Sunday January 20, 2013

8:00 a.m. at the 7-11 on Chang-an road in Taipei

Despite all the day trips I’ve taken in the Taipei area, I’d never actually been to Yingge, that small town just outside of Taipei that is famous for its ceramics. It’s surprising because Yingge is probably up there in the top ten or even top five of places that people are encouraged to visit when they come to Taipei. I think I’d always overlooked this place because the scooter ride to get there was not appealing. There is probably a scenic route that can be taken sort of south of Xindian, but the straight shot to get there would take me through urban sprawl almost the entire way. At least, that is what I thought. So to get there it made more sense to take a train or a bus, and I just don’t enjoy using that kind of transportation for day trips.

Yesterday, however, was a beautiful sunny day and after my morning coffee and other activities, I didn’t really have enough time to go on a long trip – a hiking trip or anything like that. So, I decided that it was finally time to go to Yingge. I could bring my camera and take it slow and just enjoy the day.

I’ve been taking lots of trains recently for work, so I actually wasn’t all that worried about taking the train to Yingge. The great thing about Yingge is that it is right on the national railway line. The train station is right in the middle of the town and it’s a small place, so you can walk pretty much everywhere from there.

I live just one subway stop away from the main train station in Taipei, and I was there in just a few minutes. I didn’t think it would be any trouble to tell the clerk at the train station that I wanted a ticket to Yingge, but just in case, I had printed out the name of the town in Chinese to show them. (Buying an ink cartridge for my printer has actually turned out to be extremely useful, and I’ve suddenly found the need – or at least the convenience – to print out all kinds of different things.) I realize now that there was no reason to stand in line at the train station. I could have purchased my ticket from an automatic ticketing machine. However, I stood in line. I had plenty of time. I enjoy watching people, and it’s always fun to watch people in line-ups at train stations and speculate on where they are going. When it was my turn at the front of the line, I barely even had to say anything or even show the clerk my piece of paper. It’s like she took in my tourist-like appearance and gave a little snort and a smile and said, “Yingge.” A second later, she slid my ticket across the counter along with my change. The price of my one-way ticket to Yingge by local train was NT$31, or about $1 US. Quite the bargain.

So buying the ticket was easy. I figured it would be. Finding the correct platform was not quite as simple. I generally don’t take these local trains. I’ve only done it once or twice that I can remember. I usually get tickets on regular trains on which I can reserve seats. These train tickets are more elaborate and come with all kinds of information printed on them, including the departure and arrival times and the train number. Using the train number, you can figure out which platform to go to. Tickets for these local trains don’t seem to have any of that information on them. The ticket is just this tiny scrap of stiff cardboard with some magnetized material on the back. The names of the departure and arrival stations are printed on the front, but that’s about it, I think. I figured I’d just have to keep asking people and slowly find my way.

Despite being so tiny, these tickets go into an automated turnstile. A set of wheels suck the ticket in, a computer reads the information on the magnetized back, and then some other wheels spit the ticket out the other side. Once I got through, I spotted a man in a train station uniform and I showed him my tiny ticket. He pointed to a big display of trains and times and platforms and said in English, “1 – 2 – 3 – A”. What he meant was Platform 3A. He had counted out 1 and 2 just to get me to understand that he was referring to the number. It’s my rule of thumb, however, that one should never ask just one person. In fact, I have a habit of asking as many people as possible. I just wander around and whenever I see a somewhat young and intelligent and friendly looking person, I walk up to them and ask my question, whatever it is.

In this case, there was another big signboard at the top of the escalator leading to Platform 3. Platform 3 has two sides, A and B. And there were several different trains listed as arriving at either 3A or 3B. Nothing on the sign or on my ticket matched up or gave me any clue as to where I should go or which was my train. The train station employee had said 3A, but there were several different trains arriving at station 3A, and I had no idea what my train number was or what time it was supposed to arrive. Besides, I didn’t really trust that information.

The first person I asked wasn’t able to help me. He looked at my ticket carefully and then he looked at the board and then he smiled apologetically and said he didn’t know. This always surprises me when it happens. It seems like if a person can read the Chinese on a train ticket, it would be a simple matter to know which train the ticket was for. But it doesn’t really work like that in Taiwan. I’ve noticed this problem before. I noticed, for example, that quite often a train will be referred to by train number at some points in the system and then at other points there will be no train number. Trains are often referred to by their origin and destination stations, but those can be completely random and unhelpful – particularly when you are getting on that train in mid-journey. All the trains are pretty much running between Taipei and Kaohsiung, but they all start and stop at different stations before or after or between those cities and referring to trains by these places is no help at all. So, somehow, even though this Taiwanese person was looking at my ticket, he, too, had no idea what train it was for.

The next person I asked must have had some experience with this particular train, because he seemed a bit more sure of himself, and he said my train was arriving at Platform 3B. That was unfortunate. If he had said 3A with confidence, then I would have been able to stop there. That’s the same answer the train station employee gave. With two answers the same, I could have just gone with that. However, I now had one person saying 3A and another saying 3B. I wandered down the platform and picked out another victim. He said 3A. I went the other way and asked another man. He said 3B. My system wasn’t really working this time. Plus, none of these people were able to provide any information beyond the platform number. They still couldn’t tell me the train number or the departure time even though we were often standing right in front of the digital information board listing all the trains. Somehow my ticket was incomplete.

I kept walking along the platform from end to end and looking for more clues. Luckily, no trains had come and gone in this time period. So assuming that I was on the correct platform – platform 3 – I hadn’t missed my train yet. Not that I was worried about it. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. I could always take a different train or not even go at all if it came to that. This was just a day of pleasure and hanging out. I started to realize that I would probably have to find another train station employee to break the deadlock. All the passengers seemed equally divided between the answers 3A and 3B and none of them seemed very confident. I needed to hear something from someone in authority. Then I turned a corner way at the far end of the platform and, to my surprise, I found an information booth with a train station employee sitting inside. I showed him my ticket. He just glanced at it and pointed at a train on the board behind him. That train was leaving from Platform 3B. And since he had pointed to a specific train on the information board, I now had the train number and the departure time – the key bits of information that seemed to be missing from my ticket.

I was very pleased to see that the train was almost completely empty when it arrived. It was a local train, which meant that it looked somewhat like a subway train with just a few seats arranged along the sides and lots of standing room with strap hangers and poles everywhere. In fact, these local trains are pretty much identical to subway trains except that the seats have thick cushions. I climbed aboard and took a seat and settled in for the ride.

The train trip to Yingge was only about forty minutes, I knew. The train stayed underground for much of that journey and stopped at the Wanhua and Banqiao stations and took on lots more passengers. Then we emerged into the light and passed through a few more stations – Fuzhou, I think, and Shulin among others. There was a digital sign inside the train car that indicated the names of all the stations in both Chinese and English. And at each station there were also signs in both Chinese and English. We English-speakers are kind of spoiled in Taiwan.

The train station in Yingge was very pleasant and airy and had nice bathrooms and a 7-11 and all that sort of thing. It was obvious that Yingge was a tourist town because there were maps everywhere with big “You Are Here” arrows. I was mainly interested in the ceramics museum. After that, I figured I’d check out the local “old street”. And then I’d do whatever struck my fancy.

As I said, there were maps everywhere and that’s a good thing. However, there is definitely something odd about the tradition of tourist maps in Taiwan. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I’m often confused by them. There is something about the way they are drawn or the way they are oriented. For one thing, they don’t seem to line up with the world properly. I’m never quite sure if I’m looking at it the right away. I don’t know which way north is and I can’t get oriented. In the past, I’ve had to take pictures of the maps with my digital camera and then look at the map on my camera while orienting my body correctly. That’s the only way I can do it. I don’t think it’s just me, either. While I was staring at the big maps at the exit of the train station, I noticed the Taiwanese being confused, too. Groups of them would stand in front of the map and have long and amusing discussions about which way they needed to go. They would stand in front of the map and then look around and orient their body and point left and right and try to figure it out. The next person would do the same but end up pointing in the other direction. They’d laugh about it and look at the map again and eventually, like me, just give up and pick a direction at random.

The maps in Yingge were particularly confusing. The main attraction in the town – even more of a draw than the museum – is the old street. The entire map was even called something like “Tourist Map of Yingge Old Street.” Unfortunately, whoever designed the map actually forgot to put the old street on it. I looked at map after map after map all over the town and though they all claimed to be maps to Yingge Old Street, none of them actually showed where this old street was. It was very puzzling. In the town itself, there were lots of street signs pointing to the old street. Unfortunately, none of these had distances on them, so I wasn’t quite sure how they all fit together. From one intersection alone, I actually saw three different arrows pointing to Old Street, and they were all pointing in different directions. I figured out much later that from that intersection the Old Street was actually quite far away, and you could, in fact, get there by heading in all three of those directions. But that wasn’t very helpful. It would be like going to every intersection in Taipei and putting up an arrow pointing south labelled “Hualien.” Sure, one could get to Hualien by heading south from all those thousands of points, but as directions those signs wouldn’t be very helpful.

The result for me was that when I left the ceramics museum I followed the signs pointing to Yingge Old Street. The signs led me all the way back to nearly the train station. The signs then circled away from the train station and I walked for a long time through a very busy and congested downtown area of Yingge. Finally, I closed in on Yingge Old Street, and it was pretty much right beside the ceramics museum! There were lots of maps of the area scattered about the old street and much as I looked at them, I couldn’t figure them out and, again, none of them actually had the old street marked on them. It seems to me that old street itself would be the most important thing to have marked on a map to old street. More confusing, I realized, is that there really isn’t an old street at all. It’s more of an old neighborhood. I thought I had found the old street at long last. But after walking through it and sampling some snacks and taking some pictures, I got to the end and found a sign that said Old Street No. 2. It appeared there were several of them. Another sign pointed to Old Street No. 1. It was not so much an old street as an old area. When I left, I went by a cool elevated walkway that went over the train tracks. And it was when I was up there on the walkway that I realized I was standing pretty much right beside the ceramics museum. That long walk I had gone on had been completely unnecessary. I thought back over the steps I had followed to get there, but I don’t think there was ever a point of confusion. I had followed the only arrows and signs I had seen and they took the unwary tourist all the way back to the train station before then directing you onward. It’s like the train station was a portal that you had to pass through.

I’ve come across lots of similar situations on my travels in Taiwan, and I think I’ve come up with an explanation. The explanation is that the Taiwanese don’t use or need these signs and maps. They just grow up knowing where all these things are. These tourist signs are put up as part of this or that well-meaning effort by local governments to be nice to tourists like myself. And there aren’t that many tourists visiting Taiwan, so these signs don’t really serve a practical purpose. They are more decorative than anything else. So if they don’t actually work or make sense, it never really gets discovered or fixed.

My first destination wasn’t old street, however. It was the ceramics museum I was looking for. I never did figure out with certainty by looking at the maps which way I should go upon leaving the train station, but it was clearly either left or right. I had a fifty-fifty shot at it and as it turned out, I guessed right. It was relatively early in the day still, and most of the shops I passed on the street were closed. That was okay with me since I wasn’t, to be honest, all that interested in pottery anyway. I didn’t anticipate spending a lot of time in the shops looking at what was on offer and then filling up my knapsack with pottery and ceramics. I was fairly certain that the ceramics museum was going to be enough for me.

The museum, as it turned out wasn’t just enough for me. It was more than enough for me. I didn’t know what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised. The museum was a spacious and airy and very pleasant building. Admission was free, and the friendly woman who greeted me at the door rushed over to a pad of paper and made a mark as I walked through. I guessed that she was keeping an informal count of the number of foreigners that visit each day.

I wonder sometimes if I wasn’t born to be an architect or something. I often find on my visits to these places that I’m more interested in the buildings themselves than in the contents. In this case, the ceramics were impressive. There was an informative and interesting set of exhibits on the history and technology of ceramics in Taiwan. There was also a very interesting special exhibit of ceramic art from all over Asia. That really was interesting. However, what impressed me the most and gave me the most pleasure was just the building itself with its high ceiling and massive glass walls and fun walkways. It was just a very pleasant space and I made sure at one point to head to the resident Ikari coffee shop and enjoy a cup of coffee and a slice of delicious cheesecake.

A hands-on workshop for children was underway in the basement and there was lots of excitement there. Behind the museum building was an expansive park filled with interesting things to check out. There were pottery display areas with potters on hand demonstrating different types of kilns and different types of pottery wheels and other techniques. There was even a small bakery advertising “healthy bread” made in their own wood-fired oven. I bought a bag of healthy rolls for NT$100 and munched on them as I wandered around snapping pictures.

After the museum, I went on my long circuitous journey to the old region. I was surprised at how little pottery there was in the old streets of the old region. In fact, this particular old street looked and felt much like every old street I’d seen in Taiwan recently. I don’t mean that as a bad thing. I enjoy these old streets and I snack my way from one end to the other sampling whatever strikes my fancy. I did have a couple of unusual encounters. The first was with a couple of men selling peanuts. One man had open peanut shells in his hands and he was handing them out as free samples. I took one and thought they were quite tasty. I went through this particular old street two or three times, and on my third trip through, I stopped to buy a bag of the peanuts. I thought it would be fun to take them home and crack open the shells and munch on the peanuts. I’ve always loved peanuts in the shells – especially around a campfire when you can then throw the shells into the fire. Anyway, I stopped at this display and I asked the guy how much a small bag of peanuts was. They had bags of various sizes. Even the smallest was quite large, so I asked about the smallest bag. This man went to their cash register and started rummaging around inside it. He eventually came out with a handful of money. He had 3 NT$100 bills and one NT$50 coin. He slapped that money on the bag of peanuts to show me the price: NT$350! He was clearly trying to rip me off. He had looked me over and figured I was fresh off the turnip boat and didn’t know what prices should be and he’d just picked a number out of the air. I just shook my head and started to walk away. He then took away NT$200 and indicated that the bag of peanuts was NT$150. I have no idea what the actual price should be, but I wasn’t about to buy anything from the guy after what he pulled. It was funny because I don’t think that had ever happened to me before. It’s true that I tend to go to market stalls that have the prices displayed. I just find the whole business of asking about prices and then bargaining a giant waste of time. It’s so inefficient. Just tell me what it costs and I’ll pay it. But even when I buy things without listed prices, I always get the local price, whatever it is. This is the first time in all my time in Taiwan that I can remember that someone just took a chance and threw out a huge number on the off-chance that the dumb foreigner would pay it. That happens all the time in other countries, but never in Taiwan in my experience until now.

The second unusual experience was turning the corner from Old Street #2 onto Old Street #1 and seeing two men on horseback. It was a stunning sight, to be honest. You simply don’t see anything like that in Taiwan as a rule. Taiwan is the kind of place where seeing a cow in a field is a type of tourist attraction. People pay good money to see a cow in a field and get quite excited about it. But to see a horse! And not just one, but two! And to see them right in the middle of a crowded old street where you can really get a sense of how big and muscular and beautiful they are. It was quite something. Certainly, I hadn’t seen a horse myself in many years and it was almost a mystical experience to suddenly find myself standing next to one. The Taiwanese were almost beside themselves with excitement and picture-taking frenzy. I don’t know if this is a regular thing in Yingge. Certainly these horses were used to it. There’s no way you’d take horses into a crowded and noisy environment like that unless you were sure that they could handle it and wouldn’t be spooked. I kept worrying for the people who passed too close behind the horses. I know from personal experience just how strong and fast they are. A quick lash of the rear legs and that would be the end of you. I would never go behind a horse a like that, but being from Canada I at least have a bit of experience with large animals. Most Taiwanese would rarely encounter horses or cows and wouldn’t be as careful around them as I would be.

After several strolls up and down the various old streets, I made my way back to the train station. This time, I bought my ticket using the automated ticket vending machine. I still couldn’t tell from my ticket which train to take or when it would arrive, but I simply looked on the board for the next local train to Taipei that was scheduled to arrive. I figured I could get on any train I wanted to as long as it went to Taipei. The ticket wasn’t used to get on the train itself but only to get into and out of the train station.

I had a hunch the train back to Taipei would be a bit more crowded than the one I had taken out in the morning, and with this in mind, I hadn’t left my departure until the evening. It was still the afternoon, and even as early as it was, the train was jammed. I suspected it would be, and I had walked all the way to the very end of the platform. The middle cars were packed to the rafters, but the very last car still had about two square feet of space available near the door and I got in with just enough room behind me for the doors to close. It was only a short journey though, and it wasn’t that uncomfortable.

Back in Taipei, I congratulated myself on a day well-spent. I’d finally been to Yingge. And not only that, I’d had train adventures and seen a couple of horses. What more could one want?

 

Tags: museum, Taipei, Taiwan, train