Day 6: Appreciate with Love, Hold with Care

As mentioned yesterday, we have fallen into routine, with morning classes followed by an afternoon/evening trip to an area nearby. An update on our flutes (dizi): today, we focussed on attaching the "dimo" membrane to the flute, over a hole found between the blowing and finger holes. The wrinkles in the membrane resonate when the dizi is played, creating a brighter tone that has a buzzing noise.

Source: wikicommons

This afternoon, we headed to one of the busier areas of Taipei, at the Zhongzheng district. Our first stop was at the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center. In other words, a three story gift shop (plus a basement), aiming to make the most out of foreign students with lots of money =P. Despite being very commercial (with little or no history explaining the stories or traditions behind the art), the shop had many beautiful handicrafts.

 

Top left: the very large handicraft gift shop (that's just half of the second floor)

Top right: a fan; Bottom left: Leather art, in the shape of Taiwan

Bottom right: a tile saying Formosa (meaning beautiful)

Of course, many handicrafts tend to be very fragile, resulting in lots of those "you pay if you break it" signs; we found the sign on the bottom quite amusing:

Many of us, myself included, did end up buying some ice cream, which was very comforting when we headed back out to wait for the bus. Here's a picture!

Pouchong Tea = a type of tea between Green Tea and Oolong Tea

The next stop was the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, built from 1976-1980 soon after his death. He was president of the Republic of China, thus having a great influence on Taiwanese history and culture in the latter half of the twentieth century, including forty years of martial law. Opinions on the former leader are mixed, with people either loving him or hating him. This had led to a name change in 2007 to the "National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall" in 2007, thought the name was changed back a year or two later. 

There was not much to do there. We toured around, watched the changing of the guards, and walked along one of those jagged rock paths that are meant to reduce stress. I suppose it's a way to massage the feet, but oww they can also increase stress while stepping on them.

ahh, I know it's generally custom to do this barefoot,

but I didn't think I would've finished without socks. let's do this one step at a time =P

We had dinner (Subway was an interesting choice), before entering the National Concert Hall for a music performance by a Youth Wind Ensemble. The music was focussed on French Music, focussing on Debussy, 20th century compositions, some jazz, a folk song, and an introduction to the saxophone by a Taiwanese musician who had studied in France. The concert hall was very well decorated and had a magnificent organ (that was unplayed =/), but I kept the camera off due to a no-photography rule. The concert lasted until ten, and afterwards, we headed back to Jiantan.