Tamshui

For breakfast yesterday, I opted for shaobing 燒餅 instead of danbing. Here is a picture. I got it in the maze of streets that had been the night market. In the early morning, most of them were closed but a few were doing a brisk business in delicious breakfast foods. Shaobing is sort of like ciabatta and sort of like nan bread, but not really like either one. It also had some sesame seeds on it. Much more filling than danbing.

Despite much forethought, my quest to make coffee in my room has been plagued by difficulties. So on my way out after breakfast I just caved and got a cup at Starbucks.

The adventure for the day was to meet Liuxia Zhi and Batbean and go to Tamshui. This is the spot on the far north end of the redline where the Tamshui River flows into the sea. It's become a popular tourist destination. From where I live, it's just under an hour on the MRT.

In terms of stories, there is not much to tell. We walked around a lot and looked at stuff. Then we ate some food and got back on the train. But here are some of the sights we saw along the way.

Fish Ball Museum

The fish ball museum! The sign is a little hard to see in this picture, but that's what it say. I insisted we go into the fish ball museum because how could we not. Have you ever been in a fish ball museum? Besides, it was free. There wasn't all that much in there, but one thing I thought was cool was a big display of rotating blocks. On the one side were pictures of different fishes and on the other were their names. Good vocabulary building! Maybe I should go back there and spend some time studying. It would be really funny to become some kind of insane expert on Chinese fish names.

Fish Identification Blocks

Here are Batbean and Liuxia Zhi in their hats, contemplating Guanyin Mountain. It is called that because it is supposedly in the shame of a reclining Guanyin goddess. I can sort of see it.

Contemplating Guanyin Mountain

Here is me posing by the statue of George Mackay, a sort of Tamshui local hero. According to my guidebook, he extracted more than 21,000 teeth. That does seem heroic. He also did other stuff, like start schools and hospitals. And was a missionary.

With George Mackay's Beard

Overall, I don't much hold with obsessing over whichever Westerner happens to have been influential in a given place. That said, this guy does appear to have an unbelievably heroic beard. So I had to get a picture with him.

The major local tourist attraction is Fort San Domingo. It reminded me a little of wandering around in Macau--the non-casino parts. Was that a million years ago? In terms of this blog, not too far back but in my life... a long time ago (posts here and here). Anyway, here are some sights around the fort:

Fort San Domingo

It must have been an impressive structure in 1628. Presumably it has been restored/rebuilt since then of course. Built by the Spanish, occupied by the Dutch, and then a couple hundred years later by the British. Including a familiar name:

Giles of Wade-Giles

This is Giles of the Wade-Giles romanization system for phonetically representing Chinese. Happily it's now mostly eradicated--it doesn't matter to me what system we use, so long as everyone uses the same one!--but it is admittedly much more intuitive to English speakers than pinyin. He looks distinguished, don't he?

I think this brazen statue is making eyes at Liuxia Zhi, don't you? He better watch out. She is not to be messed with.

Statue in the Corner at Fort San Domingo

Another bit of colonial architecture, a British consular residence I think? I was getting very hot and tired by the time we hiked up the hill to here here, so I may not be remembering right. Mostly I liked the orange flowering tree.

Orange Flowering Tree

Of course being who I am, what really caught my eye was tiny details relating to local fauna. In particular, this lizard which I noticed sticking out of a bush...

Sneaky Lizard

...and this astonishing caterpillar. Dude, this thing was massive and bizarre! In addition to the eye-spots, it had a white rod thing on its tail which it waved lazily. "Look, this is my head! Just kidding!" Wish I could see the butterfly that will result.

Caterpillar with Eyespots

Also on the list of interesting fauna-related sights was a betel nut shop featuring two pigs and three parrots. It's not a very humane way to keep pigs. I hope they have a yard to run around in when they're not at work.

Betel Nut Pig

Parrot and Shopkeepers

"Binlang" and Red Parrots

Parrots make such a distinctive noise, I heard them from a long way down the street.

We took the 2 km walk to Fisherman's Wharf, which the guidebook characterizes as "boring." The guidebook is correct, aside from above-mentioned pigs and parrots. There were a few nice views of the water though. Here are some local guys chilling in the shade and drinking beer.

Local Guys by the Water, Tamshui

We caught the bus back from the resoundingly big and empty Fisherman's Wharf. Maybe a failed development, maybe just the wrong time of day.

Plaza at Fisherman's Wharf

It's actually interesting how alienating the design of the place was. It is obviously meant to imitate some sort of European grandeur, but it didn't even have a Disneyland charm because the scale was far too big. Or maybe I was just too footsore.

Row of Shops, Fisherman's Wharf

More shops, mostly closed

It was beautiful scenery, so clearly it takes more than that to make a place interesting and nice. Was it really that I just wanted it to be more crowded? More shops open so there would be more stuff to buy? I don't believe that of myself. I'm not sure quite what was lacking. I guess just... charm.

Anyway, back down near the train station we discovered what everyone else was here for. All afternoon, a lot of the town felt empty. But that's because basically everyone was gleefully crowded together on a few tiny streets. People know what they like.

Street in Tamshui

Grilled squid! Fruit juice! Stinky tofu! Silly toys and carnival games! This is where the renao 熱鬧* was.

(* "Hot and noisy" but with a highly positive connotation, meaning, the action and excitement.)

This morning I woke up before 5. This has happened to me before. Maybe it's the sudden stillness that wakes me. A moment later, the room started to shake. My hard double bed swayed like a hammock. I guess many people are used to this, but it was a relatively surprising experience for me. Chicago is so seismically stable. It's great living in a time when you can instantly verify what you think you experienced. The USGS says it was 6. It was a little scary but also kind of cool, that the earth just does that.