jiufen - village

Jiufen - view

Jiufen

Last week-end i went to Jiufen, as my lonely planet said " it is the first place foreigners who live in taiwan bring their families".

As my family would not take the trouble to come to an island nobody knows could exist in this part of Asia - i am sure they are still convinced i am in Thailand...no, just joking..quoique! I convinced Patty it was worth going. And off we went. Forty minutes by train and a taxi ride later we were there, ready to explore.

What a disappointement when we discovered the only attraction was a shopping street with stone beads, food and T-shirts "been there done that".... well, we tried every type of food : herb cakes, taro cakes, honey cakes, chili oil marinated fried fish, Thai crisps and of course my favorite stinky doufu. we also saw a weird creature for sale ( remember Yehliu...two new animal discoveries in 8 days. ) It was a kind of sea animal, with a shell. I have checked on the internet, and apparently it is a "Calcinus Tibicen". Check this link for more info : http://www.recif.be/article/hermit.htm . For a hundred yuan you could take one home in a small plastic bowl. I struggled not to adopt one and bring it back to France. But then i thought that it would probably not survive the week when i will not be in Taipei, or the length of the flight home. And what about passing the customs...hum, i guess i cannot prove it had got all its shots and i do not think you can get them an identification tatoo or chip like cats and dogs. So i did not adopt any.

I also took pictures of things people thought weren't worth taking a picture of, doors, windows, streets, while the average taiwanese tourists took pictures of themselves in front of the scenery, their friends in front of the scenery, themselves and their friends in front of the scenery...with fingers in the shape of a "V" and a bright smile. the scenery was indeed beautiful. ( please can someone tell me if i can use "indeed" in the middle of a sentence? thanks)

The sun was really hot so we had a cup of tea and guazi in a small traditional house with a view on the port and the mountains. Soooo relaxing.

I almost adopted one...I would have called it Albert or Hortense, a "cool" name like those

Yehliu photos

Today I went to Yehliu

Yehliu is a port town at the very North of Taiwan. I chose my day, the sun was hot and bright...maybe too bright for my camera though. i had a hard time playing with the contre-jour.
It was full of tourists, and every body took the same photos, posing beside the "queen's head" or in front of the ocean. So people waited in procession to take pictures, they queued up, as usual, very polite and patient!
It was so hot today, and the rock formations at yehliu were the perfect place to get roasted by the cruel sun. And roasted and sweaty i was... ( see picture) Summer is the period when i shed skin... it peels off because i am sun-burnt!

The scenery is amazing there. There is a huge yellow cliff with bizarre-shaped rocks and holes and cracks on the ground. it is exactly how i would have imagined the moon looked like if we had not sent people there to see how it really looks like. ( hum... i really feel like a 3-year old when i spaek english like that! hahaha!)

The yellow of the earth is matched by the green of tropical plants and the blue of the sea.

people usually stay on the path and just go on the site to take pictures. But i climbed two hills to the observatory, where i enjoyed the silence and the view. It is such a treat to be able to enjoy the silence, far from the permanent noises of Taipei! it was all flowers and bird songs up there. And it must be the butterflies' reproduction season, because there were so many. I even saw two huge black ones -as big as my hand- i tried to take pictures of them, but when they got close i got scared, so i wasn't really successful! they are really impressing. I also discovered a new kind of animal/insect/sea..food? it is called "sea cockroach" in chinese 海蟑螂. little kids are scared of them, scream and run away when they see one, and sea cockroaches are scared of little kids, move their antennas and "run" away when they get close! So they end up chasing each other when they were trying to avoid each other..

Pictures of the beautiful Yehliu natural park in the next post.

retour en arrière 3bis : photos

Retour en arrière 3 : juming museum

En avril, je suis allée au musée de Juming (prononcer djü minegue.) Ce brave Monsieur Juming, artiste de renom 60naire maintenant, a réunit un bon nombre de ses oeuvres, des sculptures, dans un musée qui s'étend sur des hectares avec des expositions permanentes en plein air. Il est célèbre pour sa série "taichi":
















Il faisait incroyablement beau ce jour-là, quelle chance ! Nous sommes allés là-bas en bus, à partir du musée d'art contemporain. Taiwan n'est pas très grande; donc nous y sommes arrivés tôt.

Les jardins étaient très sympas. Si sympathiques, que nous avons décidés de faire une sieste sur un îlot artificiel au ,ilieu d'un bassin...jusqu'à ce qu'un garde ne vienne nous en déloger, à grand renfort de gesticulations.

Allez, quelques photos de l'art de M. Juming dans un prochain post. Photos par Anthony.

Retour en arrière 2 : les photos promises

Tout ça, c'est ce que je vois de mon rooftop. C'est sympa, (sauf l'autoroute, j'en conviens...) non?

strange woman

Hier j'ai rencontré une demoiselle bien étrange...

昨天碰到一位很奇怪的女士

I met a strange woman yesterday...

Un parc en cas de catastrophes naturelles - Anti-calamity park

Je crois que ca se passe de commentaires...lisez vous meme. I like the "clothes drying field"

chinese new year ( trilingual version )

Cette annee, j'ai vraiment eu un nouvel an chinois.
j'ai ete invitee par Huang Yang Shan, un ami taiwanais, a passer le soir du nouvel an avec sa famille.
A 18:30, me voici donc dans le salon, assise entre le pere et l'oncle, a leur expliquer ce que je fais a Taiwan et a les ecouter me raconter leurs aventures (commerciales) au sichuan.
Les femmes de la famille : la mere et les deux tantes maternelles, etaient en train de finir de preparer le repas.
Tout le monde est passe au salon, les deux oncles, les cousines et le cousin, le pere, Yang Shan et moi. Puis les "cuisinieres" nous ont rejoint. Il y avait tant de plat sur la table! Des plats de legumes, toute sortes de fruits de mer, du poisson, de la viandes, mais aussi des plats de nouvel an traditionnel comme l'oeuf seche de poisson, le gateau de nouvel an poele, et une soupe avec des boules de poisson. Nous avons trinque plusieurs fois pour le nouvel an, les cuisinieres, le boulot du cousin, les diplomes des cousines, ma venue ce soir la, le plaisir d'etre ensemble.
Le principal de la conversation etant fait en taiwanais, la maman de yang Shan me traduisait au fur et a mesure en chinois.
Apres le repas, nous sommes alles Pao cha ( faire du the et le boire ) entre "jeunes", pendant que les autres pariaient aux cartes.
Ce sont des gens tres tres gentils. J'ai passe une tres bonne soiree, et ils m'ont fait me sentir "a la maison".

Vers 11:00, tout le monde voulait rentrer, alors je suis allee rejoindre Kenji et Tommy a Shangdao temple, oules garcons ont prie.
Dans le temple, il semblait que le temps s'arretait, l'atmosphere etait irreelle. Il pleuvait, et l'encens s'elevait en volutes grises et bleues au dessus des sculptures du toit du temple, qui etait rempli du bourdonnement des prieres.

In Chinese now:

我今年跟我的台灣朋友和他的家人過春節, 他請我出他 家作客。那天晚上有yangshan﹐ 他爸媽﹐他媽媽的兩個姐姐跟她們丈夫孩子。我來的時候媽, 大姨﹐ 和 姨母還在做飯, 所以我們都在客廳聊天。姨夫和yangshan 的爸爸告訴我她們在中國大陸作生意的故事。過了一會兒﹐媽叫我們來吃飯。飯廳的桌子上有幾盤海鮮﹐一個小火鍋﹐魚丸湯, 魚蛋, 肉﹐青菜, 年糕。我們為大家乾杯幾次。
大姨﹐ 姨夫﹐ 都講台語﹐ 就yang shan 的媽媽幫我解釋她們的話。她們都喜歡講故事, 開玩笑﹐所以氣氛很熱鬧。吃完飯, 青年人去樓上泡茶﹐樓下她們都想賭博。
十一點到了大家想回家。我就去接我的男朋友和他的朋友。我們出善導寺拜拜。寺廟裡的人很多。藍灰色的供香煙飄到黑色的天空, 使氣氛很嚴肅。即使很多人在一起拜拜﹐寺廟裡也很安靜。離開寺廟的時候我們互相拜了年。

In English now ( mais ou s'arretera-t-elle?!?)

I spent the chinese new year's eve at my friend's Yangshan. He invited me there to have new year diner with his family.
When i arrived, his mother and his aunts where still in the kitchen cooking. so everybody sat down in the living room. I sat between Yangshan's father and his uncle, who told me stories about their commercial adventures in Sichuan, mainland China.
Then we were called to diner. we hate seafood, meat and vegetables,fish ball soup and the traditonal fish egg and new year cake. We "ganbei-ed" a lot!
Most of the people there spoke taiwanese, but Yangshan's mother transalted in chinese for me. After diner, us young people went upstairs to make some tea while the others were gambling downstairs.
At eleven, everybody went home. It had been a very nice evening and Yangshan's family are really nice people.

Afterwards, i joined my boyfirend and his friend at Shandao temple, where they prayed. The atmosphere there was surreal. It was as though time had stopped. incense fumes of grey and blue were flying over the temple's carved roof, and the whole place was full of the buzzing of hundreds of people prying.

Preparation pour la fete des lanternes. Les photos: 1- Cyril, moi, et le "chicken" 2- le cote de lanterne des st-vincentiens 3- Gordon et Seab 4- cote de lanterne francais 5- cyril, laoshi, une lanterne et moi 6-cote de lanterne allemand 7-julie dessine un elephant sur le cote de lanterne du Malawi 8-Thomas et Kenji

Preparation pour la fete des lanternes. par groupe de meme nationalite, nous avons peint et ecrit nos voeux ( paix dans le monde, sante et bonheur pour nos proches) sur des grands empiecements de papier de riz. Colles un a un, en ajoutant un "couvercle" en papier lui aussi, ces quatre grands cotes forment une lanterne geante, que l'on va faire s'envoler le 12 fevrier, afin que nos voeux se realisent.
Cyril et moi avons peint deux faces de lanterne. L'une avec nos voeux, le nom de notre pays et une branche fleurie de prunier, l'autre avec une fleur stylisee et un dragon.

retour en arriere: Danshui avec Yohan

Petit voyage de fin d'apres-midi a Danshui, l'une des destinations favorites des taiwanais le week-end.
La rive de la riviere est divisee en deux, d'un cote la riviere ou les amoureux enlaces et les touristes blases admirent le coucher de soleil, de l'autre, des rangees de boutiques d'ou s'echappent les derniers morceaux de pop taiwanaise ou singaporienne a la mode...trooop romantique..