Yingge

Had another good weekend in Taipei. I spent Friday night hanging out with friends and then on Saturday I finally made to Yingge, a small town about a half hour south of Taipei known for its ceramics. First stop was the ceramics museum, one of the coolest buildings in Taiwan. While most buildings in Taiwan are ugly concrete blocks, the museum is a beautifully airy and open combination of wood, steel, concrete, glass, and water. In addition to the museum, there is also a large sculpture park and a couple of underground galleries on the park grounds. I think it's a place worth visiting if you're ever in Taiwan.

After wandering through the museum, my friend Jessie and I headed to the ceramics old street to check out the teapots as a teapot is the one thing I wanted to bring back from Taiwan. There were several shops selling teapots of various quality, but we eventually found one that had a nice selection of small handmade pots and cups. After spending over an hour and a half in that one shop comparing teapots, picking out cups, tea tasting, and getting instructions on the proper way to care for the teapots and make tea, we each left with a pot and two little cups. While most people in the US drop a tea bag in boiling water and call it good, tea preparation and drinking is an art in Taiwan and was a cool of the shop owner to spend so much time with us explaining everything. It's was also good that Jessie is Taiwanese so she translated everything for me as we went. Thank goodness for local friends. After we made our purchases, the shop owner even drove us back to the train station. Gotta love that kind of customer service.

When I got back to my apartment, some teenage boy and I have never seen before followed me into the building and asked me to help him up the stairs because something was wrong with his foot. He seemed nervous and I was wondering if he was going to try to steal my purse or my purchases. Decided I would help him out, but if he tried to steal the teapot I just spent an intensive hour and a half picking out I was prepared to kick his ass. But we made it up the stairs without incident and my teapot is safely packed and awaiting the trip back to the US.