After one day city explornation in Kaohsiung, I met my parents at our family house in Chiao tao where my father grew up. The uncle Frank still lived there and he invited my parents visit there because it’s a flower festival elected in that week. The winter is usually the best reason to visit the southern Taiwan. Before they had this trip, it rains more than 10 days in Keelung. However, it’s sunshine everywhere in Southern Taiwan and people only wear T shirt in the street. It’s really worthy to drive all the way to southern Taiwan to enjoy their sunshire if you’re tired of the gray sky and glooming weather.
The sunshine in Southern taiwan is beautiful
10 years ago, the sugar cane is everywhere in this village. However, the labor cost is too high to grow the sugar cane to make the sugar, now. When we were young, biting sugar cane is the common memories of all the kids in Taiwan. People sits outside of the house, chewing the sugar cane and chat. Before the computer era, it’s the major entertainment in the evening when we were in Southern Taiwan. Now, you still can buy the sugar cane to chew at home. However, chewing sugar cane at home alone, it lost one major flavor you can’t specific said. Everything changes, Chiao-tao, too. They don’t grow sugar cane but economic crops like fruits or organic vegetables. Everyone needs a break. The land, too. To develop the tour industry, they grow the flowers during the fallow season. That’s those beautiful flower fields come from. They planned to keep those flower fields until the chinese new year. After the chinese new year, those flowers will become the nature fertilizer to help our farmer grow the good fruits or vegetables in the upcoming year.
Since they called it a “Festival”, it definitely would have many programs go with those beautiful flowers. We went to an elementary school. There are few performances for a “city bumpkin” like me. After seeing their performances, it’s hard to say who is the lucky kids in Taiwan. In Northern Taiwan, yon can have any kind of class which you can find in the world. Violin, painting, language, kung-fu or brain development….. At the same time in Southern Taiwan, they would like to spend more time on passing down the traditional generation after generation. If you want me to compare the kids in the city and the one in the countryside, I will say they’re proud of different things. The city kid is proud of himself of knowing one more new technology his classmate doesn’t know. The kid in the countryside is proud of himself of knowing one more traditional his classmate doesn’t know. Both are right, it just depends on which side you stand.
The kids play the traditional wedding
The first performance they showed us is to move a bamboo house. Two generations ago (Around 50 years ago), the taiwanese are generally poor. They don’t have too much money to build up a house made by concrete. The economic and convenient way is to build up a bamboo house. The bamboo is like the bones of a house. If you don’t have the money , you can just cover thatch to be a simple house to live. Once you have money, you can cover by clay or tiles to make it prettier or stronger. According to what father said : the family house were still a bamboo house when they just got married. There is a house next to our family house which is made by bamboo. They’re happy when they saw this old style houses and spent lots of time on taking about its history. I think it recalled some memories when they were young.
The bamboo constructed house
The bamboo made house next to our family house
The second performance is the traditional wedding. It’s performanced by many elementary school students. I think no one cares about if the traditional wedding really runs this way. It’s just too cute to see many kids perform a traditional wedding. They also show a fruit of a planet to create many art pieces. Not only the fruit can becomes an art pieces. They also taught you how to make a straw rope.
The art piece made by dry fruit
Talking about the delicious food in Chiao Tao, I have to mention an unique ice cream called “The Yeast ice cream with red bean paste”. I only find three places in Taiwan can have this ice cream and the one in Chiao Tao is the original and the most classical one. You can tell how it made by the name. It sounds strange but the ice cream store becomes a “must go” tour point every time we went back home. The place called the “Kaohsiung sugar cane factory” where is the Kaohsiung sugar cane museum located. The Kaohsiung subway system opened a station for this place. I can’t say everyone comes here for only eating this yummy ice cream but no one go without trying one.
The yeast ice cream with red bean paste
We enjoy lots of great food this trip especially the BBQ chicken. In china, they called the chicken cooked by the style shown below “the beggar’s chicken”. In Taiwan, we called it “the chicken in kiln”. First, they will use the bricks or rocks to make a kiln. Afterward, put some coals or burning rocks to make the kiln hot. Then, putting the chicken in and covered the whole kiln. You will have a great BBQ chicken after a while. I saw few time when I was a kid. It takes time which is the most expensive stuff in this modern era to make one. Therefore, they usually baked it in a big oven like the restaurant we went, now. The taste is also good but saved lots of time. (Well, less pleasure of making a kiln you can say) We finished the whole chicken in a short time. For a gourmet family like us, I think it’s the best ending of this trip.
The chicken is ready
For more photos, please see the link below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orpheuslin/sets/72157622911331542/
