North District, Tainan City 台南市北區

North District is north of both West Central and East districts.  It's one of the more suburban parts of downtown Tainan, and for this reason there's a lot less for tourists to do in the area. 北區位於中西區 、 東區的北部 ，  北區算是台南市區比較郊區的部分 ， 所以觀光景點比其他區域還少 。

While taking the pictures below I walked in a loop around the more central part of North District, starting at Tainan Park (near the Tainan Train Station), and from there walking to the Garden Night Market to the northwest.  From the night market I followed Hai-an Road south to Gongyuan ("Park") South Road, and then followed Gongyuan Road all the way back to Tainan Park. 我拍照的時候在北區較中心的地方繞了一圈 。 從台南車站附近的台南公園開始 ， 然後走到西北方的花園夜市 。  也從花園夜市走海安路到公園南路 ， 最後走公園路到台南公園 。

According to the last census, 125,151 people live in North District. 上次的人口統計表示 ，北區的人口是125,151人 。

This is one of the shelters in Tainan Park.  It rained every 15-20 minutes that day, and I sat here for a long time waiting for the rain to stop.  I'd like to express my thanks to the dog who kept me company.  I'll be back to say hello another day. 這是台南公園裡的一座涼亭 。  那一天大約每15-20分鐘下一次雨 ， 我在涼亭裡等雨停下來 。 很感謝當天陪我等的一隻狗 ， 我改天再去打招呼 。

Like a lot of older parks in Taiwan, Tainan Park has its share of bomb shelters. 台南公園跟其他比較舊的公園一樣，有幾個防空洞 。

The ducks relaxing next to the lake look very tough.  在湖旁邊休息的鴨子看起來很強硬。

The pavilion in the center of the lake is undoubtedly the most scenic thing in North District.  If you're in the area and it's not too hot I recommend it. 湖中間的涼亭一定是北區風景最好的地點 ，  天氣比較涼快的時候來這裡不錯 !

The road names in this district are really confusing.  This is the intersection of Gongyuan Road and Gongyuan North Road.  I took Gongyuan North Road west toward the night market. 這附近的路名都很像 ，  這是公園路跟公園北路的路口 ， 我走公園北路往西就到了花園夜市。

By the time I got to the intersection of Gongyuan North Road and Ximen Road it had started raining again, and I had to wait a long time for it to stop. 我到公園北路跟西門路的路口時又下雨了， 我等了很久雨才停下來 。

The area around Hai-an Road and Hewei Road seems like it would be a nice place to live.  There's less traffic here, the roads are wider, and there are new buildings going up.  Affordable?  Probably not! 海安路和和緯路附近似乎是不錯的居住環境，  交通比較順暢 、馬路比較寬大、  新大樓很多 ，  這個地區貴嗎 ?  應該是 !

This is the intersection in front of the Garden Night Market.  Not much happening here on a Wednesday, around 9 am, on a rainy day. 花園夜市前面的路口 ，  禮拜三早上九點 ， 下雨天 ，安靜!

And this is there you'll find the night market.  I visited this one years ago, but for all I know the food on offer is completely different now. 這是夜市的場地，  我幾年前來過， 現在這裡的美食大概完全不一樣了 。

Near the intersection of Hai-an Road and Gongyuan South Road I found this crab. 我在海安路和公園南路的路口碰到這隻螃蟹 。

I suppose the larger sculptures are supposed to be coastal rocks?  The crab was hiding behind them. 大的雕像應該是海岸的石頭吧 ? 螃蟹就躲在它們的後面 。

In my opinion coastal Tainan is underrated.  It's not paradise or anything, but finding so much coastal scenery so close to a major city isn't as common as you might think. 我覺得台南的海岸被低估了， 雖然它不算什麼天堂 ， 可是要在一個市區看到那麼多海岸景點也不是那麼普遍的。

The same intersection, looking north from the parking lot. 同一個路口 ， 從停車場往北邊看 。

Back in Tainan Park.  This is the path from the main entrance. 回來到台南公園 ， 這是大門前的步道 。

It's nice to have trees as big as this one around.  There were a few street lunatics lurking around it, but their presence wasn't surprising given this park's proximity to the train station. 有這麼大的樹在附近很舒服 。  公園和火車站相鄰，常會有些精神有些狀況的人在這附近閒晃休息。

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A Few More Pictures 多一些照片 6

台灣民宅 Taiwan Homes (2 of 3)

The Chinese below was written by 劉思源 and the illustrations were by 彭大維.  The English was written/translated by me.  The text comes from the book 台灣民宅, which was part of the "Boar Forest" 野豬林 series published way back in 1989.

My school was going to throw these books away!  I thought they could use a little love...

房屋是怎麼蓋起來的 ?

How were houses built?

蓋房子先要挖地基 , 然後搭建房屋的骨架 . The construction of a house begins with digging a foundation.  After that its frame is built.

房屋的骨架由柱和樑組合而成 , 用來承受屋頂 .  常見的樑柱組合方法有兩種 , 一種是穿斗式 , 一種是抬樑式 . A house's frame consists of columns and beams which support its roof.  There are two commonly used methods of frame assembly: the through-beam system [in which beams are fitted into slots in the columns] and the raised beam system [in which rows of roof beams are fitted into notches at the ends of lower, slotted beams]. (1)

牆壁的做法也有很多種呢 ! There are also many ways to build walls!

門是房子的出入口 , 也是屋內屋外的分界 , 所以古人把裝門當做一件大事 , 通常會舉行祭典 .  而且古人認為房屋裡有 "財氣" , 為了怕財氣跑光 , 所以窗子越小越好 . Doors are both entrances and exits to a house, and also serve as a a boundary between indoors and outdoors.  For this reason ancient people regarded the installation of doors as an important event, often holding a ceremony to mark the occasion.  They also believed that a certain "wealth potential" was contained within each house, and they were afraid of this "wealth potential" dissipating over time.  This is why smaller windows were preferred.

在房屋各處 , 常有木雕 , 石雕 ... 等各式各樣的裝飾 , 裝飾的圖案常有避邪 , 祈福的含意 .  Wood and stone carvings were placed all over houses, and upon these carvings were inscribed various patterns and symbols which either warded off evil or invited prosperity.

打仗的時候 , 房屋就像一座城堡 .

During times of strife a house was like a fortress.

台灣早期常常發生匪亂和械鬥 , 人們需要利用地形 , 地物和人工設施 , 來增加家的防衛力量 , 例如把房屋蓋在小山前面 , 使敵人不能從背後入侵 . Early in Taiwan's history banditry and armed conflict were common occurrences.  People needed to use the terrain, geographical features and man-made structures to better protect their homes.  For example, a home might be built in front of a small mountain or hill to prevent enemies from attacking from the rear.

房屋前面挖個水塘 , 不僅可以減弱敵人的攻擊 , 萬一有火災 , 也可以取水救火 . A pond would be dug in front of a house to weaken attacks [from the front], and if there was a fire the water in the pond could be used to extinguish it.

房屋的牆壁上 , 會挖槍眼 .  用來架槍射擊 ; 房屋四周還會建造高於一般房屋的碉堡式樓房 , 用來監視 , 避難 .  Gun ports were dug out of the walls ; and fortified buildings taller than [smaller residences nearby] were built around the perimeters of [settlements] for both surveillance and refuge.

港口出現繁榮的市鎮 .

A Prosperous Town Emerges from the Port.

城市的房屋 , 大多沿著街道而蓋 .  為了防衛 , 人們會把道路建成S形 , Y形 ... 等彎曲形狀 .  像鹿港的九曲巷 , 如果你躲在巷道轉角處防守 , 會有一夫當關 , 萬夫莫敵的效果 .  在街頭 , 街尾等地方 , 還會設置隘門 , 白天開放供人們出入 ; 晚上關閉 , 整條街就形成了一個大碉堡 , 敵人很難闖進來 . In cities most houses were built along streets.  Roads were built in "S," "Y" or other winding shapes for protection.  [Just think of] Lugang's winding Nine-Turn Alley.  Hiding in one of the alley's [many] corners would allow you to repel a number of assailants.  At the ends of each street were gates for allowing people in and out during the day.  When these gates closed each night streets became large fortresses which enemies could only enter with great difficulty.

房屋前面開商店 , 後面當住家 .

Shops are opened in the front part of houses, with residences in the back.

靠街的土地較貴 , 所以房屋的正面都不大 , 很少會超過五公尺 .  如果想增加空間 , 只能向上 , 向後發展 .  像鹿港的街屋 , 大多是二層樓 , 而且細細長長 , 像條捲起來的手巾 , 所以有人叫它 "手巾寮" . Land near the street was more expensive, so the fronts of most houses were usually small [narrow], no more than 5 meters wide.  If you wanted to increase the interior space you could only expand forwards or backwards [depending on the house's nearness to the road].  [You can see this] in the homes of Lugang, where most of the residences are two stories high, very long and very narrow.  They look like rolled up handkerchiefs, and for this reason people call them "handerchief huts."

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台灣民宅 Taiwan Homes (1 of 3)

1. Kind of hard to explain either system in just a few words, but they're pictured in the page above this section.

Forty Days Or Less

On the first day it rained a little.  We were all inconvenienced.  Some of us had trouble slogging through a dark workday in which the clouds never parted, while others struggled through a half-hearted vacation in spots where the sun would have made everything better.

I rode the train up north and took pictures.  Every twenty minutes or so I had to stop and find a place to hide from a renewed downpour.  I made the best of it, and on the ride back home I told myself that it had been a good day.

On the second day it rained a little more.  Many grumbled about clothes not being dry.  Others spent extra minutes putting on overheated rain gear before mounting scooters and heading off to work.  Still others wondered if a typhoon might be coming, and what such a typhoon might portend for activities planned long before.  How much rain, and for how long?

I tried to amuse myself in a department store.  I got there around 11, and took in all of the stores from the top floor to the bottom.  After doing so I had lunch in the food court, and while I ate I watched people emerge through the automatic doors from the rain outside.  Their clothes were wet and their faces flush from a change in temperature.

On the fourth day it rained in earnest.  People all over the island glanced down at their phones and saw flood and landslide alerts.  Drivers picked up too much speed on wet roads, killing themselves, other motorists, or oblivious pedestrians.  They all blamed the weather,.

I had to drive to the other side of the island and back.  I didn't think the roads would be a problem.  Just south of the city I drove through a large pool of water sitting on top of the roadway.  As I continued through this pool I worried over my car's engine, and hoped there weren't any holes hiding under the water.

On the eighth day the rain came down in torrents.  Some of the older houses collapsed.  Rivers, full to bursting, washed away bridges.  Several tourist sites were buried under avalanches of trees and mud.  Flights out of the airports became irregular, and trains stopped working in certain areas.

I stayed home and wondered at the leaks emerging in my ceiling.  I put buckets down here and there, only to find new leaks erupt as I did so.  I ran the air conditioner to limit the moisture indoors, but I could tell that this same air conditioner would give out soon.  It was no match for the droplets radiating through the air around me.

By the sixteenth day the rain had only paused once or twice, and in-between gusts of unforgiving precipitation we sought shelter, claiming reasons for avoiding whatever responsibilities we had that day.  Food became scarce in the convenience stores, and vehicles left outside stopped functioning.  Highways became impassible, and entire mountainsides relinquished their foliage.  When, we asked each other, would it stop?

I had to abandon my apartment a few days before.  Nothing worked there anymore.  I moved into a hotel across the street, lugging my essentials through the deluge to a room that I could only afford to occupy for so long.  The hotel staff greeted me with tight expressions.  None of the other guests in the hotel looked glad to be there.

On the thirty second day the rain still hadn't abated, and we watched from wherever we were as civilization fell apart around our ears.  The sturdier buildings began to erode and fall over, while most of the roads were little more than suggestions submerged beneath gathering pools and rivers full to bursting.  Some of us called back to the other countries which we'd come from, and said goodbye to people suffering from other ills, in other places.

I watched from my hotel window as an apartment building - that same apartment building that I'd just come from - listed to one side and began sinking towards a row of smaller houses beneath it.  The skies remained a steely gray, and in that moment I finally realized that the rain would not stop, not until everything we had built and saved and hoped for had ceased to be.  It didn't matter whose fault it was - it just was.

As I sat there a middle-aged woman emerged from the first floor below into the ceaseless rain.  She looked upward towards where I was sitting but failed to see me, her eyes wide and uncomprehending.  I sat transfixed as her clothes slowly fell from her body without her moving a muscle, and then, without even the smallest drop of blood or reaction on her part, her skin began to slough away from her rigid, standing form.  This degloved suit of flesh immediately dissolved upon contact with the flooded street beneath her, a pink stain quickly dispersed by the ongoing downpour.

I stared at her visible musculature for a few seconds before it too began to dissolve from her skeletal frame.  The organs within this skeleton, unprotected by muscle and sinew,  then melted away in turn.  She stood below me as the merest rudiments of a human being, and quickly thereafter the rest of her collapsed in on itself with an audible splash, her remains washed from my sight by the rain, the merciless rain that had already been with us for so long, so unbearably long that I had to close my eyes against its sheer imperturbability.

As cracks spread in the hotel ceiling above me, as the storm raged without, I could almost feel the mountains melt away to the west, and all of it - all of it - slowly washing out to sea.  There will be no graves to mark our passing, only a future patch of ocean, on some sunny day in the future, where all of our dreams and fears have been laid to rest.

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