For the past two days I was graciously hosted by Fred’s relatives down in Taichung who gave me a place to stay for the night and showed me around to Taichung and its neighboring towns.
We took the train from Taipei Main Station to Taichung for two hours Friday afternoon, rolling through more “suburban” cities and rural landscapes the closer we got to Taichung.
Something to note about these city names: Taipei is “台北” in Chinese. It can also be spelled as Taibei. That’s when i noticed something. Beijing is “北京 ” and “北“/bei is north. And then Fred explained to me: Taichung (pronounced Tai-zhong I guess) is “台中” and “中” is middle. There’s also a Tainan which is “台南” and “南” is south, as well as Taitung “台東” and “東” is east. So, ta-da!
On the first day we went out for a late lunch with Fred’s mom and sister before heading out by train and bus to the inner city of Taichung for its night life. We also met up with Fred Lin, a fellow USC student/Fred’s “little” and checked out his high school, National Taichung First Senior High School. The campus was huge…
On the second day, we got a more historical tour of Taichung, driving out to a few old train stations along a discontinued line, including the Shengxing Station, its tunnel, and the Longteng Broken Bridge.
Later that day we headed off to a Carton King, a restaurant/store made mostly (75%?) out of cardboard, followed by a trip to the Luce Memorial Chapel in Tunghai University.
And then some treats from that day…
