Taipei: Danshui

We took the train to Danshui today to walk around the city. Danshui is a port town north of Taipei known for it's beautiful scenery and sunsets. The Danshui landscape looked like a chinese painting: hilly with lots of mist. The waters that run through Danshui are that of the Pacific Ocean, which, for me, adds to the mystique and romance of the seaside town.



The boardwalk was relatively quiet today besides a few squawking gulls and happy schoolchildren, most likely because of the constant drizzle throughout the day. Our main destination in Danshui was Fort San Domingo, which was the site of European occupation for several centuries. The history of the fort begins with the Spaniards who built a fort on that site in the 1600s. Later that century, the Dutch overtook the area and built their own fort there (which is Fort San Domingo today). The final Europeans to occupy the area were the British, who turned the fort into a British Consulate in the 1800s and remained so until the twentieth century when the Consulate fell into disuse and was eventually converted into a museum.



The red fort was particularly striking today against the overcast sky and the bright green of the spring lawn. As we meandered through European drawing rooms, studies, kitchens, and servant quarters, I found it interesting how all of this this was still use a mere half century ago. The British Consulate was still in use in my grandmother's time and, yet, the fort seems like such a relic of the past now. It made me realize how distant the past can seem in our consciousness when in fact it's much closer to our present lives than we may think.



Outside the fort was a Japanese wishing wall. We all wrote our wishes on placards and hung them from hooks on the wall. "To living and learning"