Lives in the Lotus Blossom, Chapter 01: Pedal and Sole, Booted off the Blood Bus

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This is a brief report, about renting bicycles at Seven Star Lake (Qi Xing Tan) Beach, and a morning walk in a gathering thunderstorm. This chapter is mostly pictures (as you can see). For new readers, just click on the first picture to enlarge it, then you can go through the slide show by clicking on the next number above each picture.

Later in the day, I noticed that the blood donation bus was parked outside Chunghwa Telecom again. I went in to give a donation, but I got disallowed for one year, just because I went to China for a few days! I guess they are worried about hepatitis (even though I've had innoculations and boosters), malaria, or God knows what else. As a result, I didn't get another cool ball cap that says "Giving Blood Saves Lifes". Until next year.

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Photos

Qi Xing Tan Beach is a Popular Hangout...
...that comes alive after dark. It's safe too--families come down to have dinner and enjoy the sea and sky--and food. You can have a beer with your picnic, without anyone screaming blue murder about it.

They Say that Life is a Mountain, not a Beach...
...but in Hualien we have it all!

The Switchbacks Up the Hill are a Gentle Slope...
...and the trail is paved with a kind of rubber brick.

Sea, Sky, Fishboat...
...and the near infinity of the Pacific Ocean.

View from the Top 1...
...north, to Taroko, Yilan, and the East China Sea.

View from the Top 2...
...south, towards my beloved Hualien and Guangfu.

Outward Bound...
...with a load of cement, or beautiful Hualien marble.

My Camera takes AA Batteries.
One of these days I will be arrested--either for taking pictures of military installations or telling lame jokes, or both.

Pirate Ship Adventure Playground.
Taiwan is a really good place to be a little kid, or an old person.

A Terrible Picture, but Interesting...
...(to me, anyway). The sculpture is two big slabs of jade-like green stone in the shape of a sailboat. Two kids are fooling around, doing a Titanic thing, and giggling when my flash revealed that I had snapped them. I am usually very good about not taking pictures without consent, but teens never seem to mind anyway.

Betel Babe on Rollers.
This is one of the countless little kiosks, each staffed by a scantily-clad attention getter selling betel nuts, smokes, and beer. This one is interesting because it is on a little track. At closing time, they can just roll the whole thing back into the house.

Why Die Thai?
"Wai Dai" is Chinese for "take-out". We often use this place. Most of the foreigners in Hualien are Thai or Filipino, but English is the language most commonly-understood by us all.

Home Before the Thunderstorm.
I left the remaining pictures dark for two reasons. I wanted to create the ambience of a gathering storm, and my legacy digital camera does not allows its pictures to lighten up very well.

Affordable Housing, a la ROC
Four bedrooms and three bathrooms for about 170 thousand Canadian dollars. The places are much cheaper if previously occupied. The homes are quite lovely--often with marble or granite floors, and stone countertops. There is no central heating, but we now have a cool little German oil-filled electric radiator--and we brought warm housecoats back from Canada.

I Guess You Can Only Park...
...on the other side of the sign. So far, I have avoided finding things out the hard way. If you park a car illegally, sometimes the cops will tow you away--and write (in Chinese of course) with chalk on the pavement to tell you where your car has been taken.

There is a lot of Construction Going On
As Taiwan becomes more affluent, more and more people want vacation homes in nice areas like Hualien and Taitung. They want big places for recreational use, because they do things in large groups.