Day in Nantou County - 17 May 2009

So this is again way overdue but because I'm committed to the cause of enticing more people to come to Taiwan and discover its beauty, I'm still going to post this :)

So on Friday evening 16 May 09, I traveled to Zhang Hua county with Prior and Eva since Prior was going back to his hometown and invited me along.. this is my first time to the central part of Taiwan and it did prove to be an amazing weekend...

on Saturday 17 May 2009, we headed to Nantou county (see map on the left). Prior drove and the trip took just abit over 1 hour thanks to a new expressway that opened linked Zhang Hua and Nantou...

As you can see from the map, Nantou is actually the only county in the whole of Taiwan that does not touch the shoreline... so yes it's entirely inland...

Yet despite that, I can assure you that it's visited by many many people because the allure of the Sun Moon Lake is just too great


It really is very very beautiful! they say that the lake looks different at different times of the day and I do believe it even though I did not see it (we spent about 3 hours plus there)... surrounded by mountains covered in greenery, the lake gives a really peaceful feel to visitors...
The road goes all around the lake so there were a lot of tourist buses as well as cyclists... our 1st stop was the Wen Wu Temple (文物廟), a beautiful temple directly facing the lake.. a large part of it was damaged in the 1999 earthquake but thanks to aid that poured in from within and outside of Taiwan, it has been properly restored...

We then went on to take a boat ride on the lake... these boat rides come with and without guided tours... we did the one without since Prior was pretty much an experienced tour guide already :)

The boat trip was about 1.5 hours and included a stop at another smaller temple as well as a view of this mini island in the lake (it used to be much bigger but most of it sank in the earthquake). If you go during the weekdays, you can even go on the island... you can't do that on weekends since there are already too many visitors then and I'm sure that island will sink if we all went on it :)

for more info on Sun Moon Lake, visit http://www.sunmoonlake.gov.tw/sun.aspx?Lang=EN

After the Sun Moon Lake, we then headed to the Pu Li brewery
The brewery is actually featured in the book "Blue Ocean Strategy in Taiwan" as one of the case studies... Once a pure brewery that almost went out of business, it is now one of the biggest and most famous breweries in the whole of Taiwan and draws huge crowds of locals and tourists every day to buy products related to 紹興酒 (Shao-xing wine, a form of traditional Chinese wine fermented from rice) or to visit its museum and learn more about the process of making various forms of alcohol as well as random facts about alcohol...

A tunnel whose walls are made up of wine urns...
More on Puli Brewery at http://www.sunmoonlake.gov.tw/TW/04001114.aspx

Our final stop of the day was at the 中台禪寺 or the Chung Tai Chan Monastery... located in quite the rural part of the area (we passed by farms and large plots of lands before reaching it), the monastery is built by the largest (I think) Buddhist association in Taiwan and is said to cost NTD 4 billion to build...

From the outside, you can already tell that a lot of effort was put into the design and construction of this monastery... when you step inside, it's even more amazing...

Here you see the grand hall of the monastery on the 1st floor... that statue on the left is one of the four guardians in the halls and is 5 storeys tall and weighs 120 tonnes... It is entirely hand-sculpted, just like many of the other statues and structures in the monastery...

They definitely didn't hold back when it came to getting the best materials and the best craftsmen for this monastery...

Only the 1st two floors are open to the public and there are monks and nuns who help explain about the statues, the construction and of course about Buddhism... they cater to foreigners too (we passed by a group where a nun was speaking fluent English)...

It's an interesting way of spreading Buddhism to the world... this organization has also opened schools in the area where children learn Buddhist values from young while receiving high quality education (all students have to learn Chinese, English, French and Spanish)..

To find out more, check out http://www.ctworld.org.tw/english-96/html/index.htm (the chinese website features more information but the english one is not too bad.. comes with a virtual tour too :P)

So all in all, it was a very enriching day where I saw great scenery, learnt about wine making and had my breath taken away by the monastery while learning more about Buddhism... Definitely a worthwhile trip!

More photos at http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6892183&l=3934180b1e&id=576355703

Just a thought...

People have often asked why I chose to come to Taiwan, considering that the culture between Taiwan and Singapore are quite similar... and I am always confused by this question...

I'm confused because I don't understand how people know that the cultures are similar when they have not lived in both Singapore AND Taiwan...

After all, isn't culture more than what we see on the news? in the newspapers? in books? Isn't culture more than just food? and fashion? and isn't culture also more than that group of friends you have from that country?

Definitions tell me that culture is a set of behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes within a group/community of people... I don't dispute that, I think it does make sense... but on the other hand, some part of me insists that culture is nothing more a pair of "perspective lens" that Man puts on due to our very innate need to group, to classify and to distinguish...

Isn't it conflicting? We seek to belong yet we seek to differentiate ourselves... We learn the accents that the locals speak, we shake hands and exchange name cards the way locals do, we hang out at local spots to experience life like the locals and sometimes we fear being found out because it means we will get charged tourist prices.. yet we also seek to be special; we look for differences, we ask questions about the way things work, we point out how things are like in our own countries, we ponder why some things suck back at home when they work so well here locally...

and it is in this process of classifying, grouping and distinguishing that we slowly get the sense of what, in general, this "culture" thing really is... so if you think about it, cultures exists, or more accurately, we recognise culture BECAUSE there are differences... it's like how you can't see air which is all around you, but you can recognise it when you experience
1. a lack of it or
2. the differences in the environment when air moves or changes its state (e.g. when the wind blows)

If this is the case, saying that cultures are similar is also acknowledging that there are differences.. and if differences exists, that means that there is something to experience by going or living there... and if there is something to experience, why does it seem strange for people to uproot themselves sometimes and live in another country?

Am I making sense or am I going round in circles? Just a thought...

HIV / AIDS in the World

Fantastic talk and presentation by Dr. Hans Rosling on HIV/AIDS...

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_truth_about_hiv.html

I can't embed it here but I assure you it's definitely worth a view!

Dr. Rosling talks about how we always tend to oversimplify the HIV/AIDS problem into something that is "Africa" and he shows with hard core statistics the disparity within African nations, and even within the different cities of an African nation... He also talks about why it's essential to tackle the problem by preventing transmissions instead of only focusing on developing and delivering treatment...

Something that really struck me was with regards to statistics that we typically see. For example, we occasionally see statistics about the number of HIV/AIDS infected people in a certain country, or the % of people in a country / region that has the AIDS. This really doesn't paint a very accurate picture if you think about it.

For one, if people don't get tested, naturally the number of infected people will be less. Because we just won't know.

For another, in some of the worst hit countries in the world that are too poor to deliver much medical support to those infected, these people die young from the disease. Which then affects the total number of people infected (which usually only refers to the living)

If you flip this around, it means that a country with a moderate number of infected people and has the ability to provide more medical aid can help these people keep the disease at bay and ensure they can live longer and more meaningful lives. And this again affects the total number of people infected.

So what should we do in the face of this daunting challenge that faces mankind, and the very strong tendency for us to "over-simplify" or "out-classify" the problem when we see the news or the statistics?

As far as I can say, let's get ourselves tested so we know for sure and let's spread the word so people know more about HIV/AIDS, how to protect themselves and how to curb the transmission of this terrible virus.

Dilbert MBA Series - funny!

This 2nd one is so classic Alice :)

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