City by the Lake

Congratulations! You've almost made your way around the whole island with me! The last stop before our glorious return to Taipei: Taichung 台中.

Side note: You might have noticed that an awful lot of place names start with the syllable Tai-. This is because apparently Taiwanese people had no creativity whatsoever when naming their cities. Literally, Taipei means Taiwan North, Taitung means Taiwan East, Tainan means Taiwan South and Taichung means Taiwan Middle. At least it makes thing easy, after all in China, Beijing also literally means North capital and Nanjing means South capital. /end side note.

First, some friendly advice to any of you who plan to someday visit Taichung: Definitely get a public transport card! I should have gotten one on my first day in Taiwan, it's so convenient! You get one card that you can top up and then use in almost every city in Taiwan. Now you might say "no it's alright, I'll just use cash." Which is valid, I did fine with that, at least until I got to Taichung. This city is downright discriminatory towards people without a card :D They have a rapid bus system which you can only access with a card. Also, if you take the normal bus, you have to get a disposable plastic card from the driver every time. You swipe it once when you get on the bus and then again when you get off. Then you need to frantically search for correct change because everybody is just waiting for that stupid foreigner to get off the bus. The best thing? If you have a public transport card, any bus you take is free for the first 8 kilometres. And 8 kilometres is far! If only I had had a card, I wouldn't have paid anything for getting around Taichung. So much for that anyway.

On my first day there, I visited the Museum for Natural Sciences, more specifically the museum's botanical garden. I'm a sucker for botanical gardens, and this one was especially beautiful. They created a "fake" tropical rainforest inside a greenhouse and around the greenhouse, there is a park that introduces the different vegetation zones of Taiwan. After walking around there for a while, I decided to go to the Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. To connect the two museums the city constructed a green corridor, 3km long, called the Calligraphy Greenway. It's an amazing experience walking through it, there are street artists everywhere. I heard a lot of good music and saw a lot of great dancers. I also stumbled across a small outdoor museum called CMP Block Museum of Arts. At the time they were organizing a public arts project. Every visitor was given a glass to decorate. At night they put candles in the glasses to light up an entire meadow. It was really beautiful, and of course I also decorated a glass. Although it was already quite late when I made it to the Museum of Fine Arts, I still decided to go in and have a look around. What a great decision that was, because for the first time in my life (probably) I got to see modern art by Asian artists. Very cool, seeing works by artists whose names I've never heard before. I'll talk about one of them briefly here, because I really liked his paintings. The artist's name is Sun Yinglun 孫英倫, he paints images of nature, sometimes realistic sometimes abstracted. He uses both Western and Chinese painting techniques in his works. I was really fascinated by his works, they seem to capture ephemeral moments perfectly. Sadly I didn't find any of his paintings online and I also didn't take any pictures inside the museum, but I still have the exhibition leaflet :D If any of you want to know more about him, Skype? Anyway, it was a great day. I feel like I picked good museums to visit, even though I did only visit two during my time in Taiwan. (Don't judge me, mum and dad.)

Inside the greenhouse.

Outside the greenhouse.

This is how they arranged the glasses.

Now please enjoy my amazing work of art from all possible angles :D

I guess for those of you that don't speak German or Chinese, I should translate it into English as well. The first bird thinks "Pasta", the next one tells him ”It will be ready in no time" and the last one asks "And what about me?"

A part of the green corridor.

On my second day in Taichung I took a little bus trip to the place that was the actual reason for me visiting the city: The Sun-Moon-Lake 日月潭. Its name stems from the fact that one half of the lake looks like the sun and the other half looks like the moon. First I took a boat across the lake and walked up to the Xuanguang 玄光 temple. From there one can overlook much of the lake and the surrounding mountains. From there I took another boat to Ita Thao, where I visited a so-called butterfly garden which contained a grand total of two butterflies. I then rode the bus to the Wenwu temple where students come to pray for good exam results. Luckily, I didn't have any exams that needed praying at the time, so I proceeded to walk down the Steps of the Year (365 steps, each one engraved with celebrities born on the particular day) and then along the lakeside to get back to my starting point. On the way I walked past quite a few terrifyingly large spider webs but luckily also past breathtaking views to make up for it. All in all, a great day with great weather.

The view upon arrival.

A picture with this stone is apparently the only valid proof that you were really there...

...which is why...

...everyone was queuing up for it.

The view from the temple.

Butterfly #1.

#2.

At Wenwu temple.

The Steps of the Year.

Walking along the lakeside.

One last picture before I leave.

And that was it, 4 hours later I was back in Taipei. Fear not though, there will be one more post detailing my last days there. For now I leave you with a kiss and a hug :*

Oh also, this is probably only of interest to the Germans among you: On one of the busses I took, they were showing a Til Schweiger movie. Kokowääh 2 if I'm not mistaken. Here's the picture to prove it.

There was no escape.

Chinese Word of the Day: 烟花 yanhua, fireworks. There's been a lot of those lately, new year and all. Luckily I can sleep through almost anything.