Visit to Beijing

I am late. Again. It looks like I am losing some good habits. But, as I promised a few weeks, or months, ago, something about my visit to Beijing in mid-September.

It was a trip purely for pleasure, of course. I took a direct flight from Taipei to Beijing, now that it is possible. It might be a little bit more expensive than flying through Macao or Hong Kong, but you get there in only three hours. If the trip is only for three days, as in my case, it is an important factor in the decision.

I arrived to the new Terminal 3, another monster in the middle of nowhere —some megalomaniac countries have this obsession—, finished for the olympic games. I was picked up there and we headed back to Taipei in a taxi. My first impression of Beijing were concrete towers and freeways everywhere under a grey sky. Fortunately, I had my own Sun next to me, so to speak.

After lunch,

and experiencing my first bus trip —with one guy collecting money inside if you did not have the magnetic car, a curious mix of old and new times— we went to the Summer Palace.

It was the summer residence of the emperors, where they escaped from the royal court. Now, it is a very large and beautiful public park.


With the old buildings in a reasonable good state, even if there are signs of old destructions in some of them, and with magnificent forests and lakes.



A very nice place that we peacefully toured as the afternoon was slowly dying away. After so much time in Taipei, the temperature difference was almost shocking.


On our return to the city, with a mix-up of bus stops included, I had a first experience of the huge amount of people on the streets, and the accompanying chaos, and a very pleasant night taxi trip back home looking at the very modern-looking buildings along the way. A promising first day.

(There will be more)

Three days

Back from Beijing. A little sad and shaken, as expected, but happy too, with many good memories to cherish. Three intense and exhausting days, doing many things that I will tell about as soon as I can.

And my company? As you can guess, excellent and lovely. Very special.

NNW

Life has a knack for taking very curious turns. A little more than three months ago, I could say the day, hour and the place exactly, I denied I could ever do what I am about to do. I was not believed, of course, but I deeply truly believed it. After all the things that have happened, and because life goes on and I refuse to chase ghosts or negative people, I am about to cross the South China Sea again, to visit someone very special to me and to enjoy (hopefully) three very nice days.

Life is always surprising, especially when after the rain, the Sun comes out again.

Kenting

It is almost three months ago that I went to Kenting, for the annual meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Republic of China. I had a few exhausting days before going, sleeping not too much finishing things, but also there, with the trip and the stay, still not much sleep joined by some toothache. Maybe that is the reason why I never put up any pictures when I came back.

We did not really had much time to do any sightseeing, during the day, apart from visiting the National Museum of Marine Biology, which was in the same building where we had the meeting in Pingtung. Amazing, with rays, sharks, all kinds of jellyfish, a whale shark, all kinds of little (or not so little) fish, marine animals and plants






and some penguins too.

Kenting, which I saw more at night than during the day, is located at the southern tip of Taiwan and it resembles so many touristical coastal locations, with lots of half-naked people walking in the streets, full of shops and stalls decorated with shiny lights and deafening music. One night, though, I could see parts of the southern night sky that I had never seen before. A foreboding night maybe. Now, after all that has happened, I cannot escape an ambivalent feeling when I recall those days.

Taroko

Shortly after arriving to Taiwan, somebody told me that if I had to visit some place in the island, I had to go to Taroko Gorge, which is considered the crown jewel of the natural parks of the country. But more than a year has gone by before I could go. Finally, last weekend, I went there with two riends of mine that are visiting me and other post-docs of the IAA.

We left early in the morning from Taipei in a train that took us to Hualien, where a guide picked us up and went with us for most of Saturday and Sunday. Taroko is a gorge with a narrow river that runs along at the bottom, between very high walls, most of them covered in green.


The rocks are mostly marble and there are many waterfalls


It is certainly a very beautiful place, with innumerable trails to walk on. We did some of the most typical ones, I guess, as the Tunnel of Nine Turns,


where we had to wear a helmet due to the risk of falling rocks —as I could tell when a couple of small size rocks fell 5-10 meters from me; a walk along the Baiyang Trail, and all its many tunnels,


until we reached a spectacular waterfall, maybe not because of its height, but because of the amount of water,

even if we could see two waterfalls more from there;

an illegal swim in the Shakadang Trail


and crossing hanging bridges.

On Sunday afternoon, we ended up in the beach, where we went for a short swim in the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean.

The weather was fairly good most of the time, except in the evening of both days, and despite the heat, I had a good time. Of course, we also could see many small critters


(many big spiders, too)

and little flowers or colourful leaves in the park, which is always nice.





It looks as if I was re-connecting with nature, uh?

Hiking

When black clouds gather inside my head, a way out is to meet some friends around a table and spend some time to see if the conversation, jokes or serious stuff manage to cheer me up and I end up walking out with a lively step and flying again over my worries. Besides, if they also ask me if I want to go hiking on the following day, the best thing to do is to say yes.

So, Saturday morning, I met with some other post-docs met at the Taipei Main Station, took the MRT to Beitou, then a taxi to Zhuzihu (Bamboo Lake, even if there is no lake and few bamboo trees) to hike in the Yangmingshan National Park, north of Taipei.

As I have probably said more than once, Taipei is surrounded by mountains, around 1000 m high, and Yangmingshan is supposed to be one of the more beautiful places. I had wanted to go for months, but I only did it for the first time yesterday. It was a wonderful sunny day, as many of previous ones,

which meant that it was very hot and the Sun was bound to burn you.

After a good meal, and under the naked Sun —I could almost hear the prototypical old man complaining about the time we were setting off, but the company was like that—, we took the trail that lead to Xiaoyoukeng

made of stones and/or steps, going up, gently in some parts, steeply in others. The initial part of the trail was flanked by a thick forest of different kinds of trees, bamboo trees among them,

traversed by many different sounds, butterflies of many colors (and oh so beautiful)


colourful fireflies


and full of plants with odd leaves.


Once we were up there, the landscape had changed from the initial forest, to pine trees to a kind of tall grassland without any trees, and later we could see the fumaroles at the feet of Qixingshan, while we recovered from the walk (listening to Abba, by the way)


Some of us climbed up Qixingshan (the 7 star mountain), of 1120 m, the tallest mountain of northern Taiwan. I really enjoyed it, pushing myself up the very steep steps that took us there. We found several fumaroles more on our way up, and were subjected to the changing wind and Sun, sweating a lot.

We could see Taipei at our feet on some parts of the trail, even if the air was not so clear as we would have wished.

At the top, we had a magnificent view of the North-East coast to reward our effort —I could even see Yehliu— with a very clear sky and that great feeling that comes from reaching the summit, it does not matter how small.


We climbed down on the other side of the mountain, where there were similar or even steeper slopes, even if they were short, and we managed to catch the last bus to Taipei.

One of the postdocs asked me later, while we had dinner, what was the goal of hiking, to get tired?. I do not know, but for me, it is that mix of walking in nature, reach a beautiful place and stress my body with exercise, which on some day, and while I am still healthy, it is the best thing to do. A clean body, a clean spirit.

Leaving

It is really amazing how fast two weeks and a half go by. I arrived with a list of things to do, or to sort out, people to see, places to see again; but now that I am about to leave, I could not do it all. In any case, I leave glad because I could do most of the work I planned to do, I had enough time to see my family, and I could some friends. About sorting some other things out, well, I will leave it for another moment, as usual.

Right now, with my bags already packed and about to leave for the airport, I feel a little sorrow because I am leaving mixed with the anticipation of going back to Taiwan. It took me three days to get used to the Catalan life and now I wonder how I will feel in Taiwan. The question I ask myself as I travel around the globe.

The next post will be from there.

Back in old Europe

A long flight, not uncomfortable, and fairly uneventful —apart from a rollercoaster-like fall due to turbulence in the first leg of the trip that left most of us breathless. Upon arrival, worrying health news in the family that, fortunately, seem to have turned to nothing today after the cause has been found. And at the same time, great joy seeing the two babies, grown up and doing their stuff. There are some smiles, toothless still, that really wash away all the worries in the world. All together a day of reunion with my brothers, around some tables, as it should be.

One day in Barcelona already; one day back in Europe and I am not used to seeing so many westerners in the street yet. My first impression, in the plane or here already, was not too positive. Cultural shock?, it could be. I am too used maybe to being in Taiwan. It has a gentler side. It was called Formosa for a reason. And it is for a reason that I am missing a little beautiful thing too.

First day, then, and I have already done some work. Happy about that , too.

Talk at NTHU

Last Friday was a very tiring day. I spent the early morning hours, until five in the morning, doing some remote observations —not the ones that I had planned to do; a little disaster in fact, because I did not check a basic thing, but once the dates were set there was not any other solution—; sleep four hours and get up to take the bus to go to Hsinchu, to Tsing Hua University to give a talk in the afternoon. After that, go back to Taipei, because I had another night of observations. I slept a lot yesterday.

But I am not complaining. The talk was fine, even if I have done better ones. I had a very nice coffe after the talk with some of the people there, the day was beautiful, and I could see a little bit of nature out of the cities. Very impressive, the white flowers in some of the trees of the forests I saw from the bus, which, from the distance, seemed to alternate between dark green and whitish green colors; it looked as if there was snow on the hills. Thanks to that, because the buildings along the way are not really pretty.

The best of all is that I have almost done all the urgent things I had. Now, I will be able to go back to a normal life again.