgrim having finally reached a holy relic.
The story of how I visited a beautiful national park in Taiwan and nearly died for The Grams. In early 2019, after a pleasant stay in Taipei, I took the train down the east coast of Taiwan to Hualien County. Rugged mountains! Pebbly beaches! The roughcast cliffs and crashing waves! My destination: Taroko National Park, where the Liwu River carves its way through a spectacular marble gorge. After a night in Hualien City, I hired a bicycle in the early morning and cycled deep into Taroko National Park. It is an extraordinary place, unlike anything I’d ever seen before, where the river is a deep blue-upon-blue, the rock formations and mountainous terrain are reminiscent of an ancient and serene Chinese landscape painting, and the water seems to weep mysteriously from the walls of the gorge. Highlights include the Eternal Spring Shrine, which commemorates the workers who died building the Central Cross-Island Highway that runs through the national park, the Swallow Grotto, where the nearby river walls contain caves that spring swallows nest in, and the marvellous and marblelous Taroko Gorge itself, obviously. But a word of advice, don’t cycle into Taroko National Park the way I did: Pedalling in the rain on the narrow, winding highway with giant tour buses roaring past you! And don’t conclude your bicycle tour the way I did either: With a downhill crash that banged up both my knees, cut up my hands and bloodied my right forearm. Thankfully, I was able to get some first aid from the park staff and the guy I was cycling with (who I just met him during my ride) revealed he was a doctor. What luck! So I got some quick medical tips off him and was on my way. That was an extremely unfortunate accident and, to this day, I still have a nasty-looking scar on my right elbow as proof of my misadventures. Once I returned to the township and I had fixed myself up with some more bandages and gauze from the local convenience store, I quaffed down some Taiwan Beer to dull the pain and crawled into bed, wounded but alive... Of course, the fun didn't stop there. The next day, I returned to the gorge and did a tour of the infamous Zhuilu Old Road. This is a narrow footpath winding along the edge of a sheer cliff, hundreds of metres above Taroko Gorge. Many parts have no handrails and a permit is required in advance, with less than 100 people allowed on the trail per day. It is an epic walk and, as my photos can attest, absolutely not suitable for anyone with even a hint of vertigo. The hike to the top was fine (ignoring the fact that I was still bleeding from the bicycle crash the day before) and the mountain mist helped suppress my fear of heights. But on the way back down, the weather cleared up and -- boom! -- I was hit with a dizzying fear of heights and shaky knees. While I returned to the ground intact, I definitely needed another Taiwan Beer after that second misadventure. Aside from mildly hazardous visits to the national park, I also had the opportunity to meet up with some fellow backpackers from Taipei and check out Hualien City as well. It is a small but interesting place, well worth a visit. For example, the Taiwanese indigenous peoples are much more visible here, certainly more so than in other major urban centres on the island. Because the city is close to a major air force base, you can constantly hear the thundering screams of fighter jets performing military drills overhead. And because the county is the heart of Taiwan's marble industry, many of the city streets are themselves paved with marble. I ate an array of delicious snacks at the local night market, admired the respectable array of imported whiskeys available at unassuming convenience stores (the Taiwanese love their whiskeys, it seems), and even tried chewing on a betel nut, or areca nut, which is a highly popular but problematic psychoactive substance consumed in this part of the world. Betel nuts can become addictive and give heavy users blood-stained teeth and even oral cancer. Also, it tastes disgusting. Post-script, or rather, a weird anecdote: On my final morning in Hualien, I swung by my friends’ hostel and had the honour of meeting "Obama", the hostel owner's dog who, despite his namesake, was apparently very racist. And while he barked angrily at the, ahem, white guests, Obama-the-dog took an immediate liking to me. Yikes. What should we infer from this? How far can we take these allegations? What did you do, Obama? Why are you like this??
Unusual towns of northern TaiwanNorth of the beautiful, energetic metropolis of Taipei, three interesting tourist towns can be easily knocked off in a single day. Each has its peculiarities and touristy appeal. Let's check 'em out! 1. Houtong Welcome to the Houtong Cat Village. When the local coal industry died in the 1990s, the villagers figured out an obvious solution: turn its unusually large cat population into a tourist attraction. Everywhere you wander, there are cats, cats, and more cats. I'll resist the temptation to make a very obvious feline pun. But somebody please tell America's Rust Belt they have a new economic strategy. 2. Shifen Shifen (which translates to “ten portions”) is another historic mining town. The first thing you'll notice is the fact that the railway tracks run straight through the middle of the town. The second is that there are a lot of sky lanterns floating around. You’re meant to write your wishes on them and launch them into the heavens. Of course, now and then, one of them fizzles out and tumbles back to earth. Haha! Wish denied! Close to the town is Shifen Waterfall, a scenic if modestly sized cascade. Nevertheless, at approximately forty metres in width, it's the broadest waterfall in Taiwan. 3. Jiufen Jiufen (which translates to “nine portions”) is perhaps the most famous of these three towns. It is a bustling, lantern-filled town in the fog-shrouded mountains filled with trinket shops and delicious street food vendors. It proudly claims to be the real-life place that inspired the setting of Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”. Nope! A quick internet search reveals that’s just a popular myth, one that Miyazaki himself has debunked. Oh well... It's still a neat little place to explore and take photographs, of course.
A quirky day in Kaohsiung cityOh, Formosa! On one of the last legs of my circumnavigatory train journey around Taiwan back in 2019, I made a stop in the huge port city of Kaohsiung on the south-western side of the island. Unlike the eastern coastline, which was filled with lush natural beauty, the western part of Taiwan is significantly more developed and heavily populated. I could immediately sense the difference out my train window: the stronger visions of industry, the busier roads, the inevitable urban haze... But even so, I still came across some truly bright points of interest in Kaohsiung. The Pier-2 Art Centre. Originally a series of abandoned warehouses by the sea, the area found a new lease on life as a colourful district for contemporary artists. It's eclectic, it's vibrant, and it's a delight to meander around this place and stumble across peculiar and idiosyncratic public installations, both big and small. Lotus Pond. Despite the humble name, it is, in fact, a sizeable artificial lake surrounded by Confucian, Taoist and folk religion temples. Created in the 1950s, this place provides is a technicolour tour of local beliefs and traditional architecture. I was lucky enough to show up at the lake during a large “miaohui” temple gathering in which various groups paraded to the temples, banged drums, and set off firecrackers. But the most popular group by far was the convoy of mini-jeeps, blasting loud techno music, with pole dancers performing on top of them. Don't believe me? Here is my somewhat-shaky-video proof: Yes. Wow. I guess even the gods need livelier forms of entertainment sometimes... What more can I say? It was a quirky day in the city.
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AuthorMing is an economist, traveller, and creative writer from Melbourne, Australia. He’s a nebulous collection of particles on the lookout for a good corner to sit with a book and a cup of coffee. Archives
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