Touring in My Own Country

Working long days, grading at night, and lesson planning on the weekends tends to make you forget there is life outside teaching. This is common when you are teaching in the U.S., and sadly enough it becomes more and more likely the longer you live in a foreign country. You forget that you are actually living somewhere unique and different and fall into the old routines of everyday life. In order to actually take advantage of living in such a cool place, you need to force yourself to be a tourist in your own country. Thus, I have been making this a big push in my life in the last few weeks I have here in Taiwan.

Last weekend, a coworker and I took the Taiwan High Speed Rail down to Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. We stayed in a brand new hotel, which was awesome, and saw what the southern city of Kaohsiung had to offer. We walked along the fisherman's pier, strolled along the famous Love River that runs through the center, and rented bikes to go out to the old British Consulate that overlooks the city. It was great. The best part about that weekend was that by Sunday, I felt like I had had a real vacation and was ready for my week to start.

 Called the "Dome of Light" in the Formosa Boulevard MRT station in Kaohsiung

 View of Kaohsiung City from the British Consulate up on the hill

Really cool graffiti or murals (I couldn't tell which to be honest) on a building in the art district

Today, although I didn't travel anywhere else on the island, I did take a long walking tour of my own city, Taichung. I walked to the Science Museum which has a nice park all around it. Then I wound my way down further into the heart of the city and ended up at the National Museum of Art. It's free and oddly enough, I've never been there. Most importantly, it was air conditioned so after a long, hot walk, it was perfect.

Besides the much needed break from the heat, I also made an important discovery while there: Taiwan has some amazing art. I've always told people that Taiwan does not produce hardly any art simply because you can never buy it anywhere. There are never local vendors or small artists with their own galleries. You can't walk through small art fairs and buy cheap prints of photography even if you wanted to. So I was simply convinced it did not exist on this tiny island.

I was wrong of course. The art here is just for museums only, but it does exist. Even in the museum shop, there were no prints or mugs or even keychains of any of the local Taiwanese artists I saw in the museum. I did, however, see plenty of Van Gogh and Monet posters. Why, Taiwan, why? When there is such wonderful art being produced here, I still don't understand how the people don't want to display it more. Oh well, at least I got to enjoy it for one afternoon.

Two of my favorites from today:

Liu Kuo-Sung  

Chen Ting-Shih

Now if only I could buy prints of these somewhere in Taiwan! Anyhow, good day being a tourist in my own city.