Hsin Chu

I took a side trip to HsinChu, my wife and I worked at the National Center for High Performance Computing in HsinChu in 1992 to 1994. Our children spent two years in the Bilingual School of the HsinChu Science Park. I think it was a good time for our family, I'm a little nostalgic about HsinChu.

Armed with my google maps I sent out for HsinChu. It was a 4 hour bus ride from Tainan with a bus transfer in TaiZhong. I got let down on the main road Guang Fu Lu. HsinChu is famous for Gong Wan and Mi Fen, Gong Wan are pork meatballs and Mi Fen are rice noodles and there are plenty of shops selling them on Guang Fu Lu.

Our rented house in HsinChu was a typical place with a small foot print but five stories high to get a high total square footage. But the stairs could be tough. Here's the front:

Eli and Ely went to this school for 2nd to 4th grades, 15 years later it seem like it hasn't changed.

All the parents had to decide where their children would go to college, US or Taiwan. The Taiwanese National Exam to get into college is so tough that the bilingual school was probably not rigorous enough to get you child to pass the National Exam. So if the child was going to college in Taiwan, they eventually transferred out to a Chinese school.

Florence and I worked at NCHC, the National Center for High-Performance Computing. In those days we were "electronic migratory workers" going wherever the computing jobs were. Our kids when to a dozen schools before we eventually settled in Bellevue. Sorry about that.

I visited the NCHC building and the guard took my picture.

From NCHC I walked to the Gu Chi Fong Museum/Temple that was one of my favorites in HsinChu. Google maps are good but they don't show gates, this can be particularly a problem when the gate is closed and you're in a walled off area. I was looking at a 1 mile walk back and I explained my problem to a security guard. He showed me where I could climb over the wall.

Gu Chi Fong has fallen on hard times since the 1990s. many of the displays are packed up and the layer of dust is pretty thick. The garden area is blocked off. Anyway I have some pictures from the 1990s. The temple business is still going strong.


Buddhist Statues

From Gu Chi Fong I walked back to the train station. It is another station built during the Japanese Time that is still going strong.

Station Front

Station Back

The train back to Tainan took only 3 hours but costs twice as much as the bus ride, $561NT. I have one crazy picture from old HsinChu:

I checked out the cab, there wasn't any blood, so I think this was a case of the hand brake wasn't set and the van rolled down the hill until it was stopped. Those cement telephone poles are strong.