Dihua Market, Jianan, & Shilin Night Market, Taiwan

Friday January 13, 2012

Jackie took Joe to Dihau Street Market which is several blocks long. It is typically crazy before the Lunar New Year since the area is considered Taipei’s best for traditional New Year foods, party supplies and gifts of all kinds. Many merchants are offering free samples of their goods to all passers-by.

Several times Jackie was greeted with “Hello! Welcome to Taiwan! Happy New Year!” and had some foreign food shoved in her face. Both of us were a little overwhelmed.

There were barrels and barrels of candy.

Jackie had to keep her distance from the tall bags of nuts. She might die if these fell on her due to her allergy!

There was also a lot of dried food.

Next we rode the metro over to Jianan where the Miramar Entertainment area is and the large ferris wheel.

The Jianan metro station is pretty cool too.

Jackie’s main reason for heading here was to find Morphosis’ ASE Design Center built in 1997 in Taipei. Nowhere on the internet could she find the address for this building. She figured the link to a map on Morphosis’ website has got to be accurate enough, so up we go down a residential street. Either the building no longer exists or Morphosis can’t even accurately locate the site of a building they designed! Thom Mayne may be getting a very irate email from a young architecture admirer who was thankful she didn’t drag her aging father-in-law on this trek but upset that the location of such a highly acclaimed building cannot be found.

We gave up and took the long route on the metro to the Shilin Night Market. We went east on the brown line and saw the northeastern part of Taipei. Dahu Lake in the Neihu district looked cool and a lot of new construction around Nangang Exhibition Center and Academia Sinica.

We finally made it to the Shilin Night Market. This time we went straight downstairs to the new food court. There was a long line for this large fried chicken stand which we knew we just had to have.

We had roasted chicken buttocks and tempura from a street vendor.

This was a great last night in Taiwan, but we were ready to be home.

Saturday, January 14, 2012, we had an early flight home. Even with the long flight, we still arrived in Seattle on Saturday morning due to the time change (15 hour difference between Seattle and Taiwan, 12 hour from east coast and Taiwan). I watched a few more movies: The Help (at least the first ¾ on the first flight), the final minutes of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 2, Crazy, Stupid, Love, I Don’t Know How She Does It, and Horrible Bosses. I was able to sleep the last 3.5 hours of the flight, but Joe couldn’t sleep at all. We picked up our bags and made it through customs (even with food stuffs in our additional checked bag for the flight home). We rode the light rail from the airport into downtown Seattle. Coming into town on a Saturday morning didn’t give us a clear direct route to our house. We waited 10 minutes in windy downtown waiting for a bus to Lynnwood. We then waited 15 minutes at that park and ride for a local bus. After another 10 minute wait in the cold for a second local bus, we reached the closest bus stop to the house, .7mi away. As we departed the bus at 11am, the falling rain began to turn into sleet as we walked home! By the time we were in the house we were frozen and soaking wet. We were out the door shortly to pick up Chance from the vet where it was now snowing huge flakes! Welcome to the convergence zone!

Bali, Danshui, & Beitou, Taiwan

Thursday January 12, 2012

We went to Bali today so Jackie could see a building that won some architecture awards in the past few years. Bali was once a thriving port in the 18th century, but the wharves silted up in the 1840s. It is located due west of Taipei on the Pacific Ocean and on the southern shores of the Danshui River. We got off the metro at the Guandu Station which is about 4 km to the museum. We rode the bus over to the Shihsanhang Museum of Archeology. Jackie knew we were in the right place when she saw the large concrete containers at the local water treatment plant. The most remarkable object on display at the museum is the anthropomorphic jar that depicts a human face.

The building won first place in the 2002 “Taiwan Architecture Prize” and the winner of the 2003 “Far Eastern Architect Award”. It was designed by architect Sun Te-hung.

The admission fee of the museum is usually TWD 100, but it was free today. It was built over an ancient archaeological site. The site was the first one in Taiwan to offer evidence of iron smelting and use by the local original peoples. The site was found by a military pilot whose compass had gone awry over it. You enter the museum by first climbing slightly and then gently sloping downward, symbolizing entering a treasure-trove excavated by archaeologists.

The main multi-story interior void space is the most impressive.

This is the angled glass space over the museum entry.

Here is the view from the upper portion of the stair tower.

Joe really enjoyed this exhibit, which I still have no idea why it was in a stair tower of an archeology museum.

After climbing the stair tower (or taking the elevator) you cross a glass floor bridge to look out the glass toward the Tapenkeng Site located on Kuanyin Mountain where the site was discovered and is being researched. Joe really liked the glass floor bridge. You looked down on an archeology dig site replica below (with weird wax figures).

This is looking down from the overlook at the exterior exit stair below.

These photos are looking down the void space at the archeology dig site and the stair tower.

I love the angled concrete panel walls.

This was a tiny exit stair. Unfortunately lighting didn’t seem to be integrated into the original design.

This is just a beautiful termination of the angle precast panel walls.

The museum is made of 3 distinctive shapes representing the mountains, ocean and the past/present. The 3 building materials are exposed concrete, sandstone, and highly plastic titanium alloy. The boat shape is to honor how Taiwan ancestors reached the island from boats they sailed across the ocean.

We climbed the curved “ocean” piece where there are excellent views of the coastline. This is looking back at the sandstone tower representing the merging of past and present.

This one overlooks the breakwater toward Danshui and the Danshui River.

The curved boat “ocean” portion of the building.

There are stray dogs all over Taiwan which just makes us miss Chance more. These guys were cute napping by the museum.

I like the metal ribbed curves.

Joe says Michelangelo’s David has nothing on this guy in the Shihsanhang Culture Park.

The Sunshine Plaza along the seashore has a nice performance stage.

We should have rented bikes to ride along the waterfront so we didn’t walk for so long in search of food for lunch after visiting the museum. This was the view across Danshui River toward Guandu and the mountains.

This was the view from the Bali riverfront looking at Danshui.

We finally reached the Fisherman's Wharf and found a few shops open on the Bali Wharf Street.

We bought some fried squid, sweet potatoes and tempura to eat for lunch. We watched a huge group of middle school students spend $20 dollars on all fried food for lunch. Who knows how all these Asian kids say so skinny!

We also got some shuangbaotai, which means the twin-donut, which Bali is well-known for.
The Bali wharf connects to the Danshui Old Street and Fisherman’s Wharf by ferry. We took the ferry over to Danshui and take the metro home from there. These photos are looking back at Bali from the rough ferry ride.

We walked around and shopped for a bit. We then took the metro over to Beitou, a virtual Taiwanese Hollywood due to the many movies filmed here, but it’s better known for its hot spring baths easily accessible from Taipei.

In Beitou Park I convinced Joe to try out some of their exercise machines. He felt a little uncomfortable with the one that virtually causes him to hump the air.

We like to call this one, ‘wax on, wax off.’ That’s Asian karate skills right there.

I was really interested in seeing the Beitou Public Library. It is hailed as East Asia’s most eco-friendly building opened in 2006. It was designed by Bio Architecture Formosana, a Taipei architecture company. It is the first in Taiwan to quality for a diamond rating (the highest) under the Taiwan government’s EEWH (Ecology, Energy savings, Waste reduction and Health) certification system for sustainable construction. The Taiwan government was the first in Asia and the 4^th in the world to adopt a set of sustainable building standards. EEWH is essentially equivalent to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) in the US. The rainwater from the sloped roof is stored and used to flush toilets. The roof also has photovoltaic cells and 20cm thick layer of soil providing thermal insulation. The huge windows provide a tremendous amount of daylight, cutting the amount of electricity used. The windows are also operable providing ventilation lessening the use of air conditioning and fans.

The wooden walls harked back to Japan’s occupation of Taiwan (1895-1945). The extensive amount of wood used was from sustainably managed plantation forests. The one thing that sucks about it is the timber was sourced from North America. It could not have been obtained from anywhere closer because logging has been effectively banned in Taiwan and forests in Southeast Asia are not managed in a sustainable manner. I sure hope that this is beginning to change much like it has been in the US with more and more FSC certified wood products available. Natural wood oils instead of strong chemicals that would contaminate the environment were used to treat the structure and protect it from the elements and insects. The wood walls are also a stark contrast to the extensive amount of concrete buildings in Taiwan. My favorite aspect of the building was the open balconies surrounding the building overlooking the park.

We tested the stream running through the park. Joe says it’s not hot.

We went into the Beitou Hot Springs Museum. The building was built in 1913 by the Japanese based on the design of the baths on Mount Izu Hot Spring Bath in Japan. The Beitou Public Baths were the biggest public baths in East Asia at the time. The deserted baths have now been transformed into the Beitou Hot Springs Museum complete with stained-glass windows, authentic Japanese tatumi room where bathers drank tea after they bathed and the original bathing pool in the basement.

After this we head back to Yonghe for dinner with Dad. On our walk back to the house from the metro station we passed by Joe’s old elementary school at 4pm just letting out. And we wonder we they are smarter than us!

We had hot pot at home for dinner with Dad. Dad ate a duck foot.