A Day in Meinong

After the King Boat Festival in Donggang ended two weeks ago, we headed to Meinong for the day before catching the HSR back to Taipei. Meinong is the center of southern Taiwanese Hakka culture and is famous for its oilpaper parasols, which are beautifully handpainted and sold in several places around town. At least they would be if half of the old street weren't torn up by construction at the moment.

The food is excellent too - we really enjoyed everything we ate at the well-known restaurant on the outskirts of town (which is actually called "Traditional Hakka Restaurant" but is quite good). We had lotus leaves, cold peanut "tofu", flat board rice noodles cooked two ways, basically all of their famous dishes. All of it excellent.

Below is a set of photos.

The dog and the couch suit each other quite well I think.

For old architecture enthusiasts, Meinong is full of examples of traditional homes. You'll see a lot of them in this post.

Dongmen, the only gate and most famous landmark in town, sits at the end of Yongan Street (the "old street" which isn't very old and is currently partly under construction).

A piece of door calligraphy (this year is the year of the rat). I just liked it.

Something in an old temple.

Dongmen in black and white.

A pretty cornice (?) thing on Dongmen, partially painted.

Hakka woman on bicycle, taken from the 2nd floor of Dongmen.

Old guy watching his front stoop get torn up by construction.

Temple lion.

Three sets of fortune blocks in a temple.

Side column of a traditional house.

Traditional houses (above and below)

Shi Jin Lai is 100 years old and has made traditional Hakka blue clothes since the 1920s. His relative/apprentice here now does most of the work (Shi himself sits in an easy chair and says hello to visitors and is generally celebrated by the town, which sounds like a pretty good deal for a centenarian.) I ordered a blouse because they're pretty, and I like to support the traditional arts.

Cool dragon thing outside of a quirky shop.

Another traditional home - the friendly owners allowed me inside.

Baskets of things (yucca? yam?)

The back of the old Matsu temple (the front is brand new)

The brand-new front of the Matsu temple.

Oil paper parasols above and below - I bought one for my aunt as a Christmas gift - not the yin-yang - I bought some pretty purple...flox or irises. (above and below)

Su Ho Paper Museum + handmade paper shop

I stopped into the Su Ho Paper Museum today, just east of the Songjiang/Chang'An intersection (buses 642, 643, 280, 222 and several others go there), and the paper shop a little farther east of that - the Chang Chuen Ever Prosperous Group, which sounds so stereotypically Chinese that it makes me smile. The purpose was to buy paper for making homemade cards that I love to create for friends and family, and to get ideas for our funky, low-cost DIY wedding invitations. I love working with paper so whatever we choose not to use for the invitations will eventually be used in cards or other works of art.

Some of what I bought, with strips of the larger sheets for ease of experimenting:

The blue and purple Nepalese block print came from a larger sheet purchased at the museum (NT120 or 180, I forget) and the rest came from Ever Prosperous. Opinions on which ones would make the best decorative paper for invitations - think "funky and fun", NOT "Wedding" - are welcome! We have no color schemes because we agree that a 'color scheme' is ridiculous for what is basically a big party, but you can see that I prefer dark, rich colors. Brendan has no opinion but generally likes my taste.

The Su Ho museum, well-decorated but in an ugly storefront, is worth a visit if you also plan to make paper, but if you're just coming to poke around, the NT100 admission is a bit steep (NT180 for admission and papermaking). They do have a shop stocking gorgeous, high-quality papers that are also artistic, but the Ever Prosperous store a few doors down has a much larger selection. If you are in the market for handmade paper in general it's worth checking out both so you can see all of what's available.

Some photos from the Su Ho museum, which I took before I realized that photography is prohibited (oops, but at least I didn't use flash):

Paper...things...displayed artistically.

From an exhibit of black ink drawings of creepy stuff on handmade thick paper. It has a very Edward Gory-esque name, which fits the photos as you can see. It's running through September 21.

This sculpture of a woman is made entirely out of paper - her face, headdress and clothes. Cool!