Train Journey to Taichung

I’d bought my train ticket from Taipei to Taichung (Taizhong) on the Saturday before I was due to travel on the Monday. Taipei Main Station was packed, and there were long queues at all of the ticket counters — twelve or so — both for travel that day and for advance purchase tickets. I guess that not being at work on Saturday means that people can take the time to go to the railway station to buy their tickets for the following week’s travel. You can buy tickets online, but I couldn’t because the English version of the reservations site always failed with an incomprehensible error. Eventually I got my ticket, to travel on a train at 12.22 on Monday and went on my merry way rejoicing.

I turned up on Monday in very good time for the train — hours before it was due to leave because I wanted to get a handle on what was going on at the station, what information was available, etc. I went through the barrier: interestingly for a country so technically proficient, only a very small proportion of tickets have a magnetic strip — the vast majority of tickets are good old-fashioned slips of card with your train’s details printed on them, which have to be examined by a real-life ticket inspector. At the platform, I discovered that there was very little, if any, English (or any roman script) giving information about the trains’ destinations — a stark contrast from the very English-speaker-friendly MRT system in Taipei. I was however able to decode the information available on the boards by looking at the times of the trains. Since then I’ve realised that this situation was quite irregular — the other stations I’ve been to have more English information available, and indeed on the platform at which I arrived at Taipei this afternoon there was considerably more English available than at that from which I departed a week ago.

Eventually my train turned up, bang on time, and I got on. I found a seat, and having put my (heavy) bag on the suitably-wide rack overhead I sat down. I had absolutely no idea that seats were reserved so was a bit miffed (privately, of course) when an old couple came along to claim their seats. I couldn’t work out where on my ticket it said that I had a reserved seat, and I’m not even sure in retrospect that it did, although I was booked for that specific train. I can’t now check the ticket because I had to surrender the ticket as I went through the barrier at Taichung. As it was, I spent most of the two-and-a-half-hour journey standing, awkwardly at first because I pulled my bag down from the rack so as not to take up space for other people’s bags (and also to make a quick dash in case seats became available after stops along the way) but then when this proved very impractical for people trying to get past I sucked it up and put the bag on the rack and moved to stand with other people in the space available for wheelchairs at the end of the carriage.

I’ve now been on three trains to get round the country and the service is pretty consistent. I’ve only been on the ‘express’ trains (there are different types of trains depending on the number of stops they make up and down the line), which have pairs of seats on either side of the aisle, all facing forward. The rows are spaced very comfortably apart, which means that the person by the window without making the person by the aisle get up, that you can have bags around your feet quite easily, and that if the person in front reclines his seat it doesn’t impede your own comfort. There are no seats grouped around tables like on trains in the UK, and the linoleum floors and simple seat covers make the whole train look somewhat utilitarian — functional, but not really ‘pretty’. It is however perfectly comfortable, when you get a seat, that is. Although there are lots of trains going in both directions on both the West- and East-coast mainlines, all three of the ones I’ve been on have been full, to such an extent that there was some difficulty getting me a ticket between Taichung and Tainan.

Taichung

The first thing I did upon arrival was to get a map from the tourist office at the station. I wandered a little bit around the area that I was staying, up to the canal which had a foul stench coming off it because of the waste that was being poured into it through pipes positioned at regular intervals along the canal wall. Apart from the smell it would have been a very pleasant area, with benches along the canal and street entertainments. Indeed, the phrase “it would be very nice if it weren’t for X” could be applied to much of Taichung as I found out the following day.

The day began somewhat badly as I took a wrong turning right at the beginning so I ended up on a main road going north rather than another going east. There wasn’t really any proper pavement to walk on, at least not a continuous one, because many businesses had shifted their enterprise onto the pavement: there were countless car dealerships, motorbike shops, petrol stations, shop gardens (no, really!) and restaurants which had crept onto the pavement thus forcing me to walk along the roadway. Not really a very pleasant experience. When after 45 minutes or so I realised that none of the cross-streets I was passing corresponded with the ones I was expecting, it dawned on me that I’d walked off the map totally in the wrong direction. So, back I went, and the walk back wasn’t any easier than the first time! I think I must have missed the turning back to my hotel when I got there and carried on past because I was eventually in an area that I didn’t recognise; I turned in what I was the right direction and ended up on the canal I’d been walking along the afternoon before. Some intuition was required as I walked along looking for the lights on the fence I’d seen yesterday. It paid off and I was back in a known location, ready to try again and start for the National Museum of Natural Science.

I did eventually get there, and the museum could be said to be just about worth the walk. There was an English audio guide available, which only covered two of the exhibitions — ‘Chinese Science and Technology’ (which included some impressive early Chinese inventions, see the photos for two of them) and ‘Chinese Spiritual Life’ (which I flitted over quite quickly — lengthy explanations of native Chinese religion and the various flavours of Buddhism imported into the country leave me stiff). I also looked at a gallery depicting the life of the native Austronesian Taiwanese Aborigines and one about traditional Chinese medicine: both of these were interesting to look at but I couldn’t get much else out of them because, er, everything was in Chinese.

I then went to visit the Botanical Garden which is on the other side of the same street as the National Museum of Natural History and seems to be run by the same people. The tourist map seemed to suggest that there were various eateries situated in the garden (it was now after 2pm) but this proved to be far from the case, much to my chagrin. The rainforest house in the garden was very interesting to walk around — I was struck by how green everything was, and how few colourful flowers there were. I’ve uploaded some photos from the garden, but wasn’t going to upload many for fear of having to expose my botanical ignorance when it came to titling the photos.

I was pretty hungry by that point and there was nowhere obvious to eat in the near vicinity. Referring to the guidebook I saw that recommended as the nicest area of town was the area around Fengle Sculpture Park. It didn’t look too far on the map (only a bit further than I’d already walked; for some reason I’d had a brain melt and had forgotten quite how far that had been) so I set out on my merry way. I walked down another section of the river / canal, with all the attendant smells and waste which I’d experienced the day before. Eventually, after much searching when I got to where I thought the sculpture park should be, I found it. It was now after 4pm and my hunger had given way to my dehydration — I’d drunk the bottle of water that I’d had, and the sun had been blazing all day as I walked my many miles. I fell into a 7-eleven (the convenience store on every street corner throughout the country: it seems they have a very good franchise system) and bought myself some water and some iced green tea. It was when drinking this latter bottle that I remembered that I hadn’t much liked it when I was in Beijing for a week in 2002, and my feelings hadn’t much changed. (Green tea, in my opinion, should be drunk hot: the colder it gets, the more it increases in bitterness.) A liquid’s a liquid, though, so I drank it while sitting in the park and gradually the clarity of my vision returned and all was right with the world. Fengle Sculpture Park is filled with some pretty strange sculptures, as you can see in the photos.

I slept pretty well that night, ready for my trip the following day to Sun Moon Lake, the largest body of fresh water in Taiwan, which is situated slightly south and east of Taichung.

Sun Moon Lake

There isn’t actually much to say about my time at the lake except to point you to the photos. It certainly is an impressive vista, and this being my only opportunity to get into the Taiwanese countryside, I felt that it proved to be a satisfactory explanation for the Dutch having described this island as “Ilha Formosa”. I’d thought that it would be cool and drizzling, but was mistaken in this matter. There was a heavy mist which hung over the lake and the whole area in the morning and late afternoon, but in the middle of the day the sun burned through and warmed the whole area. I had a fairly tough time telling myself that it was still winter.

Tainan

Winter was certainly in evidence in Tainan, or at least the weather was noticeably worse than it had been at my other stops in the country, despite being further south and thus closer to the equator. Yesterday (my second full day in the city) I got rained on in the afternoon which cut my sightseeing slightly short, but I don’t think any great harm was done. The Lonely Planet guidebook actually suggests a walking tour to get round many of the major (and a few of the minor) sites in Tainan, the oldest city in the country, and a former capital. It was founded by the Chinese in 1590 and then used by the Dutch as a base for their trade with Japan and China. You could probably do the walking tour in a day but I didn’t actually start it until Saturday afternoon, since I’d spent the morning searching for a church at which — according to one place on the Internet — there was Mass in English every Sunday (for the record, it does exist, and is on Shengli Road, on the left as you walk north, between the intersections of Chingnian and Dungning Roads. There was Mass on Sunday in English at 11am, said by an old Chinese man who was the closest resemblance in human form I’d ever seen of Yoda, and his pronunciation as he read sometimes continued that comparison). As a result, I had to split the walking tour over two afternoons because after I’d got half-way round it was too late and most sites were closing. Anyway, here, in order, is a list of the places I visited — you can them all in the photos, but I suspect some people would like a little explanation of each one:

1. Confucius Temple — exactly what it sounds like. There was some sort of event going on within the temple grounds involving bizarre puppets, which you can see in some of the photos.

2. Wufei Temple of the Five Concubines — King Ning Jin (wish I could pull off a name like that), one of the claimants to the Ming throne realised the dynasty was at an end and committed suicide. His concubines did likewise, in spite of his encouraging them to flee. Their graves are behind this small shrine.

3. Fahua Monastery — this seemed to be a working monastery (there was a monk attending to an altar and another striking a bell at 4pm), and is 300 years old. Apparently, when it was built, the ocean came up to its walls.

4. Koxinga’s Shrine — Koxinga (a.k.a. Cheng Cheng-kung) was a supporter of the Ming dynasty, and did his best to restore the Ming dynasty in China after it was overthrown. When that came to nothing, he came to Taiwan to overthrow its Dutch rulers: he was based in Tainan, and started a procession of Chinese immigrants to Taiwan which continued for more than 200 years. His shrine is exactly what it sounds like — a shrine to a mortal man, and is the only such shrine bestowed with official status.

5. Lady Linshui’s Temple (Chen Ching Gu Temple) — a temple to which women traditionally come in order to ask the goddess for the protection of their children. This is where I broke off my tour on Saturday afternoon.

6. Dongyue Temple — this was closed when I passed it, so I only saw its exterior. It is a temple supposedly connected with the afterlife.

7. City God Temple — the City god is thought to weigh up mortals’ good deeds and bad deeds to assess their worthiness of punishment or reward after death. There is a large abacus over the door which he uses to aid him in his calculation. I couldn’t get a photo of the abacus because it was too dark.

8. Altar of Heaven — a Taoist temple, a seat of the Jade Emperor (lord of heaven). It is the oldest temple in Taiwan, having been founded 300 years ago (presumably at the same time as Fahua monastery — look, I’m only going with what I’ve been told). It has no statue of the god because it was originally only built as a temporary temple (so, by my reckoning, Neville House at Ampleforth, about which we were always told the same thing, should be good for at least another 255 years). It has a large tablet of the Chinese character for “one” (a solitary horizontal dash) overhead, apparently to signify “that for heaven and earth there is only one true way: humanity and righteousness”.

9. Official God of War Temple — again, pretty much what it sounds like.

10. Chikan Towers — this pair of towers’ foundations were originally laid by the Dutch in 1653. They sat in a very impressive garden peppered with carved tablets; however my experience was somewhat marred by the fact that it had now started to rain and I wanted to stay out of the wet to protect my camera (my bag’s waterproofing can only go so far) and myself (I was only wearing a woollen jumper and didn’t want it to smell of damp).

In spite of the fact that I missed out on two attractions (the Matsu Temple, and the Water Fair Temple, but I think I’d seen enough temples over those two days) I reckon I got a good taste of what Tainan had to offer. I have to say that it is in fact I think the most ‘Chinese’ place I’ve ever been to, in that it conforms to many ideas which I have about the way Chinese go about their daily lives. In some ways I felt like Tintin in Shanghai in The Blue Lotus, except that I couldn’t ask friendly policemen for directions speaking in Chinese characters. Oh, and I wasn’t hunting an international opium-smuggling gang.

So here we are, nearly 2900 words later. I don’t think I’d make much of a travel writer. Far too boring, even for me who actually saw all this stuff and understand what I’m talking about. When I got back to Taipei this afternoon it was considerably cooler than when I left (cooler even than in Tainan this morning) and was also pouring with rain. Tomorrow, if the weather eases up a little, I might go to the hot-spring town of Beitou, which is on the edge of Taipei’s city limits. I hope to post another entry to this log with some notes on my general perceptions of Taiwan before I move on to Japan on Wednesday. I’m a little worried: I’ve seen on the news that Japan has had more snow (which will remain at least until the end of the week) and elsewhere I’ve read that there have been some problems with flights into Tokyo. I’ll keep you posted.