Taiwan Birdathon 2012

Taiwan is holding a 30-hour Birdathon event on the weekend of November 24-25, 2012. It starts at 8:30am on Saturday and ends at 2:30pm on Sunday.

It will be held in the southern counties of Yunlin and Chaiyi plus Tainan City. This region is home to great birding sites such as Alishan, Yushan National Park, Huben, Beimen Wetlands, Aogu Wetlands, and Qigu. A wide range of shore and forest birds can be expected, including many endemics and wintering specialties. 

Teams, each consisting of three or four members, will aim to spot as many bird species as possible in the 30-hour period. Foreign teams are especially welcome: Accommodation and food will be provided for November 23-25, and foreign teams can be paired up with local guides if necessary. No registration fee is required.

The event is organized by the Taiwan Ecotourism Association and sponsored by the ROC Tourism Bureau and three national scenic areas: Southwest Coast, Alishan and Siraya.

For more details see the official website (the English section is still under construction) or see Richard Foster's blog post.

Taiwan's Mazu pilgrimage

My friend Rich J. Matheson (who took the cover shot for the first edition of my guidebook) joined part of this year's Mazu pilgrimage. His website includes many photographs of traditional religious events.

The full pilgrimage lasts more than a week and winds through Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin and Chiayi. For an excellent first-hand account of the 2010 pilgrimage, read Noah Buchan's Taipei Times article.

Glove puppets and prison cells

Last week I took my son, a fan of Taiwanese glove puppetry, to Huwei in Yunlin County, home of Taiwan's best-known puppetry troupe, PiLi International Multimedia. The company's name reflects its high-tech approach to the art form; their TV shows (clips here and here) are spectacles full of acrobatic sword-wielding puppets, dry ice, pyrotechnics and sound effects. The photo above is from an exhibition in Kaohsiung a few years back.

In a renovated government building in the centre of Huwei, PiLi has set up a museum. There's very little English but the scores of puppets on display are still worth seeing. (An even better collection of puppets can be seen here). During the Japanese colonial era, the building had multiple functions, one room being divided into three jail cells. Yunlin Glove Puppetry Museum (雲林布袋戲館) is at 498 Linsen Rd Sec 1 (虎尾鎮林森路一段498號); tel 05 636 4826; open Tue-Sun 10.00-18.00.
The town of Huwei owes its growth to Taiwan's sugar industry. According to this article, Huwei's sugar refinery is one of just two on the island that still operate; at the time of our visit, it was belching steam.

The temple town of Beigang

Two photos from our recent excursion to Beigang in Yunlin County, which is between Chiayi and Taichung. The town is home to - you could say it revolves around - a famous Mazu shrine, the Chaotian Temple (北港朝天宫). The photo below shows a votive bell shaped like an axe.