Yingge

Posted on by Chris

Saturday, March 11th

A short train ride outside of Taipei is the city of Yingge, known for its ceramics.

No ceramics, but pretty representative of what a smaller town in Taiwan looks like.

Before we left: breakfast! Our hotel recommended the place, it was bustling and nobody spoke any english nor had pictures up we could point to so Christy once again came through and managed to get some kind of vegetable (we think) concoction and deep fried churro type object, inside a rice roll.

The main attraction in Yingge is the Yingge Ceramics Museum.  This is a fun museum; it starts out describing how ceramics are made (the demonstrations on decorating were great) and then as you go up the floors it talks about Yingge’s history in particular and then features a few galleries hosting recent artwork.

“Collections” by Huang Ting-shian, 2016 (porcelain, wood, paint, hand building).  So many pretty things!
Christy examines “The Twittering Dreamland” by Tang Hsuan. The work was all inside a small room which you looked through windows to see.
“I”ve got a great idea! I’ll take this picture with us looking right into the sun!.” We left the museum and headed towards the Sanying Art Village.  Someone has helpfully installed a sculpture park of giant bowls (like the one over Christy’s shoulder) and other ceramics.
The Chinese zodiac is a common theme for artwork here. A lion stands in the foreground at the Sanying Art Village.

Yingge is one of the intentional tourist areas in Taiwan, which are interesting to see.  The walking paths and giant crazy sculptures have been added, and it does make the place more interesting and easy to get around.  There weren’t many other tourists; we weren’t there on any holiday and recent pushes for Taiwanese independence have caused China to claim its citizens are unhappy with Taiwan and less interested in visiting.  Of course, the government also controls the issuing of passes needed to visit Taiwan, so hard to say what’s causing the drop in tourist supply.  Regardless, tourism has taken a hit both in Yingge and at our next day’s destination: Taroko Gorge.

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2 thoughts on “Yingge”

  1. Chris, you were eating one of my favorite breakfast treats! Yin get is no longer the sleeping little town I used to visit decades ago when I was a school girl. Glad that you and Christy had a wonderful time there!

  2. We had a fun visit, great to see the sights in Taiwan. As for breakfast, it was tasty, do you know what the crispy fried object in the middle was?

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