including this first with biblical imagery
(or is this an element from Atayal legend too?)
sun-shooting legend
monkey-agriculture legend???
photos copyright Jiyue Publications 2012
Showing posts with label photo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photo. Show all posts
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Aboriginal murals on the Wulai road
including this first with biblical imagery
(or is this an element from Atayal legend too?)
sun-shooting legend
monkey-agriculture legend???
photos copyright Jiyue Publications 2012
Guns and Roses: Wanhua Makes a Comeback
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY MARK CALTONHILL
The river was the heart of this district, the earliest part of Taipei inhabited by Han Chinese, but today is largely hidden behind high levees. A good place to start a visit is at the Taipei City Wholesale Fish Market (531 Wanda Road) near the river, where more than 100 tons of fresh fish are auctioned before dawn each day. Smaller quantities can be bought at the retail stalls next door, and there are a couple of restaurants selling cooked fish. Less bloody, the No.1 Fruit and Vegetable Wholesale Market nearby is also worth a look.
By the 1730s, Manga was the main center of trade in northern Taiwan, the origin of Taipei City, as well as its major port. This dominant role continued until silting of the river led to Manga’s decline. Another perhaps more important cause was the frequent fighting among ethnic subgroups who had migrated from Jinjiang (晉江), Hui’an (惠安), Nan’an (南安) and Tong’an (同安) in Fujian Province. These clashes finally led to a mass exodus of the losers, who then established Dadaocheng (大稻埕) as a rival wharf further downstream (at the end of today’s MinSheng West Road).
Manga’s Qingshui Zushi Temple (清水祖師廟), first built in 1787, was razed during such fighting in 1853, only to be rebuilt in 1867. Largely overshadowed by its larger neighbor Longshan Temple (龍山寺), its sleepy, restaurant-sided courtyard offers a glimpse of times gone by. It would probably not look very different from when Canadian George MacKay first came in 1872. One of the most successful missionaries in the entire China region, he nevertheless had great difficulty “taking” Manga. In his book From Far Formosa, MacKay spells it as Bang-kah, nicknames it “the Gibraltar of heathenism in North Formosa,” and says that its estimated population of around 45,000 made it the largest and most important city in northern Taiwan.
“The citizens of Bang-kah, old and young, are daily toiling for money, money – cash, cash,” he noted in his journal of 1875. “They are materialistic, superstitious dollar-seekers. At every visit, when passing through their streets we are maligned, jeered at, and abused. Hundreds of children run ahead, yelling with derisive shouts; others follow, pelting us with orange-peel, mud, and rotten eggs. For hatred to foreigners, for pride, swaggering ignorance, and conceit, for superstitious, sensual, haughty, double-faced wickedness, Bang-kah takes the palm.”
Today foreigners are warmly welcomed, though even the main tourist sights (Longshan Temple, Snake Alley, Xinmending, etc.) are not overrun with outsiders and the atmosphere is thoroughly local. Longshan, for example, is a typical working temple, where Manga residents go to supplicate and thank their favorite deities. Ostensibly a Buddhist place of worship, since the main deity worshiped is the Bodhisattva Guanyin, in reality it is typical of mixed temples with numerous other figures honored in smaller shrines to the rear.
Ghost money and herbs
XiYuan Road on the temple’s west side has many stores specializing in religious paraphernalia. Selling everyday items such as ghost money, divination tools, and statues, as well as high art and more bizarre items such as weapons used by jitong (乩童; “divination boys”) for self-harm when possessed by spirits, they are good places for visitors to search for more unusual souvenirs.
Along the east side of the temple is “herb lane,” worth exploring for vegetation used in cooking and herbal cures.
In front of Longhsan Temple is a large open plaza. This is an ideal place to learn about traditional life in contemporary Taipei. Members of the local community, most of them elderly males, gather here all day long to pass the time, make friends, and enjoy themselves, and the side streets are filled with small cheap eateries. One store of unusual interest is the secondhand bookshop, antique bazaar, and café at No. 152, Lane 4, GuangZhou Street, one of the nearest things Manga has to a museum.
Another museum-like venture is the government-backed development of Bopiliao (剝皮寮), a short street of old buildings, one block further east near the junction of GuangZhou Street and KangDing Road. Still a work in progress, it already throngs with local sightseers because it was featured in Niu’s Monga. With official support, many of the small houses along what is said to have been the district’s main street in very early times have been renovated and contain exhibitions of history, art, and local culture. Although there is not yet much in the way of English information, it is still a good place to take pictures and buy souvenirs.
Back on the square, buskers entertain crowds, experts pick lottery numbers for hopeful gamblers, people dance and play Chinese chess, monks beg, and streetwalkers and their pimps approach potential customers.
Although prostitution has officially been stopped, it seems to be tolerated in Manga, where the predominantly elderly women operate openly and there are still STD clinics behind the temple. The showcase platform of this “colorful” slice of local culture, HuaXi Street (華西街; nicknamed “Snake Alley”) further east, which had open displays of snakes, turtles, and apes, and one of the city’s major red-light districts along adjacent alleys, has largely been cleaned up. This is probably due to tourist dollars as much as government edict: the sanitized market now specializes in seafood snacks and foot massages as much as snake blood and happy endings. There are many temples in the district, and many temple activities. Of particular note is that each year in November or December (the 22nd and 23rd days of the 10th lunar month), the Qingshan Temple (青山宮) at 218 GuiYang Street Sec. 2 organizes one of Taipei’s most spectacular street parades, with statues of deities from nearby temples brought to celebrate the King of Qingshan’s birthday. Beyond the bright lights and camera crews, this is also an event that will have changed little since MacKay’s time.
Uniforms and costumes
From a transportation hub based on the river, Manga developed into a center of trade. In addition to the fishing and agricultural products sold in its markets, it was particularly known for its textile and clothing businesses. While these have largely gone elsewhere (mainly to China and Southeast Asia), there are still a few reminders to be seen and enjoyed. Two curiosities in the otherwise quiet Hanzhong Street area are the trade outfitters and fancy dress shops. The former provide uniforms for everyone from shop staff to marching bands, while the latter stock costumes for private parties, trade shows, and cosplay events.
Far more obvious is the modish district of Ximending, Taiwan’s first pedestrian zone. Busy on weekday evenings, it is completely mobbed with young people on weekends, when record companies, cosmetic manufacturers, and others put on stage shows featuring established and up-and-coming music and television stars. Licensed buskers and street artists draw crowds in the wider car-free streets, while the back alleys leading toward KunMing Street are home to dozens of small independent designers selling clothing and accessories to Taipei’s counterculture youths. There are tattoo artists and body piercers as well as hair salons, manicurists, and masseurs. Street walls are covered in bright murals and graffiti, and the sound of skateboards echoes through the lanes above the chords of indie-music played on portable hifis.
Manga was once the entertainment center of Taipei, with numerous theaters doing good business on weekdays and weekends alike. Although many are gone, largely replaced by KTV centers, Ximending still has a range of movie houses showing mainstream and art movies, and is one of the main centers of activity during the annual Taipei International Film Festival.
One reversal of this cultural decline was the reopening of the Red House Theater (紅樓劇場) in 2002. This fine Japanese-era, Western-style building dating from 1908 was originally constructed as a market, but was converted to a theater by Shanghai émigrés in 1949. Now under city government control, it has handicraft stalls on the first floor, but regularly organizes performances upstairs.
Its reconstruction led to a wider change in local fortunes, and the pedestrian zone around the theater fills with café tables by day and pub seating at night. This is a center of Taipei’s LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community, as can be identified by the leather trouser and underwear specialist stores – Manga’s latest take on the textile industry – interspersed among the cafés.
The rest of Manga, lying to the south of the now underground Taipei-to-Banqiao railway line, has its own attractions, but is largely residential. For locals, two of the highlights of living there are the spacious Youth Park and even more massive Riverside Park beneath the Huazhong Bridge to Yonghe.
Wanhua Railway Station offers access to the Longshan Temple area for visitors from outside the capital, though Taipei Main Station is within walking distance of Ximending. There are also MRT stations at Longshan Temple and Ximending, and ZhongHua Road is a main hub for bus services throughout the city and beyond.
Out-of-towners can also take advantage of the wide choice of hotels in the neighborhood, ranging from backstreet hovels to high-class establishments. Perhaps the ideal location for those wishing to connect with Manga’s past is one of the riverside hotels with windows offering views of the sunset across the waters that once swarmed with boats.
So what will you find in Manga? No guns, hopefully, though perhaps a few hints of gangs, and definitely a lady-of-the-night or two. And religion to be sure, food for certain, and maybe you will even fall in love with Taipei’s original conurbation.
Text and photos copyright Taiwan Business Topics and Jiyue Publications 2011/2012
School Murals (I)
a sample of murals at the Hu Shih Elementary School in Nangang (南港), Taipei City
say no go gangs
tooth-brushing expert
science class
text and photos copyright Jiyue Publications 2012
say no go gangs
tooth-brushing expert
science class
text and photos copyright Jiyue Publications 2012
Friday, 30 March 2012
Thursday, 9 February 2012
some pics
got some nice pics in Yeliu this week:
for more see http://photos-ftaiwan-jiyueimages.blogspot.com/
copyright Jiyue Publications
Sunday, 26 June 2011
cycling in Kaohsiung
article in Taiwan Today (GIO online newspaper) about cycling in Kaohsiung (http://www.taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=167358&ctNode=427):
On a warm spring Sunday afternoon, Hsu Ching-jan, his wife and 8-year-old daughter make their way towards downtown Kaohsiung City to go shopping and eat snacks before heading home. All are riding newish-looking bicycles and are wearing regulation helmets and brightly colored cycle jerseys. They are just three of a great many cyclists thronging the car-free bike paths running along both sides of the Love River near the city’s harbor.
“We come here once or twice a month,” said Hsu. “Actually, it was my daughter Cindy’s idea originally. She’d heard about it from her classmates.”
This is typical of the way the pleasures of cycling spread by word of mouth. The Internet is similarly abuzz with recommendations.
“After many years of avoiding Taiwan’s second largest city [Kaohsiung], I recently went back,” Andrew Kerslake, a U.S. citizen residing in Taichung, wrote on his blog Taiwan in Cycles last fall. “The place had totally been transformed into a large friendly metropole with a small town feel.”
“It was gorgeous,” he concluded. “Most of all I felt safe.”
This final point is a key consideration. When asked why they do not cycle regularly, many Taiwanese cite safety as a major concern, along with pollution and—especially among women—getting sunburned.
Local cyclists have their own solution to this last problem: covering every inch of their flesh with layers of clothing. Regarding the first two, they have to rely on drivers’ etiquette and government administrations’ pursuit of antipollution policies.
“In order to make cycling more convenient and safer for citizens, bike paths are constructed as part of the sidewalk, so as to avoid bikes having to compete for road space with cars and motorbikes,” Kent T. Wang, director-general of Kaohsiung’s Department of Transport, said by e-mail.
Furthermore, to encourage cyclists to use the paths, he stressed that “they are built in coordination with road construction projects and in accordance with the same principles of signage, signaling and road marking.”
This will be good news to many cyclists visiting Kaohsiung from other cities—around the world and not just in Taiwan—who often feel themselves to be second-class road users. Taipei’s bike paths, for example, have few signs directing cyclists to destinations and no distance indicators other than those relating to the section of path being used.
“According to statistics from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Kaohsiung’s rate of cycle use in 2009 was 6.7 percent. This compares with a 2005 figure from my own department of 4.3 percent before the bicycling system was constructed,” Wang said. “This shows the gradual increase in bicycle use among Kaohsiung’s citizens.”
Wang explained that motivation for the city’s investment in cycling infrastructure was two-fold. “Our administration decided to promote the use of bicycles as an alternative to motorbikes for short journeys because they are better both for individual health and for protection of the environment. As such, it is part of our efforts to meet Kaohsiung’s low-carbon target.”
Due to its strategic location, from early in the period of Japanese rule, Kaohsiung was developed as the island’s major industrial region, a process that only intensified after postwar retrocession as it became the engine powering the Taiwan economic miracle. As the center of heavy industry—particularly steel, energy and petrochemical production—with thousands of factories, the city also recorded some of the nation’s worst air, water and land pollution indices, and one of the worst per capita carbon dioxide emission rates in the world.
It was against this background that incumbent two-term Mayor Chen Chu was elected. Two key items on her campaign manifesto were the improvement of transportation and emphasizing of environmental protection.
Not merely words with which to get elected, these policies have remained central to her efforts to transform Kaohsiung into a low-carbon and environmentally sustainable metropolis.
While most of the cuts in per capita emissions targeted—30 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050—will have to come from the industrial, commercial and residential sectors, transportation policy can also play a role in a city notoriously addicted to car and motorbike use. Chen’s administration has expanded the city’s bus system, acquired hundreds of new, energy-efficient buses, and doubled MRT shuttle bus connectivity. It has also expressed its commitment to the embattled MRT system despite poor usage rates by citizens.
Folding bikes can be taken on buses and the MRT for free, and regular bikes on the MRT for a flat bike-and-passenger ticket of NT$60 (US$2.32), said Wang.
Alternatively, citizens can take public transport to one of 50 kiosks around the city to rent one of 4,500 bikes at a subsidized rate starting at NT$30. This C-Bike scheme, Taiwan’s first urban bike rental program, was what particularly caught CNN’s attention.
“NT$75 million of the costs for the C-Bike project came from the central government,” Lee Mu-sheng, director-general of the city’s Environmental Protection Bureau, said, also by e-mail. “With NT$15 million from the city budget, this made a total of NT$90 million in 2008.”
As for the 230 kilometers of bike paths, Wu Ming-chang, director of the Maintenance Office in the Public Works Bureau, estimated they had cost around NT$40 million for upkeep in the period 2010-11.
So do riders feel these investments have made Kaohsiung a cycling paradise?
Hans Chen, a Kaohsiung native who now lives in Taipei and commutes by bicycle from Guandu to the city center, said he prefers the Kaohsiung system, “because it is less abused by motorcyclists who illegally take shortcuts on the capital’s bike paths.”
American consultant Michael Cannon recently made the opposite move, from Linkou in New Taipei City to be near his wife’s family in Kaohsiung. “Riding around Kaohsiung itself with the flow of traffic is easier and more comfortable in comparison to riding in Taipei,” he said. “Due to the prevalence of scooters here, drivers are quite conscientious about cyclists and don’t push them off the roadway.”
But Michael Turton, an American educator based in Taichung, said he preferred Taichung or Taipei, not because the facilities were better, but because “the mountains are right outside your door, whereas in Kaohsiung there are many kilometers of terrible traffic between you and the beautiful hills.”
All three cyclists had suggestions for further improvements in Kaohsiung, from the removal of stray dogs to the provision of access ramps and extension of the system.
Moreover, there needs to be a change in perception of cycling from a twice-per month hobby to a transportation system if people like the Hsus and their daughter are going to commute daily to work or school by bike, and thus really contribute to hitting Kaohsiung’s CO2-emission targets
On a warm spring Sunday afternoon, Hsu Ching-jan, his wife and 8-year-old daughter make their way towards downtown Kaohsiung City to go shopping and eat snacks before heading home. All are riding newish-looking bicycles and are wearing regulation helmets and brightly colored cycle jerseys. They are just three of a great many cyclists thronging the car-free bike paths running along both sides of the Love River near the city’s harbor.
“We come here once or twice a month,” said Hsu. “Actually, it was my daughter Cindy’s idea originally. She’d heard about it from her classmates.”
This is typical of the way the pleasures of cycling spread by word of mouth. The Internet is similarly abuzz with recommendations.
“After many years of avoiding Taiwan’s second largest city [Kaohsiung], I recently went back,” Andrew Kerslake, a U.S. citizen residing in Taichung, wrote on his blog Taiwan in Cycles last fall. “The place had totally been transformed into a large friendly metropole with a small town feel.”
“It was gorgeous,” he concluded. “Most of all I felt safe.”
This final point is a key consideration. When asked why they do not cycle regularly, many Taiwanese cite safety as a major concern, along with pollution and—especially among women—getting sunburned.
Local cyclists have their own solution to this last problem: covering every inch of their flesh with layers of clothing. Regarding the first two, they have to rely on drivers’ etiquette and government administrations’ pursuit of antipollution policies.
“In order to make cycling more convenient and safer for citizens, bike paths are constructed as part of the sidewalk, so as to avoid bikes having to compete for road space with cars and motorbikes,” Kent T. Wang, director-general of Kaohsiung’s Department of Transport, said by e-mail.
Furthermore, to encourage cyclists to use the paths, he stressed that “they are built in coordination with road construction projects and in accordance with the same principles of signage, signaling and road marking.”
This will be good news to many cyclists visiting Kaohsiung from other cities—around the world and not just in Taiwan—who often feel themselves to be second-class road users. Taipei’s bike paths, for example, have few signs directing cyclists to destinations and no distance indicators other than those relating to the section of path being used.
“According to statistics from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Kaohsiung’s rate of cycle use in 2009 was 6.7 percent. This compares with a 2005 figure from my own department of 4.3 percent before the bicycling system was constructed,” Wang said. “This shows the gradual increase in bicycle use among Kaohsiung’s citizens.”
Wang explained that motivation for the city’s investment in cycling infrastructure was two-fold. “Our administration decided to promote the use of bicycles as an alternative to motorbikes for short journeys because they are better both for individual health and for protection of the environment. As such, it is part of our efforts to meet Kaohsiung’s low-carbon target.”
Due to its strategic location, from early in the period of Japanese rule, Kaohsiung was developed as the island’s major industrial region, a process that only intensified after postwar retrocession as it became the engine powering the Taiwan economic miracle. As the center of heavy industry—particularly steel, energy and petrochemical production—with thousands of factories, the city also recorded some of the nation’s worst air, water and land pollution indices, and one of the worst per capita carbon dioxide emission rates in the world.
It was against this background that incumbent two-term Mayor Chen Chu was elected. Two key items on her campaign manifesto were the improvement of transportation and emphasizing of environmental protection.
Not merely words with which to get elected, these policies have remained central to her efforts to transform Kaohsiung into a low-carbon and environmentally sustainable metropolis.
While most of the cuts in per capita emissions targeted—30 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050—will have to come from the industrial, commercial and residential sectors, transportation policy can also play a role in a city notoriously addicted to car and motorbike use. Chen’s administration has expanded the city’s bus system, acquired hundreds of new, energy-efficient buses, and doubled MRT shuttle bus connectivity. It has also expressed its commitment to the embattled MRT system despite poor usage rates by citizens.
Folding bikes can be taken on buses and the MRT for free, and regular bikes on the MRT for a flat bike-and-passenger ticket of NT$60 (US$2.32), said Wang.
Alternatively, citizens can take public transport to one of 50 kiosks around the city to rent one of 4,500 bikes at a subsidized rate starting at NT$30. This C-Bike scheme, Taiwan’s first urban bike rental program, was what particularly caught CNN’s attention.
“NT$75 million of the costs for the C-Bike project came from the central government,” Lee Mu-sheng, director-general of the city’s Environmental Protection Bureau, said, also by e-mail. “With NT$15 million from the city budget, this made a total of NT$90 million in 2008.”
As for the 230 kilometers of bike paths, Wu Ming-chang, director of the Maintenance Office in the Public Works Bureau, estimated they had cost around NT$40 million for upkeep in the period 2010-11.
So do riders feel these investments have made Kaohsiung a cycling paradise?
Hans Chen, a Kaohsiung native who now lives in Taipei and commutes by bicycle from Guandu to the city center, said he prefers the Kaohsiung system, “because it is less abused by motorcyclists who illegally take shortcuts on the capital’s bike paths.”
American consultant Michael Cannon recently made the opposite move, from Linkou in New Taipei City to be near his wife’s family in Kaohsiung. “Riding around Kaohsiung itself with the flow of traffic is easier and more comfortable in comparison to riding in Taipei,” he said. “Due to the prevalence of scooters here, drivers are quite conscientious about cyclists and don’t push them off the roadway.”
But Michael Turton, an American educator based in Taichung, said he preferred Taichung or Taipei, not because the facilities were better, but because “the mountains are right outside your door, whereas in Kaohsiung there are many kilometers of terrible traffic between you and the beautiful hills.”
All three cyclists had suggestions for further improvements in Kaohsiung, from the removal of stray dogs to the provision of access ramps and extension of the system.
Moreover, there needs to be a change in perception of cycling from a twice-per month hobby to a transportation system if people like the Hsus and their daughter are going to commute daily to work or school by bike, and thus really contribute to hitting Kaohsiung’s CO2-emission targets
Thursday, 27 January 2011
recent food pics
out and about for cycle trips, and amcham (here) and Global Times articles (here)
so lots of food photos for JBB recently
such as this possible chapter title page for Taipei City:
grilled tofu stall in Sanchong Night Market:
and baked sweet potoato vendor, outside Liuzhangli MRT Station, Taipei City:
a pig-ear chef in Dihua Street "south-north provisions market":
a peanut vendor in Taipei's Wanhua District:
and while looking for New Year delicacies at Luzhou Market, some women buying "lucky red underwear":
so lots of food photos for JBB recently
such as this possible chapter title page for Taipei City:
grilled tofu stall in Sanchong Night Market:
and baked sweet potoato vendor, outside Liuzhangli MRT Station, Taipei City:
a pig-ear chef in Dihua Street "south-north provisions market":
a peanut vendor in Taipei's Wanhua District:
and while looking for New Year delicacies at Luzhou Market, some women buying "lucky red underwear":
Monday, 19 July 2010
I will finish
back on bicycle tour ("of the hilly bits")
hoping for some (is one per day too much to ask?) photos for JBB book
(which i WILL finish next year; though i say this every year)
here's the best from today:
rice harvesting in Taoyuan County
hoping for some (is one per day too much to ask?) photos for JBB book
(which i WILL finish next year; though i say this every year)
here's the best from today:
rice harvesting in Taoyuan County
Thursday, 24 June 2010
oh, sunny days
it seems to have rained for the last three months
so i have hardly a photo for the guidebook i have been commissioned to contribute to
so i have to dig back in my own files
<--such as this sunny-day shot of Taipei (Dadaocheng) from Taipei County (Sanchong)
and here is the view b
ack the other way -->
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
high-rent neighbourhood
people living in taipei city often say "you can see Taipei 101 from my house"
well, this was the view from my rooftop garden at dawn recently
Saturday, 22 May 2010
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
fish of the day
the bottom-right photo yesterday from Huang Yun-ju's trip around Taiwan,
showing fish and a sailing boat,
reminded me of the fish on top of the huge Wang Ye boats that are burnt at religious festivals in Taiwan, such as the one below from Jiali (佳里) in Tainan County.
[it probably isn't, however, since Huang says the temple is the Sheng Mu Gong (聖母宮; "Sacred Mother Temple") in Luermen (鹿耳門) and so will be dedicated to seafarers' deity Matsu, which would also explain the boat and fish]
showing fish and a sailing boat,
reminded me of the fish on top of the huge Wang Ye boats that are burnt at religious festivals in Taiwan, such as the one below from Jiali (佳里) in Tainan County.
[it probably isn't, however, since Huang says the temple is the Sheng Mu Gong (聖母宮; "Sacred Mother Temple") in Luermen (鹿耳門) and so will be dedicated to seafarers' deity Matsu, which would also explain the boat and fish]
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
.jpg)
Sunday, 2 May 2010
back on the hill
most temples on Shitoushan (獅頭山) only open to the public on Sundays so I went back for a second look
(still not awed, I have to admit)
this one is nice, the baroque Ling Xia Cave (靈霞洞 )
Thursday, 22 April 2010
photo of (another) day
too many words, not enough pictureshere's the monastery at Shitoushan
NT$1000 per night for a double room
nice gate to mountains too
Saturday, 17 April 2010
original lamp posts?
amazing row of shops in Qishan (旗山) Township ("The Banana Kingdom"), in Kaohsiung CountyWednesday, 7 April 2010
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Friday, 2 April 2010
Friday, 26 March 2010
+LR.jpg)
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