I’m doing something I don’t normally do and posting on the weekend to show off a slideshow I made of my time in Cambodia, with special emphasis made on ancient Khmer culture and the ruins of Angkor Archaeological Park.
The music in this slideshow comes from a recording made by Tara Alan and Tyler Kellen. They recorded a group of landmine victims playing traditional Cambodian music for their blog about bicycling around the world, Going Slowly. While they seem to be back according to their posts, you can get a lot of insight about world travel through their ginormous website. They were nice enough to allow me to use their recording. Remember, you can buy CDs of this music from the musicians themselves, who frequent areas around the temples.
I recommend seeing this video at full screen and if possible, at 1080p quality, the highest available.
I’ve decided to create another slideshow – this time in two parts to shorten the length to about two minutes. While I’m finished with both, I’ve only posted the first on Youtube so far and it can be seen below.
The theme I’m going for here is “Ilha Formosa – Taiwan Today” due to the very general nature of these photos. The first video includes some more traditional scenes while the second video will have a modern twist. Make sure to watch at 720p or 1080p HD quality and at full-screen to get the full impact.
Next week is the beginning of Chinese New Year, and it seems like things are already winding down. I’m planning on showing some family members around and am looking forward to exploring southern Taiwan. In addition, we’ll be taking part in New Year’s festivities, so it’ll be a loud week, if anything!
These were taken while walking around a year-end celebration in the community. Lots of reds here, as you’d expect!
One of the more difficult types of photos to take is the ever cool looking long exposure. Usually done at night, these are made by setting the Aperture to a high number (my lens goes to f-stop 22) and holding the shutter open on “bulb” mode. If you hold it too long, and it’s bleached out. Too little, and it’s too dark. Oh – and don’t wobble it… most people do this with a tripod and remote trigger.
These photos are some pictures of traffic at dusk using this method. I was actually very happy with this set because it’s the first time I’ve gotten this moving traffic in this way. I’m going to have to try more techniques, like the black card – which should let me keep the shutter open longer and get more movement without bleaching things out.
This set of photos looks like it could have been taken in the US – a chapel on the campus of a private Methodist-founded college in Taichung by the name of Tunghai University. Taichung is Taiwan’s third largest city and geographically in the center of the country… its name “台中” actually including the chracters for “middle of Taiwan.”*
All photos are HDR except for the last which is made with a single exposure. Oh, and if you haven’t noticed, I changed the layout and theme of this site – let me know if you do/don’t hate it if you want. I went with the black background because this oddly became a photo blog – something I never planned on starting.
*Lots of Taiwanese cities are like this. 台北 (Taipei) simply means “north of Taiwan.” The city I live in, 竹北 (Jhubei or Zhubei) refers to being “north of bamboo.” Just south of 竹北 is 新竹, or Hsinchu. The “竹” character refers to the bamboo which I’m guessing used to be in the area while, if you haven’t noticed, 北 means “north.”
While I have already made a post about the ShiDa Night Market, I was recently excited to visit a market here in Jhubei which is obviously easier to get to, still very large, and occurs weekly. As I said before, night markets are pretty common here in Taiwan, and you can expect some very good food to go along with your visit.
Above, we have some common scenes: crowds and food. Both of these are huge things to contend with… and when I mean “content with” food, I mean that you have to choose. One of the choices, below, is known as Chou Dofu, or “Stinky” Tofu (臭豆腐). 臭豆腐 is a form of tofu which is first fermented – so you can imagine it lives up to its name of being “stinky.” I had the chance to try this in Houston and hated it as mine smelled and TASTED like feet, and was quite apprehensive to try it again here in Taiwan. I certainly smelled it… Yuling wasn’t fooling me extremely well when she tried to feed it to me as I finished off my barbeque corn. I told myself, though, that I’d give it another go, grabbed it with my chopsticks… and…
…it wasn’t too bad, actually! I even like it more than the Taiwanese “kimchi” or cabbage, which goes pretty well with it… if you ever eat it, though, do yourself a favor and DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT read the Wikipedia article on how it’s made before you do. I thought about this while eating it, and it almost ended very, very poorly. I can at least add this to the pig intestine, duck blood, chicken feet, chicken gizzard, and beef tongue that I’ve had so far… and with the exception of that tofu, I apologize to any vegetarians out there. Just make sure you hang around the Buddhist monasteries for food if you come to Taiwan… everyone else is a definite carnivore here.
Anyway, on to some more photos…
Again, a reminder: sometimes photos are heavily cropped to make them more interesting – to see this photo, just click on it and you’ll see a larger size in Flickr.
So the above photo is representative of some of the carnival-style games they had. In the front of the rows, you’ll see some basic items… snacks, soda, whatever. If you can throw a ring around it, you’ve got it. Further back? Beer bottles. With beer. A little bit more? A full bottle of whiskey. Hmmm.
…gotta love the flavored corn. I tried my BBQ corn at a different stall, but will be visiting this one in the future.
…and another stall cooking stinky tofu on skewers with cabbage…
On the second day of our Hong Kong trip, we took a walk around the city as I searched high and low for a Nikkor 70-300mm lens, the second of my collection since purchasing my DSLR.
While I didn’t get the lens at first, we did get to tour the Lower Manhattan-esque Central District of Hong Kong. I honestly wasn’t enthralled as other than the fact that I was walking up steep hills and sharing narrow sidewalks, it felt as if I’d seen it all before. However, we did get to a series of ridiculously long escalators, which took us most of the way up the mountain. Closer to the top, we eventually encountered the “Peak” cable trolley – which took us to the top of the city for a spectacular view. Photos below.
The two above photos show our trolley on the way up (first photo) and the way down. You can see the grade on this hill – it was actually very steep… I tried not to think about that too much…
…an HDR of a lion “guarding” the city…
…and the city itself, with a regular single exposure. Too bad it was a dreary day, as it didn’t help my lighting at all…
Last night, I was having dinner with my girlfriend’s family in the older section of Jhubei.
As I mentioned before, many of these Taiwanese cities tend to have “older” and “newer” sections – for a quick comparison, you’ll find most temples and “older” markets on their side of town… the type of market, that is, where your chicken is still alive when you arrive and definitely not when you leave. The newer section of Jhubei on the other hand boasts some very nice restaurants, grocery stores, and mostly everything else to keep you from having to go across the river to Hsinchu too much.
Many young people and to be honest, foreigners (like me) live in the new sections of these cities. We have our conveniences which, while not absent from the other side of town, are a bit easier to adjust to when moving from a foreign country. There still might be some aspects of culture over here which are impossible to ignore – for example, the firecrackers I’ve heard going off as one of the many new buildings was opening near my apartment complex – but it is much different than just a few kilometers away (yes, I’m trying to convert myself to the metric system at least while I’m here…)
The old section on the other hand, has character. I’ll get to that later… back to the dinner.
So there we were, eating the whole chicken her mom just got, along with the other piles of delicious food in which we were indulging. I find my communication with the family has improved, in spite of not speaking much Chinese – though the first thing I had to etch into my brain was “Hao bao! Hao bao!” – which translates to saying that I am too full to eat any more… along with “Hao shih” – meaning that the food is very delicious. Don’t want to offend.
Partway through my third bowl of food – this time, noodles with some soybean curd – we hear the sound of suonas coming from down the street. If you haven’t heard these instruments before, I’ll ask you to go ahead and give this Youtube video a try:
Partway through, she uses a reed in her teeth to make the sound sans instrument – I don’t think this happened – but at least his clip gives you an idea of the unmistakable sound they make. Check this Wikipedia article for more background information…
So I hear these instruments coming from down the street, and all playing traditional temple music. Along with them, comes this brightly-lit… thing… seen through the blinding on the house’s large sliding doors. I could only hear the increasing volume of the music and see this large bright thing move slowly through the street.
Yuling’s mom says that this could be a funeral procession – keep the doors closed! Evil spirits might come through.
Of course, her curious nature just kind of did away with that – she opens the door five haunting minutes later and we see that it’s not a funeral, but something put on by the local temple… the suonas and drums and gongs and cymbals are deafening by this point, so I have to say I was sort of feeling uneasy until she actually opened the door and gave the “all clear.”
The procession stopped nearby because there is a small local altar – which is dwarfed by any other Chinese temple. It’s set up to provide security for the neighborhood and the locals take care of it just as it’s an extension of their own property. This procession, which included mobile altars and even some walking effigies of gods being marched through the streets, was greeting the local god on the way to the final destination.
The festival itself ended up at the local main temple. Yuling and I hopped on a scooter as she went through some back alleys to beat the procession (and the traffic it caused as no streets were closed – it just kind of meandered through multitudes of scooters and cars…) to the temple itself where we were able to see a fireworks/firecracker/dancing spectacle. Fascinating stuff, indeed.
This probably relates in some way to ghost month – which comes up next week. Last night, the gods were allowed to wander through the streets that night and they were asked to return “home” to the local main temple. During ghost month, it is believed that the spirits will be wandering the streets as they are let out of heaven and hell – so it is imperative for people to be careful as not to join them upon their return…
There are bad times to forget your camera.
This would be one of them – something that a Westerner probably wouldn’t experience even IF he/she was living in Taiwan. The good news is that I did have the camera… I took about 450 photos, of which I used about 50 of them due to softness and low light issues… still not bad at all. See below for some, and be sure to click on the Flickr site to see the rest of the set.
The above photo is a Chinese god who I currently forget the name of – he was on a mobile altar of sorts. Right underneath him and blocking out the people carrying the altar is a moving car. Interestingly, this parade went through some pretty busy streets that were never closed off. They just kind of meandered through traffic.
Yuling was awesome enough to get me to the temple far in advance of the traveling festival so I could get more shots. While waiting, I noticed some photographers with DSLRs going in and joined them in getting some shots of the complex.
Divination stones – blocks of wood meant to give the worshiper a way to ask the gods questions and get a response. If the stones are thrown in a certain way and end up facing in one direction, it could mean that the prayer has been answered. These were already lined up to take this shot – so convenient!
This is the “big multicolored thing” that I had seen moving by the house. It was quite impending and lit up much of the room I was in as the music zoned out everything else. This is a special altar for some sort of special god with which I am not familiar…
A man prepares firecrackers at the temple. I had first seen firecrackers like this on public display at a Houston, TX Chinese New Year festival. The fire warden was there. No fire warden – or safety officers – or yellow things to tell you to stay away here… needless to say, I was extra careful.
This fire was probably being kept up by some sort of Taoist prayer sheets – and played an important role in the ceremony at the temple gate. The gods would walk over it as part of the ceremony… and I kept a serious eye on it with all of the fireworks nearby… to make matters worse, the night grew windier as the procession came to the temple.
At first I thought this truck was out-of-place, sitting in front of the temple… it was carrying musicians, I soon realized.
These gods are actually around to represent evil, interestingly enough. They are to be respected and reverred – but not necessarily worshiped…
…and the suonas! They were definitely heard…
I was told that this dancer represented a man who was being attacked by an evil spirit – as he swayed to and fro, you could see this in his steps. Apparently, the person being attacked was still protected by the gods… it would be interesting to learn more about what this represents.
Aftermath: the firecracker litter and ash created a really… colorful… area. I was careful when taking this as to make sure the firecrackers had all been expended first… thankfully they had.
The last day of Taipei was spent going to one of the main cultural and political sites of the city, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. I had half-expected Falun Gong protesters as with Taipei 101 and pro-Tibet people as at the National Palace Museum, but I wonder if the revered sanctity of this place for Taiwanese keeps that from happening. Part of the experience is seeing a changing of the guard ceremony, much like we have in the US at Washington DC’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Some HDR is mixed in with the following. Click on each for a full-sized photo through Flickr.
(Notice the sweat on the guard’s face – the weather was pushing 100 degrees F/38 C)
The Taipei 101 visit was something I had been looking forward to since my time in the States, so it was worth braving the crowds of tourists from all over to get in and see the observation deck. Lucky for us, we arrived just in front of a massive Chinese tour group, so we were able to move along in line as my boredom was quelled by my trusty iPhone.
Taipei 101 – named as such because it’s in Taipei and has 101 stories – was the tallest building in the world until early this year, when Burj Khalifa in Dubai opened. Visitors who see the Taipei skyline might think that the city has no tall office buildings because they are simply dwarfed by the massive structure.
Unfortunately for us, we visited on a pretty hazy day, though there was some glimmer of sunlight during the evening’s sunset. I hope to go back to Taipei in the not-too-distant-future to get some shots of this in the skyline at night. I’m sure it’s amazing.
The above is Taipei 101 in the early evening. It’s a 3-exposure HDR as is the following picture…
…which was taken inside the smaller building’s mall. Anyone up for some luxury shopping?
…this HDR shows that glimmer of sunlight we had. Conveniently in the west as well is a mountain peak and river. You’ll want to click on that photo for the full-size image in Flickr…
The above photo is another HDR (this location lent itself very well to multiple exposures!) of the winddamper. Located in the middle of the building near the top, it is a giant counterweight meant to, well, damper the wind. The effects are noticed – if you go near the windows, you will sway a little bit… but not near this behemoth.
Another HDR taken in a park just outside the mall. I’m thinking that this would be a cool photo if the ground were wet and the lights were reflecting more…
Looking up again… another 3-exposure HDR. Though the following photo didn’t need this treatment…
…and another view from the top. I’ll attribute the softness of this HDR to the fact that it was unfortunately taken through the window of the indoor observation deck.
…and to finish off, a photo of the outdoor deck. The man in blue is a security guard – probably making sure we have no jumpers. The giant cage was good as it doesn’t interfere with your photos (a lens fits right through) and it seems much more effective than the Rockefeller Center’s plexiglass.
