Day 1: New Year’s Eve

The adventure began now three Wednesdays ago, when I took the high speed rail down to Kaohsiung (高雄). Andy showed me around the city a little bit (including the nearby temple with the European-looking knight) and we had the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner, which is one of the most important parts of the New Year. We all stayed up watching TV (and the adults playing Mahjong), then Andy and I then set off some fire crackers at midnight.

Day 2: Exploring Kaohsiung

The next morning I was greeted with more fire crackers and a delicious soup with Nian gao (年糕), a type of mochi, very reminiscent of the traditional Japanese New Year’s お雑煮.

We went out with the family to the park surrounding the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. The park features many different public sculptures.

There was also a number of pieces as part of their current exhibit on “container art,” which was pretty cool.

Many people were out in the park on this holiday, and there were many kites in the sky as well. It was a beautiful day. We then walked around through a super busy street market and went home.

Andy and I walked around at night, checking out the night market out behind his grandmother’s house, and near the neighborhood temple. A lot of great things were for sale, like various dried fruts and candies, bootleg DVD’s, and Spongebob Squarepants New Year’s decorations. I had a great time in Kaohsiung and enjoyed meeting Andy’s family.

Day 3: Taichung

On Day 3 we took the high speed rail up to Taipei, where Andy’s other grandmother lives, but stopped in Taichung on the way. Not really knowing what to do in Taichung, we decided to check out the National Museum of Natural Science—in retrospect, a fabulous choice. It was an easy free shuttle away from the high speed rail station.

Andy mentioned that he’d been there when he was very small, and only remembers that he was really scared by the animatronic dinosaurs. Most of the exhibits were in Chinese only, but we both had a fabulous time. We spent the entire day there, from about 10–4, yet only covered half the museum. A highly recommended visit in Taichung.

For some reason, though, there was a flying pig in the evolution exhibit…

And here are a couple photos from the streets of Taichung. Andy pointed out that the “Price Impossible” store actually looked emptied out, making the prices actually impossible.

Day 4: Wulai

The next day in Taipei, we decided to go to Wulai, a more rural township of Taipei county, which is home to another tribe of Atayals. The whole area is quite touristy, but the land was absolutely beautiful, even in the rain. I would love to go back again on a nice spring day.

Taking the old “Wulai wood cart” up along the side of the river, you get to one of the main attractions, the Wulai waterfall.

We then walked around up in the surrounding mountains and the Waterfall Park (we didn’t find the waterfall ). We had lunch, including some bamboo-steamed rice, and visited the Wulai Atayal Museum which, unfortunately, did not allow photography. It was a small but very nice museum, covering the lifestyle and traditions of the Atayal all across Taiwan, with some nice fun interactive features as well. I thanked the workers in Atayal, “mhuway su,” when I left, and they complemented me on my pronunciation. ^^

At night, we went out to see CJ7 (長江七號), the new Stephen Chow movie, which was a very touching, cute kids’ movie. I highly recommend it. Apple has the trailer up, so it’s probably coming to the US, and not dubbed! It’s kind of weird to have a kids movie not dubbed, though.

Day 5: Going home

The next morning we went briefly to the 228 Memorial Park and National Taiwan Museum before I left to come back to Nanao. My train ride coming home was almost three hours, and it just felt stupid, now that I know that you can go all the way down the island by high speed rail in an hour and a half. Meh.

All in all, I had a fabulous long weekend and got a good Chinese New Year experience. Thanks Andy and family for your hospitality!

Related posts:

1. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
2. Family in Taiwan
3. A Saturday in 台北

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