Episode XVI: Summit, Wall and Rail

(30/01/2007)

Unexpected drop of temperature and gloomy weather kept me from reaching the summit of the Kaohsiung city on the last week of January.

As a city peak and its proudest spot I consider the top of the Sky Tower, the 85-storey-structure that climbs up far over 300 meters. Before the completion of 101 Taipei tower, it was the tallest building in whole Taiwan. Unavoidably it became a symbol of the ocean capital, of the Kaohsiung city.

Apart from the fact that opportunity to fulfill one of my goals was not given to me this time, I have visited some other significant places.

As an inhabitant of Tsoying district, northern part of the city, where Lotus Pond is located, I felt obliged to see old Fengshan city wall, which was raised almost 200 years ago. Gate is square and heavy. Fortification, built from red brick is at least two meters wide, with the space for walking, on the top.

After I have experienced the taste of the past, I met the sign of the future, which is, as well, located in Tsoying district. It looks like an airport but it's not. Actually I have found it accidentally, while I was continuing my walk through nearby indigenous plant garden.

I have crossed the park, passed the spot where we played the flying disc with my friends few weeks earlier and got to the garden's fence. Strolling along the wire I arrived to the place where huge impressive freeways were flying high above my head. It had cleared up and aura was friendly. And there it was. Tall as a tower block, packed as a tanker, shining and glittering, incomparably vaster, brand new Tsoying station.

Newest baby of technological development of Taiwan, high speed railway, connecting north and south and offering extraordinary fast transport between distant destinations in approximately 90 minutes.

We can travel at 300 kmph but does it mean we will have no chance to slow down and see how everything else goes by, while sitting on the bench in the park, somewhere in the north of Kaohsiung?
I hope not. Access to the newest inventions is only available for a small part of a society. It will definitely not change their lives. Probably some of them will never have an occasion to experience it.

But that’s how life looks like. And that’s why I love it.