In the morning, I visited the Banqiao Library with the secondary intention of finding a good place to put my two German-language books (“My Grandfather’s Dream,” English title “Dream of Ding Village,” by Yan Lianke) and “Ali and Nino,” a book I stopped reading after about 30 pages because of its bias.
As I waited at a yellow line, the lady at the counter waved in a manner that seemed more like scaring away instead of “scaring towards”. After a while, we were able to clear up this misunderstanding, but the next was waiting: She thought I wanted the books instead of donating them, but then she was happy with taking them after all.
In the German section on the 9th floor (it’s a large library!), there were at least 100 German-language books, but only a few famous ones. Perhaps they arrived by similarly convoluted routes as mine did?
One floor was dedicated to magazines, and among countless magazines, I also found the latest issues of “Der Spiegel” and “Schöner Wohnen.”
My next stop was The Lin Family Mansion and Garden
“The merchant dynasty founded by Lin Ping-Hou made a great fortune trading rice and salt in the mid-19th century. Lin Ping-Hou came to Taiwan from Zhangzhou with his father, Lin Ying-Yin. In 1949, after the Kuomintang lost the Chinese Civil War, war veterans were housed in the garden. It was subsequently occupied by squatters. The gardens were in disarray. It took years of city planning to relocate over 125 families. The garden and its buildings were restored from 1982 to 1986 and opened to the public.” (German and English Wikipedia, mixed)
On the way back, I walked through the traditional market and tried not to buy too much food, as Li&Glen had plenty. However, I couldn’t resist buying ready-to-eat chestnuts, which were much cheaper than in Austria.
Li had suggested going to the cinema, and I watched the French film “Second Tour” in the original language with Chinese subtitles. My French was good enough for, say, 10% of the dialogue, but in the end, I more or less understood the film, although of course, a lot gets lost that way.
Li and Glen met later with me, and we went to the night market. They had brought their own containers for collecting different food before we sat down in a restaurant specialized on oyster-based food where we ate a nice mixture of stinky tofu, a kind of pancake, some veggies, an oyster omelette, etc
At home they watched a show with foreigners challenged with Chinese in different settings.
Li and Glen met up with me later, and we went to the night market. They had brought their own containers to collect various food items before we sat down at a restaurant specializing in oysters, where we ate a delicious mix of stinky tofu, some vegetables, a kind of pancake, an oyster omelette, and so on.
At home, they watched a program with foreigners challenged with Chinese language in various settings.
