Wanderer in Taipei - Day 5

Taipei day 5 - 28 Oct


Longshan Temple (龙山寺)
I started the day heading to Longshan Temple again. It thought it would be interesting to take a look at the temple in the day time.

While looking for some breakfast, I found the stall selling fried buns which I was looking for the previous night. I had an hearty breakfast of 10 fried dumplings, 2 fried buns and a bowl of soy milk. I had not had any decent breakfast for the past few days and this was pretty satisfying.

Longshan Temple in the morning has a different buzz from the night and the atmosphere was quite different. There was chanting going on and I recognized some of the sutras being chanted in Hokkien. The temple, being an old temple, did not have the large prayer halls which some of the newer temples have. The congregation were all lined up along the corridors and open spaces, with the tourists and other devotees weaving in and out in between.

In spite of the Buddhist elements, I found that it is really more of a Taoist temple. It seems to be a community hub in the area too and there were quite a number of old folks who appear to be just hanging around.

From the temple, I went along Sanshui Street (三水街) and saw that there was a Sanshui Market (三水市场). When I travel, I do like to take a look at local markets. It gives you a glimpse of some aspect of local life. I found that there were quite a number of stalls selling vegetarian food stuff in the market. It would seem to me that there is quite a significant number of vegetarians around.


Heritage and Culture Education Center of Taipei 台北市乡土教育中心

As I walked out from the market at the other end, I chanced upon a local folk museum that is not on any of the tourist maps. It was few admission and so I went it and took a look. It turned out to be quite an interesting museum.

There is one section with exhibits on Chinese medicine and another section on the old education system. There was also some cultural history about the area around the Longshan temple. What was nice is that a lot of the exhibits are "interactive". You can tinker and play with some of the exhibits. Open up the medicine box and the screen with provide information about the properties of the medicine. Try and weigh the herb with the small balance scales.

The center looked like it was newly set up and the building was actually preserved from a half torn old buildings. Apparently, the authorities had sent in a demolition squad and started tearing down the buildings before a public outcry halted it.


Ximending and the Cinema Street 西门町

From there, I continued to walk to Ximending, the shopping belt. When I found the cinema street, I found that the publicity posters for the Thai movie Love of Siam was still around. But unfortunately it was not on the screen anyway. It was too bad as I would have loved to watch it on the big screen. My friend told me that it did not do well at the box office and when he went to watch the movie, there were only less than 10 people in the whole cinema.

Before I came to Taiwan, I had already heard about the buzz around the local movie Cape Number 7 (海角7号). There had not been a local Taiwanese that was so popular for a while. I knew the movie would be going to Singapore in a few month's time, but I was interested in what's the buzz about. Since I was feeling pretty tired from running around for the past few days, I didn't mind spending 2 hours relaxing in the cinema. I bought tickets for the 11am show and it cost NT$210, which is comparable to the prices in Singapore. This being a weekday morning, there were few other people, except for a big group of uncles and aunties who came together for the movie.

I won't comment much about the movie other than to say that I won't mind catching it again when it comes to Singapore.

Ximending area is just a shopping area. I walked around the area a bit, but I no intention of doing any shopping and found no reason to linger around the area.


Sun Yet Sen Memorial Hall 国父纪念馆


I was surprised to find that the Sun Yet Sen Memorial Hall is really more than a memorial monument.

There were exhibition halls with paintings and calligraphy exhibits. The corridors were line with art works and photographs. There was a reading center where I found many people reading books and newspaper. In a lecture room, a documentary about Alaska was screening. I went and watched it for a while, before I got distracted by the change of guards. A group of arts students were painting the environs. The park around the hall was busy too and there were a few people trying to fly their kites.

I found that there were more local using the place than there were tourists. I thought that was very nice to make a memorial hall a place that functions almost like community center.





Eslite flagship store 诚品书局旗舰店

The Eslite flagship store was not far from the Sun Yet Sen Memorial hall. I have heard a lot about the Eslite bookshops. It's the biggest big shop chain in Taiwan with the biggest store. It also has a 24 hours bookstore.

Indeed, the bookshop lived up to its reputation. It was a huge store occupying a few stories. It had a wide range of books. What was nice is that it was spacious and had tables and seats for people to browse.

I had not intend to buy any books since my luggage really getting quite heavy and Eslite does not give any discounts (whereas the bookshops along Chongqing South Street [重庆南街] generally had at least 10% discount off the list price).

But I ended up still buying a few books. One was one the bestseller list and had a 15% discount on it. Another book was published 7 years ago and was not available when I looked at the other bookshops.


Taipei 101 台北101

Since I was in the vicinity, it made sense to drop by the Taipei 101. After all, it is the landmark of Taipei. I went around the building and found an angle which I took made it look like a pagoda.


Gin Gin Bookshop and Shida Night Market

I had to went back to Gin Gin bookshop (晶晶书局) to get a book for a friend. I also wanted to get some more books.

From Taipei 101, I took a bus to Gongguan (公馆) MRT station. What I like about the bus system in Taipei is that there is a clear bus directory for each bus service at the bus stop. In the bus, there is a LED panel which indicates the bus stops. In some buses, the bus driver also announce the stops. So it was quite easy to use the bus system.

I had dinner at the vegetarian stall in the Shuiyuan Market, the same stall were I had the dumpling the first night I was in Taipei. Then I head back to Gin Gin.

I got the book my friend wanted. I saw the collection of short stories by An Keqiang (安克强) which I had missed earlier and bought all three of them. I also found the books "Dear father and mother, I am gay." I flipped through and found that it had accounts of how gay people deal with their parents as well as how parents handled their children's homosexuality. I thought it would be good to add to the Pelangi Pride Centre's collection. I would donate to the library after I read it. Again, I ended up buying more than I had intended to.

As I missed the Shida Night Market (师大夜市) the first night, I decided to look for it again. This time, I found it. Being right by the teachers' college, this night market was slightly different from the rest, as it catered mainly to the young college students.

When I head back to the guest house, I started packing my luggage. Now I was really concerned that I had exceeded my luggage allowance. The luggage felt heavier than the 20kg dumb bell I carried in the gym. I put as many books as possible in my carry on backpack, and packed aways some books and clothes which I decided I could discard if it the charges for extra weightage was too much.