Pinglin was great! Only about an hour's ride outside of Taipei city, Pinglin is has beautiful mountains and scenery. There you may find tiers/layers of tea leave plants on the slopes. Moving my eyes away from the scenery back to the exhibits at the tea museum, I read about how tea is picked, dried, rolled, dried again, tumbled, and pounded into its to-be sold form. Amazingly, the machines to do this kind of work have not dramatically changed over the years. Sure, they have gone from manual labor to manually operated, but the design of the roller and drying racks still hold onto antiquity.
After Pinglin, our crew of 8 headed out to Shifen's "Old Street". The town is divided in two by a train that passes through the center, reminiscent of the days when it shipped out Taiwanese coal to the rest of the nation. More famous than its coal mine, which is now shown off by its last work and his wife, is the lanterns. Standing about 3 feet tall, these paper balloons are fired by oiled paper and let go into the night sky, soaring high above. Ironically we are asked to calligraphize (is this even a word?) our hopes and dreams onto the balloon before it is released. Let dreams soar.
What can I say? I ate deep fried tea leaves and green tea noodles and watched my hopes and desires float away....
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