My suspicions were partly true about sleeping in when in more comfortable surroundings. However, I can’t say that it was rigorously tested since I went to sleep late the night before, so I might have just been more tired. I did set my alarm and woke to it, planning on hitting one more site before I headed back to my father’s apartment: the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial.
As I understand it, Sun Yat-Sen was a political figure in China in the early 1900’s and was a key inspiration in overthrowing the Qing dynasty. He’s often considered the father of republican democracy in Asia, so has a particular place of reverence in the mind of Taiwanese seeking independence from China. Since I was planning on returning to my Dad’s around noon, I skipped breakfast for now to hit the memorial. Luckily I made it there 15 minutes before the hour. Just enough time to snap some pictures of the outside before the changing of the guard.
The changing of the guard happens every hour, on the hour, although I’m not sure if it happens at night. The changing of the guards is a highly ritualized affair with precision synchronized marching, rifle presentations and twirling, finalizing in two of the five members ascending metal boxes on either side of the memorial to stand guard until relieved the next hour. I took a few videos of the procession, but the files are large and will have to wait for upload until later. The pictures will have to do for now. I hope I wasn’t too blatant about the target of much of my photography, because the guards were using M1 Garands as their ceremonial weapons. As far as I could tell, everything was real meaning they were performing the drills with 10 pounds of gun. The weapons themselves bore bayonets and all the metal was chromed and polished. The stocks were too black to be normal linseed oil treated walnut, so they might have been painted or lacquered. I did get a picture of the receiver markings on one of the guards which displayed the Springfield Armory stamping and the serial number of 5383491, placing it in the same year bracket as mine, 1954-1955. After the ceremony ended and the crowd cleared out, I took some better framed pictures of the memorial statue and headed out for breakfast, skipping most of the informational sections, for brevity’s sake. I would need to head back soon.
Breakfast was Burger King, this completing my western fast food round up, since I haven’t seen a Wendy’s. No, I’m not including Pizza Hut or Domino's since they often add multi-limbed seafood as a topping. With breakfast over, I packed up my belongings and took the MRT back to my father.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, consisting of minor local exploring and some quiet reading and planning of the remaining two days. We did go out to eat one more time with my dad’s friends, at a fancy Chinese buffet. Because my dad is still a little fatigued, we decided to grab a taxi to take us from door to door and all met up at the restaurant. The served a tasty lychee flavored carbonated drink that tasted more like a light citrus than a sweet lychee. Unfortunately, you can’t purchase it anywhere, or I would bring some back so you could sample it. One of my dad’s friends brought his two kids, so I had some English conversation with them, but their level of English competency about equaled my level of Chinese. I could follow most of the rest of the conversation, until they would break out into Taiwanese, which sounds like absolutely gibberish to me. The difference is night and day and I can’t understand a lick of it. Provided translations were lacking.
I hope to do a little more souvenir shopping and find one more Geocache tomorrow. I think the weather will hold out. The past few days have had a 30% chance of rain, which in Taiwan means it will rain, but only at 30% of a full downpour, i.e. a light mist. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll make it to the Taipei Zoo to see the pandas unless I can squeeze it in on Friday. Otherwise, it will have to wait for a return visit.
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