David on Formosa

I had a busy day yesterday taking photos around Taichung. The day began at an Aboriginal Cultural Festival organised by the Taichung City Government. The event featured some traditional dancing as well as some fun activities like the three-legged race pictured above and a tug-of-war. There was also a good range of aboriginal style food on offer — plenty of assorted meats on the BBQ and some fresh fruits like grapes and peaches grown in the mountains.

The colorful clothing of the Amis makes for great photos. I have a complete set of photos from this event at flickr. 

In the afternoon I met with Mark and Todd at SOGO for the photowalk. It was only a small group, but that made it easy to wander around and enjoy the streets of Taichung. Mark, a long-term Taichung resident, was a great guide. I am still quite unfamiliar with the streets of Taichung, but the walk helped me discover lots of interesting little streets around the canal district. The photo above is of a vendor in the market on Dalong Road (大隆路). This street is blocked off to traffic where the market selling various handicrafts was set up.

We spotted several VW vans kitted out to sell various kinds of food. This pink one was selling frozen yoghurt. This is in Jingming First Street (精明一街), which is perpendicular to Dalong Road and also has a market. Mark has his photos from the walk in a set at flickr. (Update: Mark has also set up a group at flickr for all the photos from the walk.)

In the evening I went to Emerge Live House, which is located up on the hill near Tunghai University. Emerge has live bands every weekend. The photo above shows Eye of Violence from Taipei. They played with two Taichung bands, Sideffect and Flesh Juicer. Metal seems to be a very popular music style in Taichung. Check my Live in Taichung photoset at flickr for some more photos of live music in Taichung over the past couple of months.