lantern love

Signs of affection at Taipei Treasure Hill Artist Village.

steamy hot lights

Steamer basket lights at Kitchen Pucci! GENIUS!

daily grind

Writing on a rainy day is a whole lot more pleasant when one can sit at the Ecole Cafe and nurse a lovely hot cup of coffee for hours and hours and hours...

hot plants

Taiwan is so hot and humid right now that even the plants are growing plants!

Yes, it was a little on the muggy side, but even having to constantly peel my sweat-soaked shirt from my pruney skin couldn't distract from the beauty of the hiking trails around Wulai. When the heat starts to diminish in a couple of months, this area will be heaven to walk around. I will definitely return.

soooooo meta

Visitors from mainland Chinese tour groups pose for pictures in front of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial.

hi-ho hai yan

I attended the Ho Hai Yan rock festival at Fulong Beach a couple of weeks ago. I've longed to go for so many years, but this summer marks the first time that the festival calendar and mine are actually in sync! Glory be! I had a marvelous time with my friends and husband, stretched out on a towel, digging my toes into the cool sand, eating grilled squid, and listening to the best of Taiwan's indie rock artists. As the sun went down, the mountains in the distance turned pale green, then blue, then a deep purple.

mazu mania (belated)

I know I've been a terrible blogger of late, and I apologize. I have a perfectly reasonable excuse for not continuing to chronicle my Taiwan adventures, however: I was, in fact, not in Taiwan, and I simply didn't think that New Jersey made as compelling a setting for my photographs as the Sweet Potato Island. I think we all agree, no? Moving on, I have plenty of images to share from ages ago. I'd like to start with some photographs from the incredible Mazu festival back in April, which took place in Beigang.

Local children participated in a massive parade that began in the morning and continued into the early evening on the last day of the festival. Dressed mostly as sea creatures or as incarnations of the goddess herself, they rode enormous colorful floats and tossed sweets (sometimes overhand, OUCH) at passersby. This girl was on the young end of participants, but she was not the youngest--I'm pretty sure I saw a few infants in starfish rompers making their way through the town.

I don't think I've ever seen as many fireworks deployed in one place as I did in front of the temple in Beigang. The red mush you see on the ground here is debris from spent explosives. Volunteers periodically swept growing mountains of the stuff away, but it was hard to control.

This is my favorite image of the festival, for reasons I can't really explain. I just love how a kind of geometry appears to emerge from the chaos as lines bisect lines. Or maybe I just like the jazzy colors.

This is another image from the parade. The girl in the foreground appears to be floating. Creepy, but beautiful.

This stage for gezaixi was tucked into a niche above a restaurant--it's actually visible in the photograph that I called my favorite above. I love the insane colors used for ritual opera in Taiwan. I'm not sure how the aesthetics of stage and costume design evolved, but I'd love to find out more...

I was in Beigang for about 24 hours--this image was taken at the very end, when the festivities were wrapping up. Fireworks went off continuously for my entire stay in the town, so it seemed fitting that the whole thing should conclude with a bang and a glorious confetti storm.