Taipei has a vibrant cultural heart but little in the way of lungs, which is why the green expanse of Guandu Nature Park (關渡自然公園) is such a treasure.
An internationally recognized birding area, the park is home to over 830 species of animals, including 229 varieties of fowl.
Joining the flora and fauna this month are six installations from international artists, who have used natural materials to build their works and thereby focus attention on the environment.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
This is laudable, of course, and the 2006 Guandu International Outdoor Sculpture Festival, which opened a few weeks ago, provides a convenient hook for a day out to see one of the city's few natural hot spots.
If it's a weekend trip, try and beat the crowd by arriving at the Guandu Nature center in the morning. There's plenty to see in the exhibition and research halls, and the information will provide insight for what is to follow.
The 57-hectare nature park is in a low-lying part of the Taipei Basin, at the confluence of the Keelung and Danshui rivers. The mixture of salt and fresh water makes the area incredibly diverse from an ecological point of view. And this is what attracts the large variety of animals, plants and aquatic creatures.
Having come to terms with the dynamics of wetland eco-systems and learned to differentiate red mangrove from mango, it's time to move on and explore the outdoor observation area; take a trail through the park and check out twitchers in the bird-watching area.
The installations may be a tad disappointing if you're expecting a bold statement. For instance, US artist Jane Ingrame Allen's Nests for Humans are made from fallen branches and are similar to shelters that have been abandoned by picnickers elsewhere.
"These human-sized nests are for people to enter and rest there a while to think about man's relationship to nature and the wonder of a bird's creation," the artist says in a statement about her work.
Japan's Rikuo Ueda made a wind machine of paper and natural debris; while Yimuko Yamazaki floated a raft of soil onto a pond to find out what grows on it.
Having contemplated nature in the abstract it's time to get on your bike and tour the riverside bike trails. A shop nearby on Zhixing Road rents bicycles at around NT$50 per hour.
Take a deep breath and enjoy a trip to Guandu. It's easy to get to on the MRT and a pleasant change from the concrete jungle.
Guandu day out:
Where: Guandu Nature Park, 55, Guandu Rd, Beitou Dist, Taipei (台北市北投區關渡路55號).
Opening hours: March to October open 9am to 5pm on weekdays, 9am to 6pm on weekends. November to February, 9am to 5pm on weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm on weekends. The park is closed on Mondays.
Telephone: (02) 2858-7417.
On the Net: For a detailed map visit www.gd-park.org.tw/en/e1.htm
Pedal power: Chiang Hsian-chin (江憲欽) Bikes, 206 Zhixing Rd, Beitou District, Taipei (台北市北投區知行路206號). Call (02) 2858-7046.
On a prayer: Guandu Temple (關渡宮), 360, Zhixing Rd, Taipei (台北市北投區知行路360號). Call (02) 2858 1281.
Feb. 9 to Feb.15 Growing up in the 1980s, Pan Wen-li (潘文立) was repeatedly told in elementary school that his family could not have originated in Taipei. At the time, there was a lack of understanding of Pingpu (plains Indigenous) peoples, who had mostly assimilated to Han-Taiwanese society and had no official recognition. Students were required to list their ancestral homes then, and when Pan wrote “Taipei,” his teacher rejected it as impossible. His father, an elder of the Ketagalan-founded Independence Presbyterian Church in Xinbeitou (自立長老會新北投教會), insisted that their family had always lived in the area. But under postwar
The term “pirates” as used in Asia was a European term that, as scholar of Asian pirate history Robert J. Antony has observed, became globalized during the European colonial era. Indeed, European colonial administrators often contemptuously dismissed entire Asian peoples or polities as “pirates,” a term that in practice meant raiders not sanctioned by any European state. For example, an image of the American punitive action against the indigenous people in 1867 was styled in Harper’s Weekly as “Attack of United States Marines and Sailors on the pirates of the island of Formosa, East Indies.” The status of such raiders in
On paper, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) enters this year’s nine-in-one elections with almost nowhere to go but up. Yet, there are fears in the pan-green camp that they may not do much better then they did in 2022. Though the DPP did somewhat better at the city and county councillor level in 2022, at the “big six” municipality mayoral and county commissioner level, it was a disaster for the party. Then-president and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) made a string of serious strategic miscalculations that led to the party’s worst-ever result at the top executive level. That year, the party
As much as I’m a mountain person, I have to admit that the ocean has a singular power to clear my head. The rhythmic push and pull of the waves is profoundly restorative. I’ve found that fixing my gaze on the horizon quickly shifts my mental gearbox into neutral. I’m not alone in savoring this kind of natural therapy, of course. Several locations along Taiwan’s coast — Shalun Beach (沙崙海水浴場) near Tamsui and Cisingtan (七星潭) in Hualien are two of the most famous — regularly draw crowds of sightseers. If you want to contemplate the vastness of the ocean in true
RSS