[RD] Discovering Taiwan

[warpus]

The Taiwan Connection mildly reminds me of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. I wish I got to see the High Line while I was in New York– next time I guess. Very cool.

I was actually just watching the New York episode of Somebody Feed Phil, not too long after reading your comment, and the High Line came up. This got me wondering, which city was the first to do this sort of thing? Was Taichung inspired by New York?

Turns out that Paris built the world's first urban rail to park conversion in 1993, but a 390 km long rural trail like this was built in Missouri in 1990, and there's a rural rail to trail that was built in the 1980s near Melboure, Australia. Chicago seems to have the first urban rail to trail in the U.S., built in 1996, but New York's High Line, built in 2009, seems to be the most influential of these urban rail to trail conversions, and seems to have inspired dozens of cities around the world to try something like this as well.

The reasons why New York's High Line was so influential even though it wasn't the first seem to be many, and I don't really know enough about the subject to summarize them very well. Being a higher profile city must have helped, but it looks like the High Line was successful in cultural and economic terms, which got the attention of city planners around the globe.

The somewhat unique aspect of Taichung's Taiwan Connection is that it is very heritage focused, moreso than other such projects around the world. It's half pedestrian walkway half open air rail history museum.

 

[warpus]

Old Taichung Train Station
aka Taichung Railway Cultural Park

As you make your way down the Taiwan Connection 1908 walkway, you eventually end up at Old Taichung Train Station, which ceased operations in 2016. It has been integrated into the Taichung Railway Cultural Park, showcasing historical rail exhibitions and old trains.

The new elevated train station is actually right above.

 

[warpus]

Old Taichung Train Station

It was interesting to revisit the train station from this vantage point. The old train station was built in the very early 1900s in a neobaroque and Japanese colonial style, wihch has been well preserved to this day. The new elevated traion station was sleek and modern, made of glass and metal.

There was a Snoopy themed pop-up store here until the end of the year due to Peanuts' 75th birthday.

 

[warpus]

More pictures from the Taichung Railway Cultural Park

There is a museum here, but sadly I did not visit it.

 

[Kyriakos]

@warpus , which country will be next?

 

[warpus]

@warpus , which country will be next?

Me and some friends are planning a trip to Japan in October or November. They've never been but I have, and I am excited about returning there. Am also planning a sidetrip to South Korea while I'm in that part of the world, but we'll see what happens. HR is also on our butts to lower our vacation day reserves, they've been accumulating throughout the pandemic... So I'm looking at flying somewhere European in the summer maybe, have been eyeing up Dublin and Scotland or a week long return to Portugal, we'll see what happens. It's very possible I'll save my money for Japan/South Korea

 

[warpus]

Shin Sei Green Waterway (新生綠意廊道)

This redeveloped urban waterway used to be known as the Lyu-Chuan Canal and before that as the Xinsheng River. It's one of several such revitalized walkable waterways that run through Taichung. This one basically starts where the Taichung Connection 1908 ends and takes you close to Taichung Park, so it was a bit of a no-brainer to walk in this direction.

 

[warpus]

Fourth Credit Union

This structure was built in 1966 in the style of a traditional western bank building and served as the headquarters for the Taichung Fourth Credit Cooperative until 1998. It then underwent a number of transformations, first becoming a convenience store, then a wedding gown company, then a dance studio, and later a safety helmet store.

In 2013 the building was refurbished into a three story cafe and restaurant, reverting to the original name and preserving as much of the original historical look and feel as possible. It stands as a sort of symbol of Taiwan's adaptive reuse of historical buildings that reimagines the building for another purpose while preserving its historical essence and significance. I wish I had taken more pictures of this building, as it is very eye catching and unique. The front door is a big vault door, for instance.

Today this cafe is famous for their ice cream, which is prepared using traditional methods. People also come here for the shaved ice, braised foods, and cold drinks, but the ice cream is a big draw. This place initially popped on my radar due to the unique name (for a cafe) as well as the unique interior. What sealed the deal were the especially high reviews that seemed to rave about the ice cream in particular. I needed a bit of a break from all the walking so I popped in for a coffee and of course some ice cream.

The waffles are made on site using a large robot-like construct that mixes the batter and grills the waffles on a griddle. So not only was the ice cream very good, but the waffle was super fresh as well. This was a great spot to take a break and relax for a bit. I couldn't stop looking around the interior, I wish I had taken more pictures of it.

 

[warpus]

Taiwan Suncake Museum

Suncakes are flaky pastry dics filled with malt sugar; they were invented in Taichung in the 1980s by pastry chef Wei Qinghai. Pastries sort of like this have existed in Taiwan in one form or another for a while, but Wei refined the recipe and made the dough more light and flaky. Today suncakes are thought of one of the most iconic Taiwanese snacks, and are especially linked to the city of Taichung.

The curious thing is that none of the pictures I have from this museum seem to have anything directly to do with suncakes. I even doublechecked the GPS coordinates to verify that they were indeed from the suncake museum.

The above is a Japanese twin-lens reflex camera from the 1950s. I've also been able to figure out that Polydor is a German record label that in the 1950s and 1960s was releasing popular music records in Japan and Taiwan. In fact, the record says something about perhaps being pressed in Japan, I can't quite make it out.. Either way, it's tough to say what any of these interesting items have to do with suncakes. Maybe nothing! It's possible this was a general look into life during the 50s and 60s in Taiwan.

I've tried to translate the writing on the mint-like box that says F50, and that seems to either be vitamins or axiety medicine, at least judging by the two translations that pop up on my phone. I wasn't able to find any connection to suncakes.

I honestly am not really sure I even ate any suncakes here. I sort of vaguely remember the store in the museum having overpriced gift shop type suncakes, by my estimation. It was an interesting museum though! Had a cool caligraphy exhibit as well.

 

[warpus]

Urban Snapshots

 

[warpus]

Taichung Park (臺中公園)

Established in 1903, during the Japanese colonial period, this is one of the oldest parks in Taiwan. It was initially designed with both eastern and western styles in mind, which can be seen and felt to this day.

 

[warpus]

Walking around the park I eventually spotted this

 

[warpus]

Jiyang Kangtai Goat Statue (吉羊康泰)

This 20 metre tall goat statue was the centrepiece of the 2003 Taiwan Lantern Festival, hosted in Taichung for the first time that year. It features a goat family of 3: a male ram, a female ewe, and a kid (a young goat) perched up top on Mount Yushan, Taiwan's tallest mountain. The statue was designed to symbolize the bringing in of an auspicious & peaceful new year of the water goat.

 

[warpus]

Taichung Confucius Temple (臺中孔廟)

After the Chinese Civil War, after the Republic of China government fled to the island, many cultural institutions were re-established in Taiwan. This Confucius temple was built in the 1970s during that wave of cultural preservation. It was engineered in a Song Dynasty Confucian style as a centre of worship, moral education, and cultural remembrance, and includes 8 or so buildings on a 2 hectare temple grounds.

I got there about a half an hour before the temple grounds closed and found the place almost devoid of people.

It was amazing that there was basically nobody here.. That's obviously my favourite way to explore a landmark, but it almost made it a bit eerie.

 

[warpus]

From what I've been able to determine, the three large entrance gates to the temple grounds were built in a style that symbolizes Confucian ideals of harmony and order.

You can see a lot of the same design elements in the Liberty Square Arch in Taipei, which is the first thing that these gates reminded me of.

 

[warpus]

Paochueh Temple (寶覺禪寺)

My next point of interest was a temple that supposedly housed a large golden Buddha statue. That's really all I knew about it. I proceeded to walk in that direction and eventually saw this from a distance:

This Buddha seemed to look exactly like the golden one I was looking for, except it wasn't gold at all. I tried to google this to verify that I found the right Buddha statue. Every source I could find claimed that this Buddha statue is still golden.. and that location-wise this is the same statue. I couldn't find any mention of it being painted anywhere online, but it has to be the same statue.

A bit of a mystery. I suspect this is documented well enough online somewhere in Mandarin. This is something my friend Alexander Synaptic alluded to during our conversations. Over the years he spent some time learning a bit of Mandarin so that he could get at some extra background information for his projects, which was often not written out in English anywhere. This included assorted information about when a building was built, by whom, what it was used for, or just assorted information about a city or region.

Either way, this statue represents Maitreya Buddha, also known as the Laughing Buddha, symbolizing the future Buddha who will appear on Earth to achieve complete enlightenment.

 

[warpus]

The original Paochueh temple was built in 1927 during the colonial period in a wooden Japanese architectural style. In 1984 a much larger Chinese Mahayana Buddhist architectural style temple was built up around it, in order to shield the older temple from the elements.

Today the temple grounds are wedged right in the middle of a busy urban space. There's at least 8 structures on the temple grounds, including a bell tower that houses a 600 kg bell donated by Japan. I only ended up seeing two thirds of the site it seems, and missed out on the bell tower and the columbarium.

The columbarium here contains remains of of WWII era Japanese residents, soldiers, as well as Taiwanese recruits to the colonial effort. This is one of the few sites in Taiwan that houses Japanese remains; it attracts thousands of Japanese tourists and pilgrims every year. I did my due diligence to see if there was at any point any controversy here worth writing about, but there's absolutely nothing. It seems that both Japanese and Taiwanese visitors and authorities view this site as a space of reconciliation and remembrance. It seems to be seen as a sort of bridge between Japanese Buddhist and Taiwanese Buddhist communities. I had no idea about any of this at the time, or I would have looked for more symbolism related to that. In the end I did only have about 15 minutes before the whole temple grounds was about to be closed down for the night - the stone Chinese style temple shielding the wooden Japanese temple from the elements will have to do for the symbolism.

 

[warpus]

Urban Snapshots

One of the downsides of travelling to Taiwan in November is that by 5:40pm it is already dark, but given how extremely safe the country is this is not really an issue beyond logistics. One of the positives for me is that it allowed me to explore more of Taichung's urban cityscapes after dark.

This part of Taichung reminded me of what I was used to in Taipei in terms of a larger throughfare type street, although I swear there were significantly more scooters here.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Your travel threads are pretty valuable documents, offering an in-deep view beyond the typical touristic tour that few people (except the ones living there obviously) know or care about.

 

[warpus]

Your travel threads are pretty valuable documents, offering an in-deep view beyond the typical touristic tour that few people (except the ones living there obviously) know or care about.

Thanks, I appreciate the vote of confidence! My intersts are somewhat diverse, so I think that helps me mix up the sort of sites I visit to a reasonable degree. I do a decent amount of research ahead of time to identify neighbourhoods that will probably be interesting to walk through. Then it's a matter of heading out there and exploring to see what else is around.. and of course doing a bit of follow-up research once home to gain a better contextualized understanding of everything.

I am just barely scratching the surface here though, to be honest. There is a sort of essence of Taiwan I picked up on that's tough to bring out using mere words. There's also a lot going on with the different eras and layers of history, the architecture, the way the people who live here were influenced over the years, the food, the customs, and so much more that I wish I knew more about. I draw a bit of inspiration at this point from Alexander Synaptic, who as far as I'm concerned has perfected the art of writing susinct yet super informative articles about the things he has found in Taiwan. His cataloguing efforts of movie theatre structures in Taiwan are impressive, and there's so much more on his site than that. Either way, thanks again, I think it's important to learn about other cultures and there's so many different aspects of that you can look at and write about. Many of the things worth seeing tend to be popular, and that's fine, but there's a lot more to a country that you have to just get out and discover on your own.