I started my day at an opera house, and ended my day at a haunted house. With nice views in between.
This is the National Taichung Theater, an opera house in Taichung City designed by Toyo Ito.The theater opened in 2016 (and today at 11:30am).These concave spaces contain external balconies on the 6th floor.The interior has 580 curved walls, which—according to an automatic translation of the theater’s Chinese-language Wikipedia page—are “extremely difficult to build”.The public spaces are designed to be a cave for humankind.The ground floor hosts an indoor design market (on left), and a cafe, where I had brunch. Perhaps for too long, because……On returning to my scooter, I discovered my first-ever Taiwan parking ticket. If I’m reading it correctly, it’s for NT$20 (NZ$1). I can pay at any convenience store.My next stop was Wanggaoliao Night View Park (望高寮夜景公園), above Taichung City.Obviously it’s called Night View Park for a reason, but the day view’s pretty good too. Taichung recently eclipsed Kaohsiung to become Taiwan’s second-largest city (behind New Taipei). Taichung now has 2.8 million residents, versus Kaohsiung’s 2.7 million.Today’s ride took me though a lot of Taiwan countryside. The narrower roads had mirrors at most intersections.Here’s a typical rural scene. The Taiwan countryside is way, way, way more densely-populated than in New Zealand. And full of traffic lights.After feeling jaded last night, today I felt great. But it was hot in the sun, so I wanted to stop for a cold drink. I typed ‘park’ into Google Maps, and it brought me here. Google translates the blue sign to ‘Pitou Community’; I’m guessing it’s a rural community center. There was no one else around.On the other side of the building, I found a bunch of concrete animals……This whale rider……This girl with big melons……And this mosaic seat—the only one in the shade—between two portable toilets. I sat here.Back on the road, I passed this scooter accident, the second of the day. (This is a screenshot from my dashcam.) In Taiwan, it’s common for people to lie in situ after an accident, even if uninjured, so police can assess the scene.Nearing Chiayi City, I stopped at the end of this dirt road and wandered past the trash to……Minxiong Haunted House (also called the Old Liu Family Mansion; 劉家古宅民雄鬼屋). It was built in 1929 and damaged by American bombing raids in WWII, when Taiwan was under Japanese control. As the only three-story mansion in the area, it would’ve been an easy target prior to being covered in trees.I saw this headless statue in the yard.I also saw a lot of fallen masonry……And some empty liquor bottles. Most were on the ground, but I also I saw this line-up on a low wall. Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor (金門酒廠) is a distillery on Kinmen Island, an island of Taiwan that’s only 10km from mainland China. While I was taking this photo, an elderly couple appeared through the trees. The man exclained to the woman “Wàiguó rén!” (外國人!), which means “Foreigner!”. I said a respectful hello (in Chinese), and he said hello back. Then they left.Some of the trees were spectacular, like this one growing out of the third-floor brick wall.Around the back of the building, the roots were also spectacular—reaching down three stories to the ground.The interior was also pretty rooted.The front entrance was blocked.The words above the third-floor balcony mean something like ‘brothers be happy together / treat each other well’. We should all be so lucky.
