Ceramics

I can't complain, the postdocs group plan something to do almost every other week. Two weeks ago, as part of the farewell of Jinhua, a chinese postdoc who was returning back home a few days later, we went to Yngge, a city about 20 minutes by train from Taipei, which has a museum of ceramics, and later to SanShian, a city next to it, known by an old shopping street built at the beginning of the 20th century, lined with two-floor red-brick buildings, similar to those of the 19th century factories.

The museum of ceramics was good. It has the typical modern style of this kind of museums, and shows a permanent exhibition of the evolution of ceramics in Taiwan since the aboriginal time to the space age.

There are many curious things about the different styles of making bricks, tiles, bowls and all that stuff, with many mixed influences, chinese, japanese, western. There was also a temporary exhibition of installations and other more modern ceramics, with the typical modern aesthetics, but also with very atractice objects.


We took a bus from there, the price of which was included in the ticket, and went to SanShian, where we visited the Old Street,

which is full of shops selling food, obviously, clothes, handicraft objects, etc. This region was famous for the indigo dyes and the industrialists competed in building the more impressive shop to attract clients. Now, they are shops. Some sell small croissants with viking-looking horns, and some top them off with ice cream.


Later, we visited the temple at the end of the street, which is fairly old for Taiwan, more than 200 years and quite large. And beautiful. I could see how many people were making votive offerings to the gods, lightning incense sticks, leaving fruit and food at the altar, etc. Quite busy!.


We had the farewell dinner when we came back to Taiwan. A new indian postdoc, Kanak, joined us there. He had been only three days in Taiwan and I could finally get off me the "newbie" label. What a character!. He quickly connected with several japanese because of their mutual love for beer. As many other indians, he laughs just about everything. I foresee funny stories ahead.


So, it was a very funny and tiring day.