The first Maker Faire in Taipei (well, in Taiwan really) happened at Huashan park this past weekend, May 18-19. Entry was free for all-comers and it was awesome. As one would expect, there were plenty of robots wandering around and there were even robot boxing events. There were also plenty of demonstrations of Rasberry Pi and Arduino-based projects (along with a number of Arduino clones, my favorite being Motoduino which was apparently created by a maker fan of those Hello Moto mobile phone commercials).
After a (too long) hiatus, Im back with some new street photography from Taipei, Taiwan.
In Taiwan, strawberries are a winter fruit. Miaoli County, which sits south of Taipei, is the center of the strawberry universe. Every weekend dozens of tourist busses leave from Taipei Main Station filled with agro-tourists ready to strip the farms bare of anything with even the slightest red tinge followed by a stop off at the center of Miaoli City for some strawberry wine, strawberry ice cream, strawberries over shaved ice drowned in condensed milk, strawberry smoothies, strawberry candies, … you get the idea. There are even strawberry-flavored corn dogs and Taiwanese sausages.
What do you do if you are the village one train stop down from a very popular tourist-trail village? You come up with a hook to snag some of that tourist traffic. In this case, Houtong Village sits on the next stop past where anyone going to Pingxi to float some paper lanterns or Shifen to see the waterfall would exit.
The hook they came up with? Cats.
One of the benefits of living in the capitol city of any country are the memorials. Taipei is no exception, with the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Memorial being my favorite due to the amazing amount of space dedicated to grass, trees, and a small lake.
Ximen Market (a.k.a. Hsimen Market, Ximending, ???, Hsimenting, etc…) has been a shopping center in Taipei since before Taiwan was a country. It was first designated as a shopping district by the Japanese during their rule of the island prior to World War II. For Chinese or Japanese-language linguaphiles this explains the ding character, which doesnt make a ton of sense in a Chinese context because it is a direct transfer of the same character in Japanese (cho), which does make sense. There have been shopping or entertainment venues in Ximen for over a century including the Red House Theater, which has been standing since 1908 and still stands.
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