The next morning, we got down early to visit the Daan Forest Park (大安公園旅店) to see how the city of Taipei wakes up. First, we stopped by at a local bakery and bought some very nice baked goods for quite cheap, a delicious breakfast before heading down to the park. Once there, we did many things, like walking barefoot across a stone path, for good circulation, and even doing some qi gong (氣功) under a tree. It was an absolutely beautiful park, and it was lovely doing qi gong while taking in the fresh air.
Afterwards, we took the metro to the Chiang Kai-shek (中正紀念) memorial in Taipei. It was absolutely stunning, done entirely in traditional Chinese style architecture, with red and gold everywhere. We entered the main memorial hall, and looked through a lot of his history and Taiwan's history, learning much about the country. There was also a calligraphy exhibit which was very beautiful, with many many scrolls lining the walls.
Next, we took a short nap and went to Taipei 101 for the Christmas Eve celebrations. Unfortunately, we weren't able to go up the building and observed it from outside. After that, we went back and went to the Shida (師大) night market. There were many cute little shops all throughout. That was my first full day in Taiwan!
台灣很有趣!!
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As I'm sure I've told you already (100 times), I look forward to that bakery every single day :)
ReplyDeleteMy feet hurt from those stones for like an hour afterwards! I also thought the architecture at the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial was just beautiful. I hope we have time to return to Taipei 101 and go inside.
The inside of Taibei 101 is definitely cool to see if you wanted to go with some others to see it after school some day. It's a lot of shops, like a huge mall, but you also just get to see Taibei from really high up, you can see like the entire city. Also, I don't know anything about architecture but it's amazing to see the ball-like mechanism they use to keep the building from toppling over in typhoons.
ReplyDeleteOh, just one thing, I noticed you wrote "the Chiang Kai-shek (中正紀念) memorial" , but it's actually called 中正紀念堂. It's broken up like this: 中正 is another name for Chiang Kai-shek (and you might notice that there are streets and areas named this-- in fact I think we're living in 中正 district iirc); 紀念 means to commemorate; 堂 refers to a hall or building. So 紀念堂 = memorial.
Your passion for Chinese, and language in general, is really admirable!!
First day sure was a lot of fun! I also really admire the architecture of a lot of the buildings in the city. They're all so grandiose, yet they're also just ordinary parts of the city; it's pretty cool.
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