Ta-An Beach

Look! Blue sky! White clouds! Remember those? I sure don't....farms on the flat plain northwest of Taichung.

Blake once said that Excess of joy weeps. Excess of sorrow laughs. To which should be added: Excess of rain sucks. For those of you into comedy, you can contemplate Ma Ying-jeou's recent remark that he didn't wear underwear during his 10 day bike jaunt around the island earlier this year. That man is a media nightmare waiting to happen. For those of you into tragedy, you can read the slow failure of economic policy here in Taiwan in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (more tomorrow when I feel like blogging again). For those of you trying to recall what the world looked like before it got all waterlogged, last weekend I went out to Ta An Beach outside of Chingshui in Taichung with Joyce, her husband Andrew, and my friend Jason......

Just kilometer after kilometer of straight road on the flat plain northwest of Taichung city.

Irrigation works criss-cross the plain.

Andrew inspects a house in the old San He Yuan style.

The road passes through a graveyard on its way to the beach.

Manly men stride to the beach.

Wind farms are sprouting all over Taiwan, some of whose best wind is found along the northwest coast of the island.

A man goes out to wrest clams from the sands.

As we contemplated the utterly boring sands of Tan-An Beach, a place I don't recommend you go to, some men from the Coast Guard showed up. Had we seen a foreigner swimming in from the harbor over to the beach? They asked us. Nope. The incident provoked a few jokes, but we sobered up a few minutes later...

...when the police arrived with automatic rifles and carried out a short search of the area.

Obviously stimulants were needed to cope with this. Fortunately they are available along every major road in Taiwan.

Back through farm, field, and temple we wound.

Plenty of old buildings to give that great Taiwan atmosphere....

[Taiwan]