Hokkaido Postscript: Fun in Formosa

Gongtian Temple

We departed Sapporo 札幌 on Tuesday, the 25th of February following an 11-day, 10-night stay on Hokkaidō 北海道, taking in the winter sights and scenery. After nearly five hours of flight time we found ourselves in a much warmer climate - that of Taiwan, where temperatures of 10°C/50°F are considered to be a "cold wave". And yet in some respects it felt colder being in Fengyuan 豐原 than in Sapporo. While my mother-in-law might be overdoing it when it comes to bundling up (see photo below), Taiwanese homes are mainly concrete and tile, which combined with the lack of central heating (or even air conditioners with heating functions) can make them feel chillier inside than the outside air temperatures would suggest. I would end up buying a cheap windbreaker the next day at the local Carrefour to use until things warmed up later that week:

Wednesday the 26th. Not my brother-in-law's house, but an interesting facade located a few doors down the street from where my wife and I were staying:

One of the small things I look forward to whenever I'm back in Taiwan is having danbing 蛋餅 for breakfast. While Shu-E sometimes makes it at home here in Beijing 北京, I do miss going out to breakfast shops, where I can supplement the danbing with a "hamburger" and a hot cup o' joe:

Years ago when I was living in Taiwan I spent far too much of my free time maintaining a blog called "Sponge Bear" (all the articles on that online rag were transferred to this current diary, but not all the images successfully migrated). One of the things I used to write about was the popularity, and often misuse, of the Japanese language when it came to advertisements. Things haven't changed much as this tea shop sign in downtown Fengyuan demonstrates:

A giant dragon looms over the road close to the Miaodong Night Market 廟東夜市 (which is actually open daily from 1000 hours):

Another dish I look forward to having every time I'm back in Taiwan is Chiayi Turkey Rice 嘉義火雞肉飯, a box I ticked at lunchtime on the second day in-country. I don't waste time...:

Outside the aforementioned Carrefour was this stall selling Taiwanese-style sausages, yet another favorite of mine, although this time I didn't join the line:

One important task to do while in Taiwan was to visit the Shengang Daming Temple 神岡大明宮. Knowing the trials and tribulations her waiguoren 外國人 son-in-law was going through during the most recent bidding process, she often visited to ask the gods enshrined there for their assistance. On this day I joined her and Shu-E in thanking the deities for all the help they provided:

I didn't take any photos, but the expansive grounds of the temple (which itself seems overly large considering the size of the semi-rural surrounding community) were serving as a staging point for military exercises:

Back at the house and modeling my new Chinese Taipei 中華台北 baseball jersey, like what the Taiwanese team wore when they upset Japan last November in the Premier 12 baseball tournament, the country's first senior baseball title ever. I've worn this (and an older CT jersey) here in Beijing, to the surprise of some people. But why wouldn't I sport it in China? "Chinese Taipei" is the name the Chinese government insists that Taiwan uses in international sporting competitions, so it shouldn't be an issue here, right?. Though I have gotten some strange looks, especially from official-looking people...:

That evening Shu-E and I went out for dinner with my mother-in-law and brother-in-law to a teppanyaki  鉄板焼き restaurant. Here I am sporting my stylish Carrefour-bought windbreaker (complete with malfunctioning zipper):

Thursday the 27th. I was surprised that morning to see how foggy it was. I wasn't surprised later when the mist turned into the more common smog. Air quality is an issue for those living in Taichung 台中:

A familair sight on Taiwanese roads. This one, unfortunately, did not include a woman in a skimpy outfit belting out tunes from a stage in the bed of the truck:

Or even something like this:

In the central part of Fengyuan there is a river (or stream) that was covered over years ago and turned into a long (though narrow) parking lot. I was surprised this time to discover that one end of the waterway has been restored and turned into the Huludun Waterfront Park 葫蘆墩圳水岸花都. Why is it places where I used to live always seem to become nicer and/or more convenient after I leave?:

Another example of how things have gotten better - Fengyuan now has its own branch of the Japanese gyūdon 牛丼 beef bowl chain SUKIYA すき家, to go along with the Sushirō スシロー conveyor belt sushi outlet I noticed earlier that morning in Carrefour. It might not seem newsworthy to you, but places like these (and the already-present MOS Burger モスバーガー and Mister Donut ミスタードーナツ) would've made life in Fengyuan a little more familiar (and therefore more comfortable) for me:

The Fengyuan branch of Global Village 地球村美日語, an island-wide chain of English language schools. I used to work part-time there (actually, at its prior location, across from the Fengyuan Bus Company station). GVO is notorious among the English teacher community for its low wages (I was making a whopping NT550 or $16.50 per hour), but the company paid on time, followed labor regulations and generally left instructors alone to teach how best they saw fit in the classroom. Best of all, the classes were made up only of adults or high school students, a welcome break from the grind of working in kindergartens and cram schools 補習班, which still make up the bulk of a typical foreign English teacher's workload in Taiwan:

From Fengyuan we drove out to the area around the Tai'an Old railway station 泰安車站. The reason for going out there was to see the cherry trees blooming. Even though it was a weekday the lanes were bustling with visitors (and the businesses set up to cater to them). The next day would be a national holiday and the start of a three-day weekend, so I knew that no matter how busy this day was, the next day would be an absolute nightmare of foot and vehicle traffic. As a friend once described it, even the smallest towns in Taiwan have a way of "vomiting up people":

A sign showing that Tai'an was originally referred to as an yì 驛, an old name for a post or courier station, and not by the more modern 駅 (Japanese) or 站 (Mandarin):

Approaching the Old Beam Bridge. Operations of the Former Mountain Line 舊山線 were suspended in 1968, hence the prefixes:

A monument memorial to the 1935 Shinchiku-Taichū Earthquake 1935年新竹-台中地震. Though the station was repaired and reopened following the disaster (the original wooden structure being replaced with a concrete building), it closed in 1968. A new Tai'an Station 泰安車站 (about twenty minutes to the west on foot) now serves the Taichung Line 台中線:

Getting ready to tuck into a Taiwanese sausage, one of my favorite snack foods. That's a garlic clove, a necessary accompaniment, between my thumb and forefinger:

One of the vendors was handing out samples of a high-fiber snack made from wild wheat, which turned out to taste very similar to Honey Smacks cereal. We bought a bag for me to take back to Beijing...:

…where it now stands at my service in my office:

On our way back to the parking lot:

Before heading back to Fengyuan we did a little more snacking under the Taichung Line tracks:

On the way home we made a stop at the Lihpao Outlet Mall. We were both bemused to come across a Sapporo Drug Store there:

Next door to サツドラ was a 100 yen shop, where everything inside was advertised as being NT59. Except that at current exchange rates 100 yen is only NT22, so perhaps the 100 Shop should change its name to the 270 Shop (a side note: years ago I remember a Daisō ダイソー opening up in the Carrefour in Fengyuan. Everything was being sold at NT39, which was roughly the exchange rate at the time):

Out for an evening walk in the neighborhood. Small temples are a common sight in Taiwan, and one facet that distinguishes this country from the People's Republic, where the majority of temples (far fewer in number compared to Taiwan) tend to be of the large, historic and more tourist-friendly variety:

And yet another example of how neighborhoods become more livable once I move away, as well as the use of Japanese to make a business seem more fashionable or modern. This brightly lit shop sells bentō 弁当 lunch boxes - my hard-to-impress mother-in-law thinks highly of them:

 

Friday the 28th is a public holiday in Taiwan. I made arrangements to see my good friend Steve on this day. Normally on a Friday he would be busy working at the English school he owns and operates with his wife, but being a holiday he was free. I could've asked Shu-E to drive me to his house in the southern part of Taichung, but I decided to see some of the improvements the city has made in its public transportation network. I had my wife drop me off at Lilin railway station 栗林車站, which opened only in 2018 and a 10-minute drive from her brother's house, where I caught a local train heading in the direction of central Taichung:

I had the more convenient option of staying on the train all the way to Daqing 大慶車站, the closest station to where Steve lives. However, in 2021 the first section of the Taichung MRT line was finished. As I'd never ridden the line, I used the opportunity to see what it was like. As it turned out the tracks, though aboveground, were completely enclosed. Even though there were glass panels, the view was restricted and therefore not very interesting. I now know the next time I ride the Green Line it will be because I'll need to to reach a particular destination.

Meeting up with an old friend, who I've known since high school days. Though Steve is only five months younger than me, he obviously takes much better care of himself. As a mutual friend observed, he appears "ripped":

Ripped he may be, but Steve took me out to a delicious but less than healthy lunch at a restaurant called Burger Joint 7分SO in Taichung's Xitun district 西屯區:

We returned to his house afterward, where I met up with his wife March...

…and daughter Zoey, who was visiting for the holiday weekend from her university in Tamsui 淡水. She's holding one of the many boxes of Hokkaido chocolate that Shu-E bought at New Chitose Airport 新千歳空港 as souvenirs for family and friends (and for which I had to carry them all):

For dinner that evening the four of us went to an Indian restaurant

It's always a pleasure to spend time with old friends, even if one day is not enough to catch up everything:

Saturday the 1st of March. It would be a warm, sunny day as Shu-E and I headed north, driving past the local garbage incinerator. It was my wife's suggestion that we should explore the area around Taoyuan 桃園 and Zhongli 中壢 as a possible site to purchase a house, but as usual she had ulterior motives:

Passing by Huoyanshan 火炎山, which I hiked several times in the past. It's appearance is apparently the result of some kind of mining activity:

It's difficult to make out, but the reason I took this photo from the car's passenger seat was to capture the large statue of Guanyin 觀音, the Buddhist deity of mercy, on the roof of what presumably was a temple:

Approaching the real reason for driving north. In recent years my wife has taken an almost obsessive interest in the annual Baishatun Matsu pilgrimage 白沙屯媽祖進香, an annual religious procession centered around Gongtian Temple 拱天宮 in the town of Tongxiao 通霄. Why this activity so rivets Shu-E eludes me - is she getting progressively devout as she gets older?: 

The temple's parking lot was full, so we ended parking on a bridge a short walk away:

Once we reached the main hall my wife plunged into the throng of worshippers, while I stood to the side to take it all in:

The view coming out of the main hall...:

…and looking back:

Wherever there are crowds in Taiwan there will be vendors to serve their needs:

 

Which in my case turned out to be another Taiwanese sausage:

The wife takes photos of some wind turbines in the distance:

All the eateries around the temple were unsurprisingly packed with customers, so we returned to the car and continued driving north. While I drove, Shu-E searched for restaurants along the way, but the offerings were surprisingly slim. Eventually, she suggested stopping on the main street leading up to the private Yu Da University 育達科技大學, where we found one cafe open for business. There weren't very many people on the street, but the few we saw were mostly students from Southeast Asia:

Eventually we reached Taoyuan in the late afternoon and checked into the Freedom Design Hotel 富立登國際大飯店, in the Luzhu district 蘆竹區 of the city. After resting a bit, we headed out and over to the nearby TaiMall 台茂購物中心, the first American-style shopping mall in Taiwan:

Being a Saturday evening the mall was busy. After searching around for a bit, we were able to be seated without waiting at an Italian restaurant, which in addition to my pasta offered a bottle of the North Taiwan Brewery's 北台灣麥酒 Abbey Beer 8 經典8啤酒: 

 

A religious goods store we passed by on our way back to the hotel:

Freedom!:

The view from our room on my final day in Taiwan:

On the observation deck at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport 台灣桃園國際機場:

An Air China flight prepares to take off. Not mine, of course:

A final snack before takeoff:

Leaving the Taipei area on my back to Beijing:

Being greeted by Timi upon arriving home after being away for more than two weeks. He's been overjoyed that I'm back, but once my wife returns this weekend the Siamese bastard will no doubt ignore me once again (except for when he's hungry and Shu-E isn't around):

As you've probably already deduced, I returned to Beijing on my own, while my wife has been staying in Taiwan to spend quality time with her family and friends. She sent me these photos from Fengyuan taken on the day I departed:

I remarked at the conclusion of my previous post how comfortable I feel whenever I visit Japan. After years of feeling alienated there, the same can now be said of Taiwan. I'm nowhere near as proficient in Mandarin as I am in Japanese (and that isn't saying much), but I'm much better at using it to get around than I used to be. And the five years and counting that I've been living in China (two in Shanghai 上海, approaching three in Beijing, and with more to come) have put into clearer focus how different Taiwan is from the country that continually threatens to annex it, and how much more familiar Formosa feels. 

As I have hopefully changed for the better, so has Taiwan, at least on the surface. I don't feel as many stares or overhear as many ridiculing comments as I once did. Thanks to recent efforts at enforcing traffic regulations, it now seems safer to cross the road. Pubic transportation, at least in the Taichung area, has significantly improved, with the construction of several new TR stations and the opening of the Green Line. And, of course, the fact my wife and my daughter are both ROC citizens means I have the kind of ties many other Westerners living and working in Taiwan might not share. If given a choice (along with sufficient funds and the proper visa) I would love to settle down in Japan; but Taiwan would be an obvious second choice, the Formosan silver to the Japanese gold.

No matter what Jerry Seinfeld might say...