Fulong Sand Sculpture Festival

We took a trip on an overcast but otherwise pleasant day to the sand sculpture festival at Fulong Beach. The sculptures were awesome, although some of them made me raise my eyebrows. The festival will apparently be going on until June (the sculptures are protected from the rain).

There are two beaches at Fulong, a slightly rocky public one that's free and popular with strolling people and folks with beach blankets reading, and a private one owned by the beachside hotel, which costs NT$100 to enter and is only accessible by a large bridge (something we found out the hard way).

In addition to the professional sculptures, which are made by teams of Taiwanese and international artists, there is a more "amateur" competitition with a clear "Taiwan" or "Taiwan tourism" theme. I'm not sure how some of them promoted Taiwan tourism, but they were still cool, if not as "polished" as the professional works. I liked this surreal one:

Some more of the pro sculptures below. They were divided into sections - one celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China, and around it were sculptures of Mazu, Guanyin etc.. Another focused on the art of ancient Babylon. One area had Arctic (and Antarctic, although maybe that was just due to poor research) themed works, and another was just odd (a rabbit smoking a hookah, among other things.

The "Arctic" themed works were especially popular. We wondered why they had this category - in Brendan's words: "to celebrate it before it all melts away?"

Just learning to windsurf - kudos for picking up a new hobby!

This sculpture celebrates the new Taiwan: Heart of Asia and ROC Centennial. I do not know why either of those necessitated a Spongebob.

This is a replica of a real sculpture - the damage to the eye is done on purpose.

Bwahaha, look at the silly foreigners trying to wade from the public beach to the private one because they took the wrong turn. Whose dumb idea was that?

...oh.

It was mine. Ahem.

Carry on.

Standing in the surf, looking contemplative

Err, I guess the Little Mermaid is all grown up?

Child on the side of the Guanyin sculpture (below)

Guanyin sculpture

Move over, fools. This be my town.

Grandma's lookin' a little buzzed at lunchtime.

All in all an enjoyable day trip, though tiring to walk over the sand with so many people and small dogs about, kicking the finer sand into the air to create a dusty pall over the beach. We recovered at Mr. Brown Coffee before grabbing a bus to Keelung and having dinner at Miaokou night market (pictures of that coming up).