Xinying Sojourn

[Shutree]

Back in April when the Isan mercury was hitting 40C I decided to decamp to Taiwan. I have a friend who lives in the very ordinary town of Xinying, the northern end of Tainan county. I started off as we all do, at the airport, where AirAsia strive to make it as stressful as possible to check in. Of course most of us are already checked in online, so all we have to do is drop off our bags. No, we actually all get checked in a second time and it takes forever. Not yet 0500 hours and the counters are mobbed. A monk gets to use the priority queue, I don't know where he was going, he was pulling out all kinds of papers and it took nearly 15 minutes to check in that one person.



No pictures because they are not allowed, the Immigration hall at departure was completely empty. I have never seen that before. Only me, I had a choice of desks. Probably everyone else was still mired in the swamp of AirAsia checkin.

When they called the flight, everyone seemed to be asleep. I wandered up to the desk and was first on board. That's unusual.



It was great after the Isan desert to fly in over the green hills of Taiwan. I wasn't sure how things would go at Taoyuan arrivals, the airport website still had some BS about pre-registering for Covid clearance but the long form kept falling over so I never submitted anything. Of course nothing was asked for on arrival, just get a tourist SIM card for 15 days and jump on a train. I still had a card with sufficient credit to get me to the High Speed Rail Station, so it was a breeze. It used to be a pain, the airport and the Taoyuan HSR are quite far apart, then they extended the MRT so it all joins up. Easy too to buy a ticket, only a few minutes to wait then kick back in my seat and watch the countryside fly by.



The NTD was about 1.1 Baht, so the train was about a grand, standard class, reserved seat, down to Chiayi.
It isn't a scenic journey. The train runs down the coastal plain, too far from the coast to see the sea and on this refreshingly damp day too far from the mountains to see those. It is, however, clean, fast and efficient.

[Shutree]

The first couple of days were damp. I loved it, a great contrast to Isan.



Mostly though the weather was fine and dry, maybe 30C afternoons.

One of the first thing you notice on local roads, where scooters are still very popular, is that all riders and passengers wear helmets. I mentioned this to my friend and she said, of course, it's the law. Yep, just like Isan.



Interestingly, people stop at red traffic lights. Even on my early morning exercise I saw many pedestrians waiting at empty junctions for a green light. Exactly like Isan. Not.

[Shutree]

My friend's husband is Dutch and an artist. She is the business minded half of the partnership and in order to get his paintings to the local market she has opened her own gallery. Once she is a gallery owner she can apply to exhibit at the annual Taipei art fair.



The American-English name she chose, Bug 2, sounds a bit odd to me. Of course the Chinese is classical and has a much more nuanced meaning to Chinese readers.

[Shutree]

The town has a couple of parks. The smaller of the two is around the Cultural Centre. An actual Centre for actual Culture. Much like Nongbualamphu - fifty years from now. Maybe.



There are small spaces around town which speak to the legacy of the Japanese occupation. This is by the Cultural Centre.



The park has mature trees, providing natural shade, which is enjoyed by young and old. This might seem very ordinary to most people. In Nongbualamphu, as part of the 'improvement' to the public area around the lake, the city fathers recently cut down all the mature trees.



The trees and a small lake there encourage various wildlife.



One neat feature here is a fenced in area for people to bring their pets.



However, my main purpose in strolling down to the Cultural Centre was to sit in the coffee shop. On my first visit I learned that I could have Americano or Cappuccino, but not espresso. I asked the young barista about this and she said it isn't on the menu. I asked if she could make an Americano, without adding any hot water. She promised to look into that idea and, hey presto, the next day she produced a double espresso. I think this little story says something about Taiwan people in general.

[Shutree]

This is another civic space. In a triangle between three busy roads is the 'Eight Beatiful Horses' sitting out area. Commonplace idea, some would say. Quite uncommon though for those of us who live in the deeper recesses of Isan.

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[Shutree]

This part of town, in fact much of the town, is built up with 3 or four storey townhouses. Most are tiled on the outside and I sometimes felt like I was in a giant toilet that had been somehow turned inside out. Nearly every building is built out to the limits of its plot and there are few pavements/sidewalks.

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All that tiling is interesting. You hardly ever see any missing tiles or hear reports of tiles dropping onto pedestrians. I wouldn't risk getting any Isan craftsmen builders to tile the outside of anything above the first storey.

Another thing evident by its absence is litter. I see more litter down my country soi in Isan than I did anywhere in Xinying.

[Shutree]

The sharp-eyed reader will have seen water pumps. Many are on the outside of the buildings. Not caged in or anything. I guess people there don't steal them.

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Another mystery is how they manage without bright blue water pipes.

[Stumpy]

Great Pics Shu, Thanks for sharing

[happynz]

Wow! I lived in Hsinying back in the early 90s. Random memories of the place…

Cruised around on my beefy Honda 150 down to Tainan or Kaohsiung just to buy English language magazines at Caves Books. Celebrated the insane fireworks festival in Yenshui just down the road. Spent a good portion of time spaced out on hash bought from Uighers in Macao when on the visa run. Kaoliang shots with the commandant of the military prison in the military prison outside of town during Chinese New Year.

Thx for sparking the memories, Shutree.

[Shutree]

Car parking space is limited. Many houses have a space not quite big enough for their car.

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Many undeveloped plots have these heavy duty car tents.

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[Shutree]

With outside space at a premium, only a few expensive residences have anything resembling a garden.

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[happynz]

Bugger. Can’t open the attachments.

[Shutree]

Sorry. Seems like the TD picture gremlins are at it again. You do the same thing and get different results. I'll try to rectify.

[Shutree]

Bugger. Can’t open the attachments.

Did it work second attempt?

[Shutree]

I lived in Hsinying back in the early 90s. Random memories of the place…

Cruised around on my beefy Honda 150 down to Tainan or Kaohsiung

The spelling is an interesting detail. Xinying is now standard although many older signs still have Sinying. They don't make a big deal about it but the south end of Taiwan was less willing than the rest to adopt pinyin spelling and some places have taken their time about it. It's all about love for the mainland. Kaohsiung looks like it will never change.

[Norton]

Kaohsiung looks like it will never change.

It's changed quite a bit since my early days in Taipei.

[BLD]

Never been there but keep em.coming its on my bucket list and good to see a revival of travel threads post covid. Katie had a lot of interesting things to say about taiwan

[Backspin]

Looks like they are using electrical conduit for water pipe.

Blue is for pressurized potable water

Grey if for electrical

The Use and Importance of PVC Piping Color Codes - Parklane Commercial Corporation

Now watch AO come along and say I dont know shit about Asia!

[Shutree]

It's changed quite a bit since my early days in Taipei.

That's an interesting pic; cassettes and 8-track. Was the Sea Dragon Club a happening place back then?

The romanised name Kaohsiung though, remains unchanged. The southerners stuck with the Wade-Giles version rather than yield to mainland pinyin 'Gāoxióng'. In fact, I'd need to check but I think the name was adopted by the Japanese during the occupation. As you know, it's a complex history of mixed languages there between several native Taiwanese dialects, Hokkien and Putonghua, with the Japanese having come and gone.

[Shutree]

Temples. There are plenty of small temples tucked away around the town, principally Buddhist or Confucian. Some are as small as someone's living room, some are more elaborate.

The thing about temples in Taiwan is that they pay zero tax on donations. This, of course, would be an ideal opportunity for money launderers, although I'm sure they haven't thought of that possibility.

[Shutree]

Wine. A subject dear to my heart. The local supermarket is Carrefour and it is much like supermarkets everywhere. Unlike my local Lotutheth it has a wide selection of wines. The prices are cheaper than Thailand despite not really being 'cheap' compared to the UK. I was impressed by the breadth of choice, wines from all over.



Some offers looked good. Three bottles of Chianti for Baht 1,000 isn't something you'll find in my part of Isan.



Local people must be drinking this stuff. There is an up-market wine shop in town too.

[happynz]

Xīnying literally means New Camp. Maybe something to do with the military prison in the hills the back of town.

[Shutree]

Running through town is a small river that has been confined to a conduit.



Okay, it is the end of a very dry winter and as rivers go it isn't much to shout about. The thing is, in Hong Kong that would be a black, fetid sewer. In UK it would be full of litter with feral teenagers seeing how high they could pile the shopping trolleys. Here it is clean. There is a long riverside walk which is popular with people exercising. Despite the low water level there at this time of year there are fish.



There is something here which reflects urban Taiwan life. I'm not suggesting it is perfect, only saying that the civic authorities make an effort to do what they can with what they have got and it often comes out okay. You can walk or ride your bicycle along the river and feel comfortable, not having your senses assaulted by a stinking trickle, piles of litter or uneven pavements. It's just somehow normal.
(Yes, there are in fact plenty of uneven surfaces and walking around town can be a bit of a challenge at times. Pretty much every shop front has a surface level different from its neighbours by an inch or two and those areas tend to be filled with scooters or food stalls, so you need to pay attention as you walk. Most locals have scooters or bicycles.)

[Shutree]

One distinctive local feature is the water station. My friend lets the space outside her ground floor to one such operation. It is a busy spot, it seems that many locals get their drinking water from these stations.

[Shutree]

My friend has two children. Her daughter is six years old. The parents are Taiwanese and Dutch, she speaks no Dutch and he speaks no Chinese so their common language is English. The daughter speaks all three. Her grandma speaks to her in accented Mandarin (which irritates her mother, who is well educated and would prefer her daughter to learn true Mandarin). Grandma also speaks 'Taiwanese', not one of the many aboriginal languages, a form of Hokkien Chinese, so of course daughter also chats away in Taiwanese. This makes me feel bad. In the years since I moved to Thailand I have made negligible progress with Thai or Isan Thai. Meanwhile, this child has become proficient in four languages.
It's a pleasure to spend some time around young people. It makes me think back to the days when a large box was an adventure.