Captured moments, frozen memories, digital expressions of my interpretation of the world we live in. This is a compilation of my attempts, at looking into things, that people usually only look at...
Taipei 101, once the tallest building in the world, stood upright next to Taipei City Hall. Look closely and you can see various traditional Chinese designs incorporated to the exterior of the building. We chose to admire it from afar, a plaza in front of the City Hall proved a good spot, and out came the camera.
Get any closer to the skyscraper and you will find it hard to compose its whole grandeur design into a single photo.
It is quite an iconic building in the sense that by showing only parts of building, it can be easily identified.
We then took a bus ride around the city center and visited the National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and subsequently the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall located around the Liberty Square.
Both memorials featured changing of the guards every hour and inside each, a giant statue of the revered national leaders. The political arena of Taiwan is an interesting one and we spent hours looking up for information about the formation of the republic and the lives of these two leaders.
The memorial hall forms one side of the Liberty Square, with the National Theater and Concert Hall forming the other two.
National Theater located in Liberty Square follows the traditional Chinese architecture similar to the ones in the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. An untrained eye could easily mistaken the two. We didn't linger long in the square as we were in a hurry to the bridal studio for selection of our photos for the final printout. Yays..
Direct translation of 花海 would be "Sea of Flowers", however the official English name for the farm is "Blooming Oasis". This intends to portray more, bringing into mind an oasis of flowers in the middle of the valley of plain greenness and it did the flower farm justice.
The flower farm had grown in popularity, thanks to various Taiwanese drama shot in the farm and the bridal photo shoot industry, which salivates at the multitude of colours in a single location.
We however chose to visit this place on our own instead of with the bridal photo crew, they can bring us to better locations around the city, we thought to ourselves.
We spent about 90 minutes in the flower farm, had great fun posing for the camera, with timed shutters and scrambling into position after the timer was started. There were a lot of hit and miss with this method, however, it was fun, nevertheless. Looking at the failed attempts, the number of trials we had to take, before the final one was accepted, we could relive the moment at that time.
Stopping by the bus stand, we took the long way around to Jay Chou's school and shooting location for the movie "Secret", Tamkang High School located in a quiet alley in Danshui, a district north of Taipei.
We hesitated a while before entering, only after being encouraged by one of the parents by the gate. Apparently the high school was open for public, as long as they abide to certain visitor rules.
We were thrilled to find ourselves inside the school in front of the the iconic facade of the main building, which was prominently shown throughout the movie. Students were seen going by their normal school lives and oblivious to our presence, they must had received numerous visitors the likes of us.
Located next to the high school was Aletheia University. We found it amusing to find buildings with European architectures in Danshui. Apparently Danshui is one of the first few ports opened to foreign missionaries and was the entry point to Taiwan. During that time, this island was known as "Formosa", Portuguese for the term, beautiful.
We were glad that we gained entry into the school, various scenes of the movie flashed before our eyes as we walked along the corridors, past the iconic arcs and past students in uniforms, not unlike those in the movie.
Another famous landmark in Danshui is the Lover Bridge around Fisherman's Wharf. Upon nightfall the bridge was illuminated by rainbow coloured lights on both sides of the banks. It was very windy that evening and we cut short our visit around that area, only to return to Danshui the next day.
