After the breakfast, we took the tour into the NCTA (National Center of Taiwan Arts). The first unusual thing I learned was the purpose behind those loud creaks when opening the center door of Guanghsiao shrine. In old times, important people would enter the shrine from the center door, so if people inside the shrine heard a loud creak they would prepare themselves accordingly to treat their guest.
After that, we made a tour around those old villas replicas, learning more about old customs and proper manners in old times. Later, most of us went to make craftsman of their own choosing, I painted some small umbrellas. I tried to paint a music score on the umbrella like the way George Crumb write some of his compositions... but I failed miserably.
After a very homely lunch we went to visit to Taroko Park and Chin-Sui cliff. First went to a briefing room and watched a video about Taroko Park, one of the eight national parks of Taiwan. The video wasn`t that long but it seemed so because it tried to pick all aspects of the park, from history to geography, from biology to tourism.
The view of the cliffs and the gorge is breathtakin
g, I think anyone can take some ”professional like” photos there.
At the evening we went to stay in the Leader Village hotel inside the valley, between the mountains. At dinner I had a good surprise, and I believe most of the group also had. I can say that my vegetarian food was very well presented. Not only that, the food was tasty, the vegetarian BBQ was well seasoned, so the fruit salad (like Thai cuisine they served fruit as appetizers). Maybe the algae was too spicy, but nothing to blame here, the soup served its purpose, not too seasoned so that I could get the spicy taste out of my mouth.
Finally, at 20:00 we went to see a Taroko (one of the 14 austral-aboriginal ethnic group in Taiwan) folk show. We saw there some traditional dance done by the children, we also listened them performing two typical Taroko instruments. The dance presentation of the children was very good, not only one could notice some blisters in their feet, probably because of tiresome training but also we could see the fruits of that training, they all presented good footwork while dancing, using the tip of their feet when required. About the instruments, couldn`t help to notice that they made so much good songs with so limited notes : “ Re mi sol la”. Though the “la” sounds like “si” sometimes.
Though some youngsters sang one or two songs, the main event of the folk presentation was certainly “ICHI”, a middle-aged Taroko who participa
ted in some singing contest sponsored by a Taiwanese Channel (can`t remember which), it seems that at some point of the contest, he gained the support of all people of the Hualien County.
He certainly sang very well tonight. His voice is pretty powerful and deep. It makes you remember of old times in the history of human civilization where man and the cycle nature weren`t that afar.
Finally, seeing that most of the audience were foreigners, “Ichi” told us that he admired a lot a western singer: Luciano Pavarotti, a tenor singer who died in 2007. And to pay a tribute to Pavaroti, “ICHI” sang the famous song “O Sole Mio”.
23:24, while I’m waiting for the WI-FI of the hotel to work, (maybe it won`t and you`ll all see this post tomorrow) I see the Taroko who was in charge of presenting and explaining all those dancing and singing heating his food in the microwave. I remembered an saying In Brazil that goes like this: “casa de ferreiro, espeto de pau”. I can`t think of a translation right now…
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