Amber does Taichū

I had been promising my daughter a train ride for the past week, and this Sunday I delivered on my promise. My wife has a cold, so she elected to stay home and rest this afternoon, leaving Amber and I to wander the streets of downtown T'aichung (Taijhong) 台中 for several hours. We began by catching the 12:20 local train 各駅停車 from Fengyuan (Fongyuan) Station 豊原駅. This being Taiwan, the train naturally arrived around 12:30. Here is Amber excitedly looking at the train as it is pulling into the station:

Amber enjoyed the train ride, but I wasn't too happy about the gauntlet she had to run through to get to a seat. People were reaching out to touch her as she walked by, and I sensed that it bothered her somewhat. However, daddy's lap made for a safe refuge, and she was able to enjoy the trip into Taichung. Exiting the station, we crossed over to Chungcheng (Jhongjheng) Road, and started walking north, pausing to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant with a Hida-Takayama 飛騨高山 theme (there were posters of Takayama all over the restaurant). Amber and I shared some pork cutlets and rice, then headed back outside.

Chikuang (Jiguang) Street is a supposed pedestrian mall filled with clothing stores and food stalls. Trouble was many of the shops were closed, and plenty of cars and scooters were driving along the allegedly vehicle-free lane. It seems to me that many in Taiwan just don't get it - if you truly want a better quality of life, a good start would be to actually respect the intentions behind setting up places like Chikuang Street. Instead of enjoying a pleasant stroll down a vibrant market road, Amber and I had to stick to dirty sidewalks, walking by shuttered storefronts and hundreds of parked scooters.

From Chikuang Street, we made our way over to Minch'uan (Mincyuan) Road, and turned right to visit a pair of old government buildings dating from the Japanese era. First stop was Taichung's original city hall and later Bureau of Transportation and Tourism building, dating from 1920. It's now an exhibition hall, and inside was a display of Peking Opera 京劇 costumes. It was too bad photography wasn't allowed indoors, as the building's interior was beautiful, and the opera exhibit was pretty good too (Amber especially liked the dragon motifs). Nonetheless, it's great to see an old structure like this one being put to good use, instead of being torn down and replaced by something more "modern". Across the street is the current City Hall, which was built in 1924. The Taichung city government has had long-standing plans to move to a location further north in the city. If that does happen, I hope something will be done to preserve the attractive structure, just like its neighbor.

Next, we walked along Tzuyou (Zihyou) Street, an area known as Taichung's "cake street". Amber wanted to go into one bakery, which we did, and emerged with a couple of pastries. The thing I couldn't understand was, while there were plenty of bakeries to choose from, none of them (at least from what I could see) had any tables where you could enjoy what you had just purchased, so we ended up taking our treats to a branch of 85°C Coffee. Amber didn't seem to mind much:

Following a brief detour through Herbal Medicine Street, we reached the final destination of our walk, Taichung Park, a city landmark laid out by (who else?) the Japanese back in 1903. It was here that Pamela picked us up in the car for the drive back to Fengyuan (Taichung Station would have been pretty hectic around 5pm on a Sunday). While waiting for my wife, Amber and I walked through part of the park. Or at least I walked, as Amber was running everywhere. Taichung Park is a popular meeting place on Sundays for Taichung County's Southeast Asian community, who generally have only this day of the week off, and use it to get together with their compatriots at the park. Several of them were quite interested in Amber, and my daughter enjoyed the attention. Who wouldn't?

And thus a father-daughter Sunday afternoon outing came to an end. If the route we took sounds familiar, it's outlined on pages 238-239 of "The Rough Guide to Taiwan". Had it been just me, I would have been pretty disappointed with the suggested course. Despite all the pronouncements of the city government, downtown Taichung is still pretty rundown and decrepit in parts, and doesn't seem to be getting any better. Amber, however, really enjoyed herself, and never tired, despite all the walking around we did (though she did fall asleep in the car on the way back to Fengyuan). So let me pass along my thanks to the editors at RT.