Now in Nantou County, Taiwan
This year’s Nantou Sand Sculpture Festival [南投市貓羅溪畔沙雕藝術節] runs through February 12. We went yesterday afternoon when the sun came out for the first time during the Lunar New Year holiday. This year’s theme is Taiwanese Cinema. There are sculptures inspired by recent Taiwanese movies such as Seediq Bale [賽德克‧巴萊], Cape No. 7 [海角七號], Monga [艋舺], Island Etude [練習曲], and others.
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Too Early
A stone’s throw from Fengguidou [風櫃斗] is Xinyi Township’s Liujia Plum Farm [柳家梅園]. Liujia is home to a huge plum farm which covers a small hillside. You may recognize this area from China Airline’s 2008 Calendar featuring supermodel Lin Chi-ling.
Continue reading ‘Plum Blossoms of Liujia’
Plum King
Tucked away in the mountains of Xinyi Township, Fengguidou [風櫃斗] is an amazing area for seeing Plum Blossoms [梅花] every winter. I visited Fengguidou on New Year’s Day this year and some of the plum trees were just starting to bloom. Here’s a small collection of photographs from the trip.
Continue reading ‘The Plum Blossoms of Fengguidou’
Caotun Township Mayor Hong Kuo-hao speaks to a group of youngsters following a pre-Lunar New Year ceremony.
I definitely smell a pork product of some type in Xinyi Township, Nantou County.
Election fever in Shuili Township, Nantou County.
Josie discovers dirt at a neighbor’s house.
Completely Unrelated Photo
Predictably, blogging was light and sporadic in 2011. However, there were a few gems here and there. These are my favorite posts of 2011:
Have a Happy New Year!
Euploea mulciber [端紫斑蝶]
Despite passing Puli’s Muh Sheng Museum of Entomology more than a dozen times I’ve never had the opportunity to step in until recently. If you’re into insects than you ‘ll likely thoroughly enjoy the museum. Outside the museum is a butterfly greenhouse while inside hosts a few display cases of various insects from Taiwan and around the world [including a walking stick about as long as my forearm]. The museum’s second floor houses display cases filled with several thousands of preserved insects. The most notable of these is an extremely rare hermaphrodite butterfly [one-half of its body is colorful while the other-half is dark].
A couple days after Josie’s first birthday she participated in an activity organized by Les Enphants held at Taichung’s Chung Hsing University. We signed Josie up for the crawling competition and the Zhua Zhou activity [抓周]. There were also a few activities for toddlers. The event was very well organized and we found the staff extremely helpful and professional.
It was a short wait before Josie’s turn so we let her do a few laps on the stage to warm-up. Just prior to the beginning of the competition she seemed pretty eager to crawl across the mat. However, when the race began she only crawled about a meter or so. All the toys we waved and encouraging words we yelled from the finish line weren’t enough to coax her into continuing. That’s still further than anyone else in the group with the exception of two babies who were disqualified after standing up and running to the finish line.
We missed our number for the Zhua Zhou activity, but we were squeezed in another group after a short wait. Zhua Zhou [which literally translates to "pick" and "anniversary"] is an activity held on a child’s first birthday. In the activity, objects are placed on a tray and the object a child picks can indicate his or her future career and personality traits.
The tradition, said to have started during the Three Kingdoms period, arose following the death of Sun He, the prince of the Eastern Wu Kingdom. His father, the emperor Sun Quan, grew worried about which of his grandsons would succeed him, so a Wu citizen named Jing Yang suggested he place a few items on a plate and ask each of his grandsons to pick something. Sun Hao grabbed a bamboo slip – an ancient form of Chinese paper – in one hand, and an imperial belt – symbolizing royal power – in another. Both were deemed fortuitous choices that led to him being chosen as the new emperor. [The Zhua Zhou Way]
The meanings behind some items are pretty straight-forward while others require some knowledge of Chinese language or culture to understand:
Our daughter picked the peanuts first followed by the stamp. After waving both around for a brief period of time she decided to set down the stamp followed by the peanuts. Afterwards, she picked up two microphones [for some reason our tray had two] and banged them together for a while. She soon grew bored of the microphones and settled again for the peanuts.
Stamp + Microphone = Politician?
Josie didn’t show much competitive drive during the crawling competition and didn’t seemed thrilled during the zhua zhou activity. She was most excited as she cheered and laughed at the sight of a person in an elephant costume walking by on our way out.
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