6/25/2008

Yangmei, Taiwan



On Monday, I took this shot in the Yang Mei (楊梅) Train Station, which is a couple stops south of Chung Li (中壢). I looked up Yang Mei on Wikipedia: "Yangmei is one of the three largest towns in Taoyuan. The center is only 40 minutes from the west coast of Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait". Yes, I could see it coming in on the local train. "To the north it borders Pingzhen city; to the south it borders Hsinchu County. To the east, Yangmei borders Longtan Township. There were lots of Yangmei Trees [Japanese Bayberry] when Chinese immigrants entered this place, so that's how this town got its name." For a city of 143,00, Yang Mei's pretty obscure. An old commuter train rumbles in and stops here every hour (each direction).

I grabbed this shot while killing time on the Yang Mei platform ( I had a 40-minute wait for my train back to Taipei). I really like these benches. Notice how they're mixed in with the baby-blue plastic benches. I wanted to post the following shot up on Blogspot, but could not, as I am unable to upload vertical pictures. I think somebody might've abandoned this Formosan wheel barrow shortly after the Second World War: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrick_cowsill/2608230582/ I think Flickr and Apple might also have issues, as I can't upload pics via Safari.

4 comments:

MJ Klein said...

Yang-mei, as you pointed out, borders Hsinchu county, and Hukou is on that border. There is a road called Yang Hou because it crosses from one to the other. i used to spend time in Yang-mei but it's been some time since i was there last. Yang-mei is quite close to us and we go there for restaurants sometimes.

have you tried using any of the flickr uploading tools? they work very well. i use Kflickr (linux).

Patrick Cowsill said...

What restaurants do you visit? I'm still a bit wet behind the ears when it comes to this town. There is an excellent omelet, fried turnip and soy milk breakfast shop just around the corner from the train station. The owners are lively and have a repartee with their customers too.

Anonymous said...

The wheel barrow is still used to unload cargo from trains.

Patrick Cowsill said...

They're still using the wheel barrow? Really? That's amazing. I'd like to see that.

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