Sanzhi Day Trip II: Li Tianlu Puppetry Museum

Continued from this post


The Li Tian-lu Taiwanese Puppetry Museum (李天祿布袋戲文物館) in Sanzhi is worth a visit for anyone interested in Taiwanese culture, history, Japanese occupation, film or puppetry. Li was a famous puppet master who was also a principal character in the well-known Taiwanese movie "The City of Sadness", was involved in Japanese propaganda, was an international puppeteering champion (so says his museum) and remains internationally famous for those in the know. 

We happened to be in the area and while I'm more enthusiastic about Taiwanese opera than puppetry, it's still an item of cultural importance and a visit is very worthwhile - if only to look at the many finely crafted puppets and costumes on display.

This is a puppet portrayal of Dr. Mackay - seems fairly accurate to me. But...

C'mon, is this a caricature of a wealthy late 19th/early 20th century white guy or what?

Apparently this is what the master of puppet-making who created this thought white women looked like.
Okaaaay...

A "mosquito god" puppet

Li Tian-lu himself

Admission to the museum is NT70 (no student discount) and they're closed by 5pm. Li's actual residence is across the street. The museum itself is in a lovely old building that I personally found architecturally interesting. There is a small souvenir shop including a place where kids can DIY their own puppet for NT$80-100- or you can buy one to take home and DIY - and both high and low end puppets are on sale, ranging from NT$300 (for a kid who will just destroy it) to NT$4900 (for the connoisseur). There's also a small coffeeshop area. If you're OK with going uphill it's walkable from the more urban part of Sanzhi, but I'd recommend, if you don't have your own transport - which I rarely do! - to grab a cab up here and walk back down. Not far down the hill I spotted a bus stop but didn't have the opportunity to note which buses stopped here, when the service ran and how often.


The area around the museum is a hillside village with a very artsy feel and many small restaurants and coffeeshops. A lot of the small houses and apartments are for rent - you could totally chuck it all and become an artist if you were of a mind!

We got pizza at a "Mediterranean style" place called Pizza Olmo. I wouldn't call it "great" - not the best pizza I've had - but it wasn't bad at all, for boondocks-of-Taiwan pizza. The cheese passed muster and there was no weird mayonnaise, and only nominal corn. I recommend the wild mushroom basil or garlic bacon if you eat here. There are some good views down to the ocean and it's a nice place to hang out with friends. Closer to the museum is a pottery shop and classy coffeeshop with "French desserts" that I would like to check out sometime called Cypress29.

Dude, don't ask questions you don't want answers to.

This area has an artsy feel and is a lovely place to hang out and walk around for awhile

I call this very unfriendly cat "Cuddlemuffins".
It tried to bite my sister.

View from Pizzeria Olmo

We caught a bus back to Danshui at about 7pm, and were home by 9. All in all, a not-too-taxing day trip after a stressful time that allowed us to get out of the city, breathe some fresh air, spend minimal cash and enjoy the sunshine while seeing something new. Worth it for the expat who wants to go up to the coast but has grown tired of the usual spots and isn't interested in bumming around Danshui yet again.

Sanzhi Day Trip Part I: Dingshan Shell Temple and Lee Denghui's Birthplace

Not feeling like exerting ourselves too much (it's been a stressful few weeks) but wanting badly to get out of Taipei City on a sunny weekend day - those are rare enough as it is - we took a fun and relaxing day trip to Sanzhi (三芝) on the northeast coast. Until today I'd known it mainly as the place that my Taiwanese biking friends like to go (I don't bike but I have a few local friends and acquaintances who are really into it) for the countryside outside of town and the cherry blossoms that don't attract as many crowds as the ones closer to Yangmingshan.

It does, however, have plenty to entertain the non-biking day-tripper, and has some good places to bike if you're into that sort of thing. Unfortunately, you need your own transportation to get around most of the most interesting parts, or do what we did and go as a group of 4 and arrange a taxi (NT$500 for the shell temple and puppetry museum; pay the driver a bit more if you want to stroll around the lovely village where the puppetry museum is located and eat or have coffee there). With 4 people this is a pretty reasonable price for chartered transportation. I'll pay NT$200 to not have to drive! 

In this post I'll post a few pictures from Lee Denghui's (or Teng-hui if you wish) birthplace and the shell temple, and later on I'll post a few from the puppetry museum and surrounding artsy village.

Let's face it, the most developed/urbanized part of town is kind of bland and ugly, but most buses from Danshui - leaving every 20 minutes - will take you to the "visitor's center and gallery" from where you can arrange a taxi. The gallery isn't much but Lee Denghui's birthplace - an old three-sided farmhouse style brick building - is out back and worth a quick look.

My sister outside Lee Denghui's birthplace

The area around the old house is not as well-maintained and has some current residents, along with their dog (above) and pants (below).

The Shell Temple (頂山寺) is up a winding hairpin-laden mountain road and attracts scores of local daytrippers. The outside is gorgeous, the inside is tacky, but as temples go it's quite unique. I'd put it up there in the "Huh, Taiwan's full of temples but I ain't seen THIS before" category with the Keelung Fairy Cave Temple, Caotun's weird medicine gourd temple and the crazy gold gate at Donggang's Donglong Temple.

The road up is extremely steep and not really one I'd recommend trying on foot or on bike if you aren't very fit, but if you can get a ride up there it would be a perfectly fine walk down, with lovely farmland scenery and views out to the ocean on the way down. Bring water and a hat. Or, if you have your own transportation, make it a leisurely drive - you may want to stop and take short walks to enjoy the scenery. It's easy to get carsick - I did - so bring some Green Oil, White Flower Oil or Tiger Balm.

The best way to introduce it is to show you the best of my (iPhone) pictures - so here you go:

Basic provisions are available at the temple (some sold as offerings, some you can buy to eat or drink), and to enter the back corridor you have to pray (just grab some incense, light it and bow a few times in front of the altar before sticking the incense in the pot behind you - no biggie). There are stores on either side, one selling religious items and the other selling super tacky - but also kind of super fun - "handmade" shell souvenirs. I totally bought a soap dish, because I needed a soap dish.

From there you can head down to the puppetry museum and artsy village area - which I'll post about in an hour or two.

Continue reading here