Peculiar Road Signs

Travelling through a foreign country unevitably leads to the encouter with roadsigns. Some are clear as sunshine - no doubt about their meaning even if the language is not readable. However, some are less clear. And then there are some, which display complete new insights in obvious habits of the local people.

This one is easy and clear to understand, although it is in Chinese. Do you see the nice triangle hat? Cute, isn't it? I can't even remember, do our European road workers wear a helmet on the signs?

The one on the above right is also obvious. Although the many words below the sign trouble us. Is that important information? Probalby even very important?

So it becomes a relief to find English translation at the bottom of other road signs. (Although, this one is not really important information. We could have missed that one out...)

Sometimes I wish they would not provide the translations... poisonous snakes and bees...iiihhh! And why on earth would you want to bomb fish? What have they done to you???

We knew that weather conditions are different from Europe, but the consequeces of typhoons can really be nasty...

This one was particulary interesting for its English translation. We wonder what "currentis swift water", "deep danger" and "amusement water perfomance swimming" are??? - Nonononono! I don't want to know the answer....

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We found another nice picture to torture your mind: What is it? (Answer in one of the next postings!)

Falling Leaves

We saw a rather peculiar sign on our campus today:


How on earth can falling leaves endanger people passing by? Can innocent leaves be a lethal threat to humans?

Turning our eyes towards the sky, we realised why the sign has its justification:


Here you see Kamil, vividly illustrating the harmful potential of falling leaves.

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We still owe you the solution to our picture-riddle from January, 22nd 2008.
The picture shows rolls of rice-seed mats, which are used to replant rice fields. These rolls are loaded on a special rice-field tractor, which cuts the rolls into small pieces and plant the seedlings one by one into the flooded field.

Night Market in Taipei

One evening this week, we paid a visit to one of the numerous night markets in Taipei. These markets burst of live and are cramped with little shops and stands aligned along a narrow street offering all thinkable kinds of goods and foods. Between these stands, crowds of people squeeze through searching for something to buy. (On a rainy night and being tall Europeans, this becomes an eye-endangering slalom, where one wishes to wear really big safety goggles or even better ski or diving goggles...)


We had a Taiwanese friend with us, Mong-Han, who helped us to find a good place to eat, and he explained us many details of the night market, e.g. how to order a meal at one of these cook shops. Actually, this is not so difficult: You pile all food that you like to eat (sorry, I was wrong - that's the difficult part as you do not have a clue what these green thingies, meaty pits and pieces, and tofu-like lumps are...) in one of the plastic bowls and hand it to the cook, who will chop the food into small pieces. Then (and that is the even more difficult part) you have really to keep track on your basket, as your basket is going from one cook to another, who will eventually pour all your food into a metal basket, which he is inserting in a big pot with soup, where in two other baskets somebody elses food is already cooking.
After a short time, your food is ready, and you nod to get some spicy sauce on top. So there you are with your plate full of delicious food in one hand and .....yes, of course! .... chopsticks in the other....




Here are some impressions of the food stands in a night market in Taipei (really fresh fruits, and every - really every - part of ducks: intestines, claws, heads, throats,...).


We close this posting with a picture taken from the crossing next to our apartment: Tapei 101 at night.

Some touristic aspects of our Taiwan excursion

After a conference on arc continent collision (IGCP 524) in Tainan, we went on the six-day geologic excursion. We briefly told about the geological aspects of this trip in the previous posting. Nevertheless, we do not want to miss the opportunity to mention also some touristic aspects of this travel.
We travelled from south to north along the east coast, encountering a breath-taking richness of green plants and colorful flowers. Here are just a few examples. (The Bougainvilleas are specially dedicated to Micha's mom!) And Christmas Red seems to be growing exuberantly, more like a weed than a luxurious plant as know previously to us (and - same procedure as every year - suffering inescapably death in exactly one week after its purchase).

We also encountered a delicious fruit, called Buddha-head. They are about the size of a grapefruit, green, and have a bumpy, structured skin. Their taste is very sweet, with a hint of banana and pear. Only one drawback they have indeed: they are really messy to eat!
From rain-forests to the coast: the landscape changes quickly and impressively.



And yes, we also had some really hot and sunny days, here a picture of the tremendously steep eastern coast and the Pacific Ocean.




On our trip, we passed some Buddhist pagodas (here a picture of the "Eternal Spring Pagoda" in the Taroko Gorge). We also noticed, that in almost every house a small altar for different gods and goddesses is lighted by red lanterns in the families' living room, which - conveniently for our observations - always is directed to the street side.

And finally, some nosy monkeys, we encountered on our trip. (Here, we have to tell a small anecdote: Cees, a originally Dutch geologist, now in Canada, exclaimed excitedly on the sight of the monkeys: "Ah, monkeys! Our small relatives!" Alex, his post-doc, cynically answered: "You mean, YOUR relatives. The Dutch have been here colonizing before...")


And before we close this posting for today, here is a small picture riddle: What is this? (Answer follows in the next posting!)

IGCP 524 Excursion on Arc-Continent Collision – some geological highlights

Following a 2-day conference at the National Cheng-Kung University in Tainan, we participated in a 5-day field trip in the framework of the IGCP (International Geological Correlation Program) 524 Project on Arc-Continent Collision.

The itinerary led us from Tainan down to the southern Hengchun Peninsula, then from the southernmost tip of Taiwan north along its highly picturesque east coast. We visited the Coastal Range itself and the very linear Longitudinal Valley between Taitung and Hualien. Northwest of Hualien, we then went into the Taroko Gorge, an area of supreme natural beauty, indeed! From the Taroko Gorge we started our journey back to Taipei along the long, winding and often quite narrow coastal highway.




Hengchung Peninsula

At the beginning of our excursion, we visited outcrops of the Kenting Melange on the southern tip of the Hengchun Peninsula. We were not able to see the ultramafic rocks within this mélange in any outcrop, so we instead had to besiege a peridotite used for erecting a monument near Hengchung.



The Sheting Nature Park at the eastern coast of southernmost Taiwan offered us some superb exposures of turbiditic sandstones … plus lots of wind gusts that brought the waves crashing in on the coast.



While arguing with John on the sandstone petrography didn’t bring Kamil out of his balance yet, the strong gusts of wind higher up at a scenic stop a little later certainly did!




Back in Hengchung, we visited the Hengchung Western Hills, The topography of these hills was created by the uplift of Pleistocene (sic!) limestones. The hills slope gently eastwards. The Taiwanese geologists explain their uplift by active west-vergent thrusting just off the coast.



Coastal Range

This part of the trip gave us insight into the processes related to the collision of the Luzon Island Arc with the Eurasian continental margin. On a traverse through the Coastal Range along road no. 23 between Tungho and Fuli, we crossed a NNE-trending syncline. The predominantly igneous rocks in the structurally deeper part build up the high topography, whereas the predominantly finegrained, volcaniclastic and easily erodable forearc sediments in the core of the syncline form nicely arable land with lots of plantations. The picture was taken near Shihoang, looking south.

The largely volcaniclastic, grain-supported conglomerates immediately overlying the igneous succession feature very systematically E-W-trending, subvertical fractures related to E-W-shortening. Coral fragments stem from reefs fringings the volcanic edifices.





... and all along the Coastal Range, we encounter the very enigmatic Lichi Melange. Its origin (real tectonic mélange or olistostrome) caused longlasting debates among all excursion participants ....



Active faults in the Longitudinal Valley

A traverse across the south-draining Peinan River near Kuanshan offered a nice view across the wide Longitudinal Valley. Actually, this wide, braided river is rather atypical of the valley, as it hosts a great number of rice terraces. The Kuanshan rice has a very high reputation, of which we were fully convinced after enjoying a meal at a local restaurant.


And then, finally, finally, we saw a truly active structure: the Chihshang fault! This blind thrust is creeping mostly aseicmically – at a rate of 2 cm per year in horizontal and in vertical direction! On the photo, you see Micha standing on a concreted wall of a river channel, which was built 13 years ago (The green bar is an extensiometer installed by the Central Geological Survey of Taiwan). This wall shows a rupture induced by an upwarping fold at the tip of the Chihshang fault. The once circular water tube is visibly flattened. (See, Adrian, that’s how active structures should look like!!! ;-> )



Taroko Gorge

In the deeply incised Taroko Gorge, the metamorphic rocks of Taiwan (the Tananao Complex) are exposed. Marbles, quartzites, greenschists and granitic intrusions show fantastic large- and small-scale structures that are very attractive, even for non-geologists.

Our apartment

After staying the first days with John and his wife Barbara (which are wonderful hosts, and both gave us a lot of information how every day's life is working in Taipei - not to mention the vast recycling rules... but this is another topic we will present you an other time here in the blog), we finally moved in our apartment. The flat is quite big and has three bedrooms! We had to clean it thoroughly, but now we settled in and are quite happy. While cleaning, we made a curious discovery:

A dragon was once haunting our apartment!!!

Well, the truth is, that this guy is just about 2.5 cm and rather a lizzard than a dragon, but we still take it as a good sign, as dragons are regarded as signs of luck in the Chinese world.
But here is the whole story: The previous tenants of our flat mus have been exceedingly anxious about draft so they attached transparent plastic foil all around the windows. The plastic foil was taken down but sticky traces of tape remained on the window frames. And on one of these window frames we found the mummified remains of this poor little fellow trapped in the sticky glue....