This was a day spent exploring the arts districts of Kaohsiung. The area used to be one of the most busy ports in the world, moving goods out of Taiwan to Asia and the world, but over time it has become much less busy. It went from something like 4th busiest in the world to not in the top 20 list, so there were lots of empty warehouses and docks. The city has made it into an area full of some cool street art, so we went through two separate art districts and did a couple of boat cruises to see it all.
One of the first exhibits we saw was this swing. Up above it was a live tree on a walkway between the two warehouses and the swing hung below it. The swing was in the shape of a leaf. It was a lot of fun to swing on!
This little guy cracked me up, his face is just so happy. At night when the whole space is full of people and lit up, the spout sprays water out periodically.
There was a tiny train made for kids, so of course we had to ride it! We went around in a figure 8 between the buildings and it was really cute.
There was a lot of wire work, and this whale was enormous and just chilling in the air between two buildings.
This exhibit was on the wall as you walked through, and from a distance things looked kind of normal. Then as I walked up I saw that the dogs had extra legs and weird non-face faces. I couldn't figure it out until I read the description which says it represents a panoramic photo gone wrong...I'm sure we all have a few of those on our phones. The artist statement says that panoramic photos often fail because the phone was moving too fast, and the objects are "stuck". She says we can get "stuck" in life too when we move too fast, which was a really interesting message (especially on a whirlwind trip like I was on!).
The city is fairly industrial, but also has a few beautiful spots that we saw. This bridge was cool but under repair (that was the running theme of the trip, half of what we wanted to see was under repair for some reason) so we couldn't cross it.
The big building in the middle is a new building, the top is residential and the middle floors are a hotel. It looks like the bottom half of a stick figure, there are two towers that come up from the ground and then join together to have one coming out of them. It's a pretty cool building.
This was some paper work that was layered to create a 3D image and it was amazing. In Adroit this past year we worked with the kids on making layered pieces like this, so hopefully this can be inspiration for them this year.
These barrels were drums, and when you played the drums they lit up the whole structure. Different drums had different lighting. Part of the group went back at night and it was much cooler then.
Giant flowers with a path between them, they were fun to walk through.
This guy was freaky. I will leave it up to you if you want to zoom in, if you do you may notice that there is a head on his --um--
head. That would be Chairman Mao. It's an interesting political statement.
This image was 3D if you lined up correctly (which I didn't really do). It was cool to see the trains that had moved goods through the area for decades represented.
There were so many of these huge figures around. They're the same on both sides instead of having a front and back, and they're kind of freaky.
This is the name of the art park.
These were some cool sculptures of everyday objects. There's a huge ball of yarn and a massive suitcase mixed in with other items.
One of the main products shipped through this harbor was bananas, so this whole warehouse is dedicated to the banana trade. We had a tasty lunch here and then bought some banana snacks. I had some banana cheeto like things that were just amazing.
We went on an informative cruise around the harbor on the "Butterfly Princess Yacht", looking at all the ships in the harbor. According to the guide it's a "beautiful harbor" but it was more of an industrial zone with some pretty spots around the edges. You could see where they have adjusted since their trade has fallen off which was interesting.
This was a huge dry dock, I'm sure it's not actually that big compared to others but it's one of the biggest I've seen. The boat getting repaired was massive but didn't even fill the space.
There's a lot of salvage now, so this was really interesting. The boat in front is being salvaged and is tethered to the salvage boat behind, and the workers shuttle back and forth. It's a good way to save space while stripping it down to the hull.
If you took my APHG class at any point, you know why I took this photo. 🤣🤣
The harbor is also full of Taiwanese Navy and Coast Guard ships. While we were in Taiwan, the tensions with China were slightly heighted so I personally tended to be on high alert so this was a little nerve-wracking to see but this ship in particular was interesting. I haven't seen this hull design much, but I'm assuming it's built for speed. We learned that different ship numbers on military ships mean different things from cargo/delivery ships to attack/defense ships, so I had a little scavenger hunt in my head looking for different kinds. The big cruise ship behind makes the journey from Taiwan to Hong Kong a few times per week, it's massive but kind of run down compared to a Caribbean cruise ship for example.
We did a second cruise on the internal river and I just got a few photos, here's a night heron I got a pretty good shot of. There were so many cool birds on the trip, I have a bunch of pictures of them.
I'm pretty sure this one is an egret. I think I also saw some cranes but this isn't one.
This is a cool looking building, it's a performing arts center with several different auditoriums inside. It feels a little like Taiwan's version of the Kennedy Center in DC.
We also hit a second art district, this is a residential zone that's been fully painted and decorated. There was some really beautiful work.
Most of the buildings were fully painted like this, my favorites were the wildlife buildings for sure.
This giant bookshelf was great, I spent a lot of time looking at all the titles trying to figure out what was there. The cat curled up in the books cracked me up.
After a long day, a group of us went for an early dinner. We went over to the subway station which is quite famous and explored, taking the train one station just to see a couple of them and then having dinner in the station.
The center of the station had this amazing light structure, when we came back at the end of the night there was a great light show happening all about the creation of the planet and humanity but the video is almost 8 minutes long and won't upload. It was a fun moment though!
The station has these four light up towers on the street that make praying hands somehow. I don't see it but the tour guide was pretty adamant that each tower represents fingers, and two towers together make one hand then the two hands come together to pray. Maybe someone else sees it and can explain.
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