I was going through some boxes of slides the other day and decided I should finally put them in archival sleeves. As I was going through them I ran across a set I took while I was visiting Taiwan way back in 1994. I was there with my wife, who is a native of Taiwan, and our daughter -- who was 2 years old at the time. We were visiting my wife's family, as well as seeing the sights. Unfortunately, we decided to visit during the Chinese New Year festivities, which occurred in early February in 1994. The weather was miserable. Cold, wet, and rainy. For the two weeks I was there, I saw the sun maybe once or twice. So unfortunately almost all of my slides taken outdoors reflect the rather dreary overcast. On the positive side, shadows are soft, at least.
Sorry, some of the slides are rather dusty. I could have cleaned them better.
So here is a portion of the images I took. I have a selection of almost twenty. I'll distribute them across a couple of posts. The camera used was an EOS 650 I borrowed from my good friend, Silvio Bello, of Silvio's Photoworks. At the time, my EOS lens selection was limited. I bought a Tamron 24-70 aspherical right before the trip and most of the images were taken with that lens. It proved to be a great walking around lens for the confines of the Taipei area. All slides were Fujichrome 100.
Taiwan's National Museum, nestled into the hills on the eastern edge of Taipei, is pretty much a must-see visit. Working from 22-year-olld memories, I can recall seeing many pieces of exquisite art and carvings, and many, many steps to get there. It's a long walk, just to get to the front doors.
A view of some of the steps, my wife, daughter, and my mother-in-law on the right.
And it's still a long walk:
A koi pond and rock garden somewhere in Taipei. Sorry, don't remember exactly where anymore.
And that's about the extent of the touristy pics I took. Well, there may be a few more, but that's all I've scanned for now. The rest are pretty much pics of life in ordinary Taipei. I mean, Taipei is like any other international city. It's got its sleek sky scrapers and glitzy shopping areas and very nice parts of town. But then, like all other international cities, it has the parts where most people live and go about their lives. It was these places I was interested in.
---------- Post added 05-02-16 at 12:55 PM ----------
Hrm . . that above image got posted too soon.
So as I was stating above, I was after finding about ordinary life in Taipei. At one point, I was trying to find my way to the river that was close to my mother-in-law's apartment. I ended up walking into what I suspect was part of the abode of one of the fisher folk there.
Some of the fisher folk's housing and their boats.
---------- Post added 05-02-16 at 01:26 PM ----------
I liked visiting the open-air shopping areas. Some (most) of them had sidewalks that also doubled as streets for the motorcycle and scooter traffic.
A more typical city street
As you get away from the busy streets into some of the more quiet housing areas, often you'll run across places where it just looks like the houses have sort of grown together somehow.
In the neighborhood where my mother-in-law's apartment was, there would be four or five vendors who drove trucks up and down the streets, plying their wares, each selling rather specific items. Here's a truck that sold various food odds and ends. My wife, in the green, is examining some tidbit, with my daughter clinging close.
Each of these trucks had music they would play over loudspeakers as they drove through the neighborhoods. I got to where I knew which truck was coming based on the music I heard playing. The "stinky tofu" truck was the one that played the coolest tunes, I thought, but I didn't even want to get close to that truck because of the smell.
The fresh seafood venders would lay out their offerings in laundry baskets. Seeing baskets full of live crabs was a very common sight. Whenever my daughter would spot one, she couldn't resist playing with the crabs. Fortunately, the vendors would tie the claws closed with bamboo leaves.