Yilan 宜蘭

(Another quick trip!)

One day last week, I was out in the city, biking between a private student's house and my school, when I got a call from a sister in our congregation: "Hey, this Thursday do you want to go to Yilan for a day?" I thought, I've never been to Yilan. Sure! So I agreed, took the day off Thursday, and went to Yilan with a few friends!

(This week I actually went three places: Yilan, Kinmen and Xiamen. I was originally going to put all of them into one post, but Yilan is different enough from Kinmen and Xiamen that it might be a little confusing... so I'll have a separate post up about Kinmen and Xiamen soon. Like, in the next few days.)

All together, there were eight of us going:

Left to right: Sr. Wang, Sr. Chen, Yijin, Ginger, Felicia, Ryota, Xiaorong (and me behind the camera)

Sisters Wang and Chen were very kind and offered to drive us to Yilan, rather than have us take the train over. Road trip! Of course, Yilan is only like an hour away, so it wasn't all that much of a road trip... but for Taiwan, an hour's drive is really far away!

The road was winding and led through the northern mountains of Taiwan, and included an incredibly long tunnel directly beneath one of the mountains. After what seemed like an eternity of amber lights and close air, we emerged... in Yilan!

Well, near Yilan anyway.

Yilan is a really nice little town! It's on the northeastern coast of Taiwan, and before Keelung was built up in the late Qing Dynasty, it was the second largest port in Taiwan. Unfortunately for the people of Yilan, Keelung's port turned out to be really good, so after its opening the majority of the cargo traffic in and out of Taiwan's north switched to Keelung and left Yilan a sleepy little fishing/agricultural town that's gotten a little artsy in its dotage.

I mean, look at that train station. It's got a giraffe on it!

I'll give it to the civic planners of Yilan, they've done a good job. It probably helps that the buildings aren't nearly as tall as Taipei's, but all the places we went to felt like they had a lot more air and sunlight then I've gotten used to having. 

And look at that street! Beautiful!

 A lot of people, in Yilan and Taipei both, actually aren't paid to work on beautifying the city; they just do it in their spare time because they like to plant plants. I caught this guy hard at work in his little green corner:

Nice job man!

After a little debate, we decided to head over to Jimmy Park first, mostly because it was sunny out and we figured it would be better in the light. That's really it's name, by the way; apparently there was an artist named Jimmy who the city of Yilan invited to design their park, and his name got attached to it in the process. It's more than just a park; when I think of parks, I tend to think of plants, but this 'park' incorporated sculptures and buildings into its design. It's pretty cool actually, and made for lots of interesting pictures!

Just chillin' on a safe, as you do

This building is actually only like 15 feet tall!

This one is approximately 2.2 Xiaorongs tall

Group shot!

We didn't really do all that much in Jimmy Park, just kinda walked around and played on the art. By the way, you can totally play with the art, none of that 'no touching' junk here. It's fun to play sometimes! 

The Entrance

Who is real and who is fake?

That's a fish face. I'm a fish.

Ryota is a cool guy. His personality is a little serious, in the typical Japanese fashion, but he can relax and have a good time with friends just like anyone else. Which leads to awesome pictures like this one.

I AM HAVING FUN NOW

After messing around in the park for a couple hours, we went and got some lunch- just typical Chinese food, nothing too remarkable- and began puzzling out how we could get from where we were to the museum. 

Happily, we had Ginger and a map!

It wasn't too hard- Yilan is much smaller than Taipei- and after a short drive, we arrived at Lanyang Museum. 

It's that building that fell over.

Xiaorong apparently has wanted to go to this museum for a little while, so, you know, why not? Its focus is on Yilan and its surrounding areas- mostly natural history and anthropology. Unfortunately for me, it had almost nothing in English, so the amount of information I got out of it won't exactly win me any awards. (If I had to, I was physically capable of reading most of the signs inside, but it's a lot of hard work and my brain got tired after reading the fourth or fifth exhibit about Yilan's animals. After that, I kind of just looked at the pretty pictures and bothered one of the Taiwanese people nearby if I had a question- mostly, they were ok with helping me out.)

Despite my limitations, the museum and its surroundings were remarkably beautiful!

Not a bad group of people, either!

Walking the path to the museum's entrance

Since the building has such an interesting shape, the perspectives you can get inside it are... well, interesting. Sometimes it's hard to tell which way is up!

Main lobby

Looking down from the top

The exhibits are structured into floors- you climb to the top of the building first and work your way down, and as you can see from the above picture, they're all enclosed in the same space without any real walls separating them. Very cool building!

After checking the exhibits out for a while, we stopped at the coffee shop-

-always very important-

-and then hung out outside for a little while. Taiwan is beautiful, you know that?

Reflecting pond outside the museum

Just checkin' out the nature, man

Sadly, it was beginning to get a bit late, and some of us still had to go to work that evening! So, after a delicious, if a little hurried, dinner of onion pancakes, we piled back into the cars and drove back to Taipei. Nice little day trip!

The next post I'll put up will be about a larger trip I took last weekend to the Taiwanese-controlled island of Kinmen 金門 and its neighbor, the Chinese-controlled city of Xiamen 廈門. I hope to have that one up within the next couple days, so please be patient! :-)