"It was spontaneous, and ad hoc"

So it begins, the first talk of typhoons this season has worked its way across the island.  The weather bureau issued the first typhoon warning of 2014, but Taiwan appears to have stayed out of its path, leaving us dampened by a little rain but otherwise unaffected.  Fear that the storm would be stronger, all of the established plans for the weekend (including a trip to Sun Moon Lake and a swim in the waterfalls of Taiping) were cancelled. 

Determined not to let the weekend go to waste, I went on a day trip to a little district in the western part of New Taipei City.  Yingge is a pottery district, which is known for porcelain production.  It is home to over 800 different ceramic-related businesses, including stores, Do-It-Yourself studios, and museums.  We started our exploration in the ceramics museum, which compared the Taiwanese ceramic production techniques to those of other countries.  I was surprised by how well the signs were translated into English, which is likely due to its presence in Taipei rather than its popularity amongst tourists.  A short walk across the river is a “Pottery Park” with sculptures depicting different stages in the ceramic-making process including sculpting tools, clay, and complete pots and dishes.  Inspired by the oversized cups and bowls, we sang through “Be Our Guest” as we walked through the park, then walked along to the main attraction: The Yingge Old Street.  The old street is a brick-lined carless street lined with souvenir shops (primarily containing pottery or woodwork).  While some of the stores contained mass-produced pieces that you could find all over the country, most of them housed unique pieces made by local potters.

A cup of...me?

Stacks of pottery for sale on the old street.

At the start of the pottery Old Street

Some cute little panda pots

The trip is over, catching the local train back to Taoyuan.

Exhausted from the heat, we took a nap on our train ride back to Changhua so we would feel rejuvenated for our evening’s plan.  Changhua is full of a variety of foreigners, of all ages, who have been in Taiwan for vastly different spans of time, but because of the city’s small size, a lot of those foreigners move on to bigger cities eventually.  Last night, we all reunited to partake in everyone’s favorite past time: drinking.  Five of the local bars agreed to host our oversized group and treat us to drink specials.  My timing didn’t work out to “crawl” with the other foreigners, so my friend and I got seats in the final bar and waited until the crowd came to us.  It was great to see people that I haven’t seen in weeks, months, or close to a year even (although the hazard of seeing so many people is that it wasn’t a wallet-friendly evening). 

Televisions around the world this week have been tuned in to the FIFA World Cup, and Taiwan is no exception.  Despite not having a team in the competition, bars and restaurants are still showing the games.  I find I have been more involved in watching the games than I expected to be, even now, the Chinese-speaking announcers are the background noise while I type.  The thing that is difficult for avid soccer fans in Taiwan though is that the games times are at midnight, 3am, and 6am, which means we either commit to an all-nighter, wake up sporadically during the night, or catch up on the game the next day.  Lucky for me, I’m not devastated by missing most of the action.