Today was a busy travel day. We woke up early to ride on the High Speed Rail to Hsinchu in which we got to see Hsinchu Science Park. Our first stop when we arrived was to the Science Park Exploration Museum in which we got to see an array of new inventions that were being made at the park, one of which was a Scooter powered by Hydrogen gas. I thought that this was a cool idea to promote sustainability, however given that the scooter could only travel 80 km and its top speed was 15 km/hr, it doesn’t seem to be that useful of a product (yet?). After the museum we had a quick lecture on what Science Park does and a tour around the area. A couple of things I thought were cool was that Hsinchu Science Park is home to the #1 IC foundry in the world, with TSMC providing 95% of IC chips to the world. I also thought it was awesome that their three main goals (innovation, inclusion, and sustainability) contained sustainability as I think many innovation and manufacturing areas, in the past, have not factored in the idea of sustainability when making products. So, I found it cool that the businesses at Hsinchu Science Park are trying to manufacture more efficient and environmentally friendly things.
Afterwards, we headed closer to Hsinchu’s old city, also known as Guanxi. We walked around the city for a bit and then were able to see the Hsinchu City God Temple and the eastern city gate (photos below). I noticed that this temple, like all of the others, had a spider ceiling at the entrance, and had a pond with Koi fish. Similar to the Longshan temple, there was some Buddhist fusion as well, with a separate wing containing a seated Buddha and some Bodhisattvas.
On our way to the hotel we stopped at Rainbow Village, which was super cool to see. I found the story about it to be both interesting and sad. I thought it was so cool that one guy painted the whole village trying to keep the memory of the community alive, however sad in the sense that people vandalized the area in 2022. This is why many of the walls are covered up and the new designs, done by people in the city, do not match what the old man painted.
We then checked into our really nice hotel. Kyla and I had a delicious steak dinner with the professors, and we are super grateful for the time we get to spend with them. After dinner, we headed out to a night market recommended by our uber driver. It was cool to see another night market with a different set-up, and Kyla and I got some dessert!
