Taichung Folklore Park

Well, I did indeed have another holiday today after Super Typhoon Jangmi spent a good two days walloping most of Taiwan.  Sunday was the day of insane winds; signs were flying around the streets, scooters were knocked over, noodle stands were tossed about like ragdolls, and a dangerously sharp lightening rod was ripped down from the roof of my building.  Monday, today, was the day of rain; a torrential rain fell through most of the day, and is only now subsiding at 11:30pm.

Knowing that a typhoon was on the way and that I had a probable three day weekend on my hands, Nok and I took the opportunity on Saturday to head to the Taichung Folklore Park.  My main reason for going was as part of an assignment for one of my online classes – a study of popular culture.  We spent a couple of hours wandering around the park, which included a handful of old temples, an ancient, traditional home made of pounded earth, a giant “salted vegetable” bucket, and a fairly extensive museum filled with actual artifacts gathered from all over Taiwan, showing a much older way of life.  The goal was to find a museum that was the equivalent of the Maine State Museum and I think it was success; even down to the wax people enacting scenes of a long-forgotten way of life.

The giant salted vegetable bucket. It was taller than me.

The old house made from pounded earth.

Inside the house of pounded earth.

An old tree outside the house of pounded earth.

A collision of old and new: an ancient temple sits nestled between modern apartment buildings.

One of many corridors in the museum, each lined with dozens of unique artifacts from traditional Taiwanese life.

Another room filled with artifacts. Each room had two wooden tables with an old fashioned board game on top.

Many families stopped to play the games provided on each table throughout the museum. Some tables had what appeared to be Mahjong, while others had this game which looked similar to Othello.

Puppets. Puppet shows are an elaborate tradition in Taiwan, and even today they can be seen at temples across the country.

The various tools of the traditional opium fiend.

"Spiked Stick." Early Taiwanese weapon makers certainly understood the value of appearances. Absolutely frightening!

One's weapon collection wouldn't be complete without the old "spiked ball" to go with the spiked stick

Elaborately painted panels next to a full size aboriginal canoe. Unfortunately, my photos of the canoe didn't come out very well since I was unable to use a flash.

A wooden replica of the aboriginal boat.

Wax statues displaying the workings at an old fashioned palm reading.

Out of the museum and onto the temple. This was the main shrine in one of the temples.

The park also included a nicely groomed fish pond, which had some real monsters inside.

Once home, we brought Scroggins to the roof in time to see a spectacular, typhoon induced sunset.

Super Typhoon Jangmi

There’s another big typhoon brewing off the coast of Taiwan — and this one is huge.  It’s now classified as a “Super Typhoon,” meaning it is a Category 4-5 with winds over 150mph.  Different projections show it either grazing the southern tip of Taiwan before turnin up the Taiwan Strait, or a direct hit over the mountains with the eye passing almost directly over Taichung.  I’m actually hoping for the second scenario.  The mountains are pretty effective at breaking up typhoons and preventing serious damage.  I’ve been told the most dangerous (and the rarest) typhoons are those that curl around Taiwan and head up the west coast, with no mountains for protection.

Anyway, looks like no school on Monday, but I’ll be trapped at home waiting out the storm.

Super Typhoon Jangmi looms large to the southeast of Taiwan. That is one mean looking eye.

Scroggins at the Park

My weekends are pretty much always spent indoors now reading my stack of text books and writing various assignments.  But this Sunday I decided to take a break for a few hours, and Nok, Scroggins and I headed out to the Taichung Metropolitan Park.  The park sits on a big hill that encloses the city along its western edge.  It’s quite a large park with plenty of grassy open spaces.  It can get a bit crowded on a Sunday afternoon, but once the sun goes down it becomes deserted.

Scroggins at Taichung Metropolitan Park on Sunday evening.

Scroggins takes in the swarms of people and dogs at the Metropolitan Park.

Scroggins discovers the joy of a belly scratch.

If dogs could smile, it would look like this.

Watching a kite as the sun goes down.

Scroggins

Nok and I are suckers for animals.  After the unfortunate passing of Jeebo last month, we swore we wouldn’t get another animal until we were in a position to settle down in one place indefinitely.  Our plans haven’t really changed in that we won’t be in Taiwan for more than two years and will probably continue moving from country to country for the foreseeable future.

Yet here we are today with a new dog named Scroggins.  We got in touch with a group of foreigners here who run a handful of dog and cat shelters in Taichung county.  They had tons of dogs looking for homes, and after visiting one of the shelters we chose an 18 month old mutt previously named Maui.  He was found living on the city streets as a puppy, and he would have stayed there if he hadn’t been picked up by the government animal catchers.  Since the government shelters eventually put to sleep the animals they find, these people rescued Scroggins from the pound and took him to live on their spacious, no-kill shelter at the top of a lovely mountain on the edge of Taichung City.

Nok and I went out to that shelter last week, and it’s a pretty interesting place.  The road gets incredibly steep, narrow and windy towards the top, so much so that our taxi refused to continue and we had to walk another kilometers pretty much straight up.  Scroggins was delivered to our home the next day, and so far he seems to be adjusting well.

Scroggins in our apartment just after he arrived.  He is one of the shyest dogs I’ve ever seen.

 

Nok hugs Scroggins on the floor of our apartment.

Scroggins on the roof of our building.  I tried to get him to sit for a picture, but he’s so clingy he just kept following me when I backed up to take a picture.  This was the best shot I could get.

Today we took Scroggins for a walk at the school behind our apartment.  The tall building behind the palm trees on the left is our building.  I don’t know about the quality of teaching inside the school, but facilities of the schools I’ve seen here are far superior to any schools I attended as a kid.  This is an elementary school, yet it has a massive athletics field complete with a nice, new, rubber-topped track.

A shot from Go-go mountain, where Scroggins’ shelter was.  This was taken from where the taxi dropped us off, on top of a massive abandoned Buddhist monastery.  The monastery was condemned after the massive 921 quake.

Another shot from on top of the old monastery.

For those curious in the how things are going regarding my recent bicycle mishap, for the most part it’s good news.  My wound seems to be healing well, though most people I’ve spoken to agree that the doctor who stitched me up did a terrible job.  It’s incredibly sloppy, and even though the wound covers almost one whole side of my ankle, he used only three stitches spaced very far apart.

I was also concerned because my foot and lower ankle have gotten pretty swollen over the last few days.  I’ve seen five different doctors since the accident, and only today was I able to get a reasonable explanation for the swelling.  Apparently, in addition to the nasty gash I also have pretty serious ankle sprain, which explains why I’ve had so much trouble walking around.

On the legal side, I’ve been referred to an American ex-pat who’s lived here for about thirty years and specializes in representing other foreigners in Taiwan. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Dakeng Scenic Area

On the edge of Taichung City and not so far from Fengyuan is a massive park called the Dakeng Scenic Area. I’d heard great things about it from several people, but I wasn’t really sure how I could get there. Well, last Saturday afternoon Nok and I hopped on the train to Taichung City, determined to find a way to Dakeng.

As it turns out, there are several buses that drive past the park. However, the park is a pretty massive place with trails spreading out over quite a large area. As a result, it’s difficult to get to one specific part of the park. Our bus driver dropped us off in a strange part of town with no signs indicating we were in the park at all. But after walking around for a while, we found some trails up into the hills and were very pleased with what we saw.

Unfortunately, after a week of beautiful weather, Saturday proved to be a dreary, rain-soaked day, and our hike was cut short after a downpour started just as we began our walk. We waited out the storm in a small hillside temple next to a strange little park filled with obstacle courses and a paintball field. We will definitely be back to Dakeng in the future, but hopefully with better weather.

An interesting thing did happen before the rain came though. Near the temple, there were several trails branching into different directions. We ventured down a few of them searching for the best one. On one, we found a rather feeble looking dog strapped to a tree. The trail was rather narrow, with a five foot drop on the left side and a thick forest on the right. Nok and I passed the first time without incident. However, after finding a dead end we were forced to walk past the dog on the narrow trail again.

As I walked by, the dog started growling. Nok was just behind me, but the dog lunged at her. It happened very quickly. I heard the dog make a nasty snarling sound as it pounced at Nok. Nok screamed and put her hands up to block the dog’s advancing teeth. In a split second, she fell down the five foot drop onto some brush below. I thought for sure she had broken something, as it was a nasty fall.

I swung my backpack at the dog, who then cowered behind a tree and watched timidly as I went to help Nok. Thankfully, Nok was smiling when I went to pull her back onto the trail and I knew that a disaster had been narrowly averted. We were laughing nervously about the incident for the rest of the day.

The little hillside temple where we waited out the storm. On the next hilltop we could see a giant golden Buddha poking out from the treetops. I plan to head up there on our next trip to Dakeng. When the mist lifted briefly, much higher mountains could be seen just beyond.

This little shrine was next to the temple.

We came across these two rope bridges over a little park filled with military-style obstacle courses. It was a strange place.

Nok and I started to cross it together, but she got scared and turned back after about 15 feet.

I ended up crossing the bridge alone. It got pretty high in the middle, probably about 30 feet above the ground. You can see it is over some of the tree tops.

From the other side of the rope bridge. Some tombs can be seen on the hillside beyond.

We found these stray puppies at the start of the trail. Unfortunately, they were too shy to let us near them, and their mother was barking ferociously the whole time.

Taichung and the Giant Buddha

Taichung city is the third largest city in Taiwan and just 20 kilometers from where I now live, in Fengyuan. With over 1 million people, it’s a pretty good sized city with lots of interesting things to see and do. It’s also surprisingly clean and modern, so Nok and I have spent more than a few afternoons there.

One of the more interesting sites is this giant golden Buddha:

Nok is the little red ant on the bottom of the picture.

 

This giant mural was on the side of the Taichung Cultural Center. We went there to see an exhibition of Rodin, but unfortunately it was closed when we arrived.

In the park next to the Cultural Center.

Call me a sucker, but I just really like this picture. There was something about the light in the trees that just made this a really pleasant place.

I look up in disgust after flipping through my crappy Lonely Planet guidebook. The people who wrote it were either incredibly lazy or incredibly boring. I suspect it was a bit of both. Never buy Lonely Planet!