TAICHUNG & TAINAN (9/11 - 9/13)

Hello Taiwan! On the morning of the 11th our class piled into a bus once more—this time headed to Taichung for an overnight field trip. Our first stop? Yoshan Tea House. I had done zero research into our itinerary so this was a very pleasant surprise. I was sleepy coming off the bus but talk of tea, especially local tea, gave me some much needed energy. A tour guide greeted us inside of the place and began to explain the variety of teas they had available. Truthfully, it was a little hard to hear him over the sound of clinking glass (we were all excitedly picking up the glass tea jars and smelling them). After learning about their history, we got to make tea balls and sample some of their teas. I tried to resist but I bought two tins in the gift shop. We got lunch after at a nearby restaurant and right as we sat down a giant floor to ceiling window shattered across the restaurant. A very startling start 

to an otherwise very tranquil lunch. We ran around with some giant balls behind the restaurant to burn off some calories (plus there was a huge inflatable soccer ball I couldn't resist). The next craft destination of the day was a bamboo craft factory—where almost immediately we all noticed and begged to ride on a bamboo frame bike (I did give it a spin). I had seen the mugs this factory produced in a gift shop near TDRI back in Taipei so it was cool to see how they were produced and to learn more about bamboo varieties. For the final craft stop of the night we briefly stopped by a master woodcarvers shop. I got my hopes up thinking we'd get to carve something but we were only there for twenty minutes or so. I think one day I'd like to be a master woodcarver somewhere. For whatever reason, I expected Taichung to be a humble mountainous town in the center of Taiwan. I found out, as our bus dropped us off next to a skyscraper in the middle of the city, that was not the case. Our "hostel" was on the top floor of this building overlooking a sprawling park. It was by far the nicest hostel I think I'll ever have the pleasure of staying at. Change, being from Taichung, recommended that we visit a brewery nearby our hostel for dinner that night. After seeing a chicken head at lunch, I was sort of hoping we could have some burgers and a beer. Albeit expensive, the burger and beer combo was exactly what the American in me needed. I also got some earrings of Taiwanese beer right outside the restaurant so that was a huge plus. The next morning we packed up and left the star hostel to visit the National Taiwan Craft Research Institute. The bamboo chairs knocked my socks off—I almost fell to my knees on the second floor. They were just that cool. 

We stopped for lunch at a local sustainable eatery that we discovered opened just to cook for us on the chefs birthday. The food was incredible and Winghi's Taiwanese unc stopped by to drop off some treats for the whole class (thanks unc!). The food gave us some fuel for the next stop: another bamboo craft workshop! This time we got to work with the bamboo which was soooooo much harder than expected. I wish we had been to the workshop before the craft museum because it would've given us some more appreciation for all the works we saw (more than I already had). The master was making a bamboo dinosaur which, after taking three hours to make a little vase, seemed impossibly impressive. After a little tour, we waved goodbye to the workshop and drove back to our hotel in Tainan. Today we presented on our early concepts, which I think went smoothly after having stayed up in Taichung to work on it. After a few rounds of brainstorming, our group decided to move forward with the fortune stick chopstick holder idea. I think it'll be a fun challenge to refine the idea and polish it for this next weeks presentation. I also found some NCKU capstone books from 1980 all the way to last year that were incredibly inspiring and entertaining. The one from 1990 might've been the coolest visual identity for a capstone ever and got me thinking about what I'll do for my capstone this next year. Super excited to hop on a boat tomorrow—I'll let you know how that goes in the next blog.

Cheers!

Austin