WARNING: Long post, many images!
North of me there is a place called Mituo. Before the KMT gerrymandering it was a small village (smaller than the one where I live now) in Kaohsiung county, then it became a district of Kaohsiung city. Mituo has a fishing harbour, but a very small one. I went there once, accidentally, when I got lost at an intersection. I saw the harbour, knew I was wrong and turned around.
Today I got lost again, ended up there again, but thought "Why not?" After all, I was there, so I got off the bike and went around. And boy was I impressed.
If you ever come to Taiwan and get to the West coast sea side, you will see walls. Walls are useful. They protect you from all kinds of unpleasant things, like strong waves or uninvited invasions. People need walls. They do however come with one significant drawback: They look boring.
Many solutions have been suggested to deal with this problem, but one of the most successful throughout history has been to paint them. Where I live, the appearance of the seawall (parallel to the sea) suggests that it was painted by pupils, very likely of the elementary school right next to it. There is nothing wrong with that fact, it merely lets you expect a certain style.
The wall protecting the pier in our harbour is however not decorated at all. Not the least bit. It's grey.
I didn't check the seawall in Mituo, but the pier wall: Whoa! That IS a piece of art!
Everything you see on the wall that is not plain grey cement has been drawn, including all the arcs.
Simply thanks to all the arcs you have the feeling that you can see the sea on the other side, you never feel like walking next to a boring grey wall.
And the images? I had to laugh so many times! Whoever came up with these designs didn't just do it for the money.
The only regret I felt was because you can't climb this wall (unlike ours), you can't see what's on the other side.
I heard pretty strong waves from the other side and there was one spot where the waves would send some water over the wall from time to time, so it must have been pretty impressive.
So we could only walk there and enjoy the images (which I thoroughly did), although I also saw a few people fishing.
One thing that did baffle me though was the complete lack of boats. I saw a number of bollards, mostly in a rather desolate condition, but no boats at all.
It took me a while to realize that I was looking at the entrance basin of the harbour, while the real basin was farther inland.
There I did indeed see lots of fishing boats of all sizes, plus one that looked suspiciously like a motor yacht.
Which is odd, because Taiwan has designated each harbour as either class 1 or class 2, with class 2 only being open for fishing vessels, so yachts may only go to class 1 harbours. Mituo is a class 2 harbour.
However, that was no problem, because I was very obviously looking at a fishing boat that only looked like a motor yacht. How could I know?
Well, this is no joke: The boat had "Professional Fishing Boat" written in large, friendly letters on its hull, across half the length of the boat.
See? It says that it's a fishing boat, right there on the hull, so there can be no doubt that it's a fishing boat.
I wish every problem could be solved that easily...
While I was really envious about their wall, their "beach" didn't really deserve that name.
Admittedly there is nothing golden or white about our beach. Only two beaches on the island of Taiwan are "white" and at least one of them does not contain sand, but tiny shell fragments. If you want a white/golden beach, go to Penghu (Pescadores).
So our beach IS grey, yes, but it opens towards the sea. You can look across the sea from the beach towards the horizon. (Which many people do at sunsets...) But not so in Mituo.
Here you have a small stretch of grey sand inside the first harbour basin, but believe it or not: children were playing there. (Someone needs to tell them about our beach...)
But I have to admit that small Mituo did a magnificent job of making their harbour look and be absolutely fabulous! Should you ever be in the South of Taiwan, try to spare the time for a visit.
And finally, after all those images of walls (sorry for that, but that wall simply DOES look amazing), as proof that my whole story wasn't made up, let me present to you: a professional fishing boat!
#Taiwan #Mituo #myphoto #notmyharbour #art
