Today the GF and I went to the Lin Family mansion, in the outskirts of the city, in Banqiao. This was once a palatial countryside estate, with views of green hills and forests and fields all around. Now, there are the usual grubby apartment blocks and office buildings creeping up against the walls, with some built on what was once part of the estate. It was, according to the information board, constructed at approximately twice the cost of the newly founded city of Taipei. What remains contains many of the necessities of a civilised life, such as pavilions from which to watch the moon, pavilions from which to admire the surrounding greenery (now gone), pavilions set inside ponds which served as the master’s study, little mountainscapes to remind the family of their home in Fujian, etc. We had tried to visit some weeks ago when it turned out to be shut for power washing, and it was still quite empty despite being free of charge for Taipei residents. Among those who were there was a couple getting a wedding shoot, and what looked like a kindergarten graduation ceremony. We lingered to watch one of the children get his photograph taken; a particularly vivid child, who gave the camera a dazzling smile and a thumbs up, and upon remonstrance, stood stiffly at attention with a presence that extended far beyond his diminutive form.
The only way to see the house was as part of a tour so we resigned ourselves (on my instance, it should be said) to trudge along with the tour group. These guided tours to tend to be soul crushing things, and the information provided is of minimal interest. This was certainly a magnificent place, and the courtyards very beautiful, though the tour was all in Chinese and from the words we could pick up, seemed to consist largely of lists of measurements. The GF, who really hates these things, put in his headphones and zoned out, I tried not to listen and instead to pay attention to the ornament. The group was shepherded along, in addition to the uide, by two volunteers who watched with an eagle eye to chivvy us along, prevent anyone from leaning against walls or taking photos.
We emerged a little worn of spirit and walked around the gardens a little more to revive ourselves. Despite the beauty of the gardens and their trees, and the relatively complete buildings, I found it difficult to imagine what the place must have been like before those apartment blocks were looming overhead and the sounds of a jackhammer broke the countryside quiet. The flats overlooking the garden were all blind, clearly not designed to look down into its pools and pavilions, which seemed odd and sad.
A stronger wine was needed for revival so we decided to go to the lovely Spring Day Nice Day cafe, just by Da’an park. This has some of the nicest coffees we’ve encountered and luckily the owner assembled us a place to sit, under the bookshelves, and guided me in choosing a hand drip coffee (he firmly rejected my first suggestion). I found myself a book from the Taipei Film Festival of 2002, with a very interesting essay on the histories of new wave cinema in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland respectively, and felt much revived.
When it was time to leave it was raining outside. I had foolishly left my umbrella behind, but we decided to walk through the park anyway and I refused the GF’s offer of sharing his umbrella. The rain became torrential and I was soaked, but it was quite warm so enjoyable, and the park was almost completely empty, other than one pavilion in which three people were playing the saxophone. We walked to the lake to see the egrets again, much quieter in the rain than our visit last weekend. Every now and again a large fish would swim up quite close to us, into the reeds, and find itself beached then do an undignified series of hops to turn its body around so it could swim away again. I suppose there was something tasty in the reeds, or maybe the pouring rain hampered their ability to detect the presence of the bank.
As we walked on we spotted a tiny turtle upside down and seemingly dead, in the middle of a path, about 200 metres from the lakeside. I turned it over with a stick and it came back to life. It didn’t look a healthy place for such a tiny turtle so I picked it up, thinking of my pet tortoise when I was little, which lived in the courtyard garden of my grandparents’ home in Lahore. Our current house there is built on a quarter of the property. It was a really young creature, I think: for all my care, its shell flexed slightly. I wonder if a bird had taken it and then dropped it, I couldn’t think how else it would have ended up where it did. I carried it back to the lake and hopped over the fence to find a place to release it as close to the water as I could, and then it was on its own, along with its hundreds of brethren we’d spotted on sunnier days around the lake.
The rain had lessened by now, and by the time we got back to the flat I had developed a raging headache, so was done for the day.