Taipei Botanical Garden

This morning in Taipei started as partly cloudy and switched to partly sunny. The forecast called for no serious threat of rain. The temperature before I set out for the day was a degree or two below normal room temperature and was forecast to rise to about normal room temperature and stay there for the rest of the daylight hours. I thought it was a perfect day to hit a park. Or if not hit it, at least walk through and sit in it.

Hence, I started in the Taipei Botanical Garden.

I then walked over to the river that runs by Taipei to take a gander at it.

Taipei Botanical Garden

The Taipei Botanical Garden is a green paradise with towering trees, lush bushes, vibrant flowers, and even a few tranquil ponds.

One of the ponds had some fish in it. They were hard to see because their coloration camouflaged them in the greenish-grey water. I wouldn’t have looked for them were it not for a sign beside the pond that said “NO FEEDING.” I assume the Chinese on the sign said the same thing. I wouldn’t know.

I thought that sign was ambiguous. Was I not supposed to feed the fish? Or was I not supposed to feed on the fish? I fault the Taipei Botanical Garden for not being clearer.

Then again, it didn’t matter. I had neither food for the fish nor fishing gear to catch them. So I just enjoyed the pond.

The Taipei Botanical Garden also has a couple of small themed gardens set off from the rest of the park by hedges and low fences, and an opening through which to enter them. One was a Buddhist Garden and another was the Botanists Memorial Garden.

Buddhist Garden

The sign in front of the Buddhist garden explained that important phases in the Buddha’s life—birth, enlightenment, teaching, and nirvana—can be represented by a tree. The Buddha attained enlightenment under a Bodhi tree, making it the most “famous.”

“Famous” was the sign’s word, not mine. To be honest, I think Bodhi trees need a better PR agent. I’d never heard of them.

Heck, the spellchecker on my iPhone even thought it was a spelling error. However, when I used the lookup feature on the red-underlined “Bodhi,” it took me to an entry for “Bo tree,” which said it’s also known as the “Bodhi tree.”

Hey, spellchecker, stop being so lazy. That information is right there for you to access yourself. Look it up. If “Bodhi tree” is an alternate name for “Bo tree,” accept it and move on.

On the other hand, I’d never heard of a Bo tree either. The two names should get together so that, as a joint venture, they could afford better marketing.

The Buddhist Garden had one example of a Bodhi tree, but unless I missed a larger one or misinterpreted the sign, the only one I saw was barely a sapling. Grow, little Bodhi tree. Grow.

There were also other trees associated with Buddhism in the garden.

Botanists Memorial Garden

The Botanists Memorial Garden also had a sign out front. The top half was in Chinese, the bottom half was in English. The English portion of the sign started by talking about the important work carried out by botanists in Taiwan in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

I don’t know what the bottom part of the English said because a bush with densely packed leaves entirely obscured it. I might have liked to know what the rest said, but I thought that being hidden by plant life was appropriate for a botanists’ memorial garden.

Chinese Zodiac Plants

A section in the Taipei Botanical Garden is devoted to plants related to Chinese zodiac signs. It’s not a distinct garden like the Buddhist or botanist garden. It’s just some plants and trees on either side of a path, an explanatory sign at one end of the section, and label signs in front of each plant or tree.

The explanatory sign says that some plant species’ names include the names of Chinese zodiac signs. The sign didn’t say if this connection was coincidental or if the inclusion of the zodiac sign names was intentional.

In any case, some of these plants grow in this section.

Before I continue, enjoy the other pictures I took in the Taipei Botanical Garden that appear immediately below. Then, please continue reading below that.

December in the Taipei Botanical Garden

Now that you’ve had a chance to take in the greenery and flowers in the photos above, out of sympathy for anyone in a northern climate reading this contemporaneously, I will not—I repeat not—point out that it’s decidedly into December now.

And while I’m definitely not pointing it out here, I was reminded that back home in Toronto, this is the season of signs beside tall buildings saying something along the lines of “BEWARE OF FALLING ICE“ to warn of the hazards that may fall off roofs and balconies. In contrast, here and there in the Taipei Botanical Garden, there are signs warning, “CAUTION. FALLING LEAVES.”

I’ve never considered falling leaves to be much of a hazard, but I appreciate the Taipei Botanical Garden’s effort to keep me cheerful by warning me of falling leaves in December.

Then again, I’m also reminded that this trip has only about a week left to go. If I ever feel the urge to reread these pages when I’m back in Toronto, I’ll have to remind myself not to do so until we’re out of the grip of winter.

Tamsui River

There’s a river that runs through Taipei, the Xindian River, which is a tributary of the Tamsui River. The two rivers merge in Taipei. Technically, the Xindian River doesn’t run through Taipei. It forms the boundary between Taipei City and New Taipei City, which are separate municipalities. New Taipei City used to be called Tapei County, but they changed the name to make it more confusing for visitors.

My walking tour app doesn’t list any sites in New Taipei City. My guidebook does mention its existence, but just in passing. So I won’t be going there.

My walking tour app also didn’t mention any sights by the river. My guidebook mentioned a restaurant and a bar beside the river at a point a fair distance from where I was this morning, but it also mentioned riverside pedestrian and cycling paths.

Even if there weren’t any named sights there, I still wanted to look at the river. When I finished with the Taipei Botanical Garden, I looked at Google Maps for the closest place by the river with a green blob beside it indicating a park and went there.

The river is nice, but not spectacular. And the park was kind of humdrum. The park had scraggy grass, tennis courts, and some exercise bars at different heights.

As my guidebook said, there were walking and cycling paths. They were adjacent to to each other with no physical separation, just painted lines, between them. The cycling paths had stencilled bicycles painted on each path pointing in the intended direction of bicycle traffic.

I didn’t walk far on the pedestrian path because it was around lunchtime and there were no restaurants by the river near where I was. But I wasn’t sure I was even supposed to be walking on it. Stencilled on the pedestrian path were two stick figures, an adult and a child, holding hands. I didn’t have a child with me. If I’m legally required to have one to walk on the path, the least they could do is rent loaner youngsters for childless people who want to take a stroll.

I spent a very short time walking on the path in defiance of the “must be accompanied by a child” rule and then went off in search of a place for lunch.