"Most people buy them as gifts to take home for relatives after they've visited Anping, but some local people buy them too," she assures me before falling into conversation with a visiting neighbor and completely forgetting my existence.
I wander down Yanping Street farther. It's nearly deserted. A party of three tourists wander ahead of me with cameras but they don't stop for pictures. There's little to see. The few old buildings that remain are in various states of disrepair.
It's the side streets that are more interesting, I discover. Hsiaochung Street, which runs parallel to Yanping, for example, is still little more than a snaking alley lined with one-story homes and the occasional temple, like the Kuangchi Kung, which a plaque outside says was founded in 1743 by fishing people living here as thanks for the miraculous homecoming of a fishing boat given up for lost in a terrible storm.
But the real treat is the Haishankuan, which despite Mr. Chang's disparaging remarks, is a fascinating traditional building arranged around a courtyard. It's been there since 1684, and has been variously a Matsu temple, a barracks, a funeral home and a private residence, before being reclaimed by the government in 1974 and opened to the public.
Fort Zeelandia
Close by is the attraction that keeps the tour buses pulling in: Fort Zeelandia. It's one of Tainan's triumvirate of Dutch forts that date back from the early 17th century when the Dutch had their brief sway over the island. As at the others there's little left to see. Locals claim that a length of wall is from the original structure, but if this is so it's near impossible to determine which length of wall they're talking about.
Not that the tourists seem to mind. There are fake cannons for them to pose for photographs with, and in the exhibition hall above the fake walls they can gaze on a knight in armor mounted on an armored horse from the "late Gothic period circa 1490" while karaoke music drifts from hidden speakers. There is a display of 17th- and 18th-century rapiers and pictures of the Pingpu tribe hunting. Heaven forbid that anyone should ask why.
As I stroll around the fort I find myself thinking of Mr. Chang. If the tourists were coming to Anping for the fort, they were coming for the wrong reasons. It was the locals who knew where the real history was, or at least where it had gone. They might at least stop and talk to Mr. Chu and buy one of his crickets, but he was sitting alone when I left. Business was slow.
For your information:
Anping is around 20 minutes from Tainan train station by taxi (NT$150). Ask for the Anping Gubao, which is the Chinese name for Fort Zeelandia. Yanping Street is a few minutes walk from the fort. Tainan is easily accessible from Taipei by train (four to five hours), bus (six or seven hours) or air (one hour). The Tainan domestic airport is around 20 minutes from downtown Tainan.
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