Go to the parks dotted around Taipei — or other towns and cities around Taiwan — and you will likely see, and usually in the early morning, before the workers hit the offices, or the seniors return home for a late morning nap, people doing exercises in the park. It’s nice. Fresh air, picturesque environment, sunny day.
This scene is in a small, shady clearing by the side of a set of steps leading up to a peak in a ridge in Neihu. In the far left hand corner of the clearing is a couple of colorful, tiled pieces of what are presumably fixed gym equipment, provided for stretching exercises, or for sit-ups, or the like, sitting abandoned among the scattered leaves.
Edged with rectangular, brown tiles, the main facades of the objects are covered with oval tiles, like flat, colorful pebbles — blue, pink, yellow, red — in a design reminiscent of tiled bathtubs once seen in inexpensive hotels in central Taiwan, 10, 15 years ago (I wonder if those tubs still exist).
Photo: Paul Cooper, Taipei Times
照片:台北時報記者古德謙攝
Here, in this clearing, they look vaguely alien, and certainly belonging to another time. If they were not situated among other gym equipment, I’m not sure I would have known what they were for. But I liked them, and I took the picture.
It was only later, when I was processing the photo, that I noticed the dangling hands.
(Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
在台北的公園,或台灣任何一個市鎮的公園,常能看見運動的人,最常是一大清早,上班族還未開工,而老人家還沒回家睡回籠覺的時候。那是宜人的:清新的空氣,如畫的風景,燦爛的陽光。
相片中的場景位於內湖一塊充滿林蔭的小空地,在一座通往山頂的階梯旁。在空地左邊的角落固定著幾塊舖滿彩色瓷磚的物體,看上去應是體育設施,給人做伸展操或仰臥起坐之類的,就這樣荒置於滿地的落葉之間。
這些奇特的物體以棕色的長條瓷磚鑲邊,其餘表面則貼滿扁平的、鵝卵石般的橢圓彩色瓷磚,有藍有黃、還有紅和粉紅。造型就像個浴缸,且是十到十五年前中部的廉價旅館裡常見的那種(不知那樣的浴缸如今是否還有)。
在這塊空地上,這些浴缸似的物體看起來有些格格不入,顯然是另一個時代的產品。若不是放置在一堆體育設施中間,我恐怕也不能理解它們究竟有何功能。但我喜歡這些設施,於是拍了這張照片。
至於那雙懸掛在背景中的手,我一直到事後處理相片時才注意到。
(台北時報編譯涂宇安譯)
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