Tuesday - February 11, 2003
On the trip back from Tainan, Chu-Wan had told me
about the money for the Lantern Festival being spread around the island. She
also said that, despite this being the year of the ram/sheep/goat (more on that
later) Kaohsiung was going to bring out their Snake lantern from 2 years ago
because it had been so expensive they wanted to use it again.
Before I
go further, I should explain what year this really is. Is it goat? Is it sheep?
Is it ram? The answer: yes. Each of those is a type of yang and this is
the year of the yang, therefore all are correct. In the west, we tend to
translate that as goat, but here its usually represented by a sheep or a ram,
but not always, as witnessed by the giant goat horns for the Taipei
lantern.
The weather had taken a turn for the worse and it was colder,
cloudy and windy, with the promise that the weather would continue to get worse
as the day went on. Nonetheless, we decided it wasn't bad enough to stop us
from going to the zoo.
I checked out the Taipei Zoo website to see how
early they opened and to my surprise learned that they do not close on
Mondays and we could have gone yesterday when the weather was picture perfect.
The zoo would be open by the time we could take the Metro there, so I had to
skip my city wall hike today and just make the quick trip to the
memorial.
I power-walked the path and skipped my Cong You Bing
breakfast, but when I got there I was pleasantly surprised. News crews were
there covering the preparations for the Lantern Festival. Lanterns were being
built all along Aiguo road and Zhongshan road had lanterns strung
all along its length in front of the memorial.
There was also a bizarre,
macabre display of dancing and singing goat lanterns being built in the front.
I didn't get the chance to check out if anything was being done along the other
side of the memorial on xinyi road, but will do so tomorrow.
The
one thing that I really found encouraging was one of the lanterns being
unloaded and pieces on the sidewalk for later assembly appeared to be a giant
Dragon. Could it be that Taipei, like Kaohsiung, is trotting out one of their
old lanterns to re-live past glories? I hope so.
By the time I got home
the temperature had dropped more and the wind was stronger. We still were
determined to go to the zoo and set out. Chu-Wan revealed she hadn't had
anything to eat and since I hadn't either, we stopped at Woa Jia Niupai
("My Home Steak") for lunch.
When we came it, the wind was positively
frigid and considering that the zoo is in Mucha and would be colder and
windier, we finally decided that we just shouldn't go to the zoo
today.
We checked with the lost and found office of the Metro but no one
turned in Chu-Wan's address book. Well, I'd had some small hope we might get
the book back, if not the cash and I'm recommending that we go in person to the
lost and found office tomorrow just to double-check. The chances are looking
increasingly slim. One of the things that was probably irreplaceable in the
address book was Chu-Wan's teacher's address and phone number. She had such
trouble contacting her in the first place and she wrote the information right
in the book when we had lunch with her. She has no way to contact her now to
send her the pictures.
This evening we went to the Shilin night
market where I bought things to take back and had dinner. Michelle stayed home
with grandma. She'd been a bit of a pest today and we were glad to get the
chance to get out without her for a while.
As it happened, the
temperature hit its lowest just about the time we ate lunch, and it began to
get less windy and the temperature creeped back up to about 72 by the evening.
Hopefully that trend will continue tomorrow and we can go to the zoo.
I did a little more
research on the Taipei city walls. They were built in the 1800's. The comments
at the exhibit we saw Sunday were a little misleading, perhaps the translation
was wrong, or perhaps I just read something into it that wasn't there. "Best
preserved..." didn't mean in best condition, but meant in most authenticate
condition. From what I had seen of the other gates, they were in better shape,
but it turns out they've been altered over the years, whereas beimen is
still pretty much as it was when it was built.
Associated
Links:
Taiwan
Council for Cultural Affairs information on North Gate - English |
|
