This is the photo
This is the photo of Chiang Kai-Shek’s memorial hall. It is a popular spot to relax, or participate in outdoor activities. While there are quite a few parks here in Taipei, there isn’t nearly as much open space as I am accustomed to. Virtually no one in the city-proper has space of their own outside of their home. There are no lawns. Large balconies are uncommon. Subsequently when outdoor activities take place, they take place in the public sphere. This gives communities here an interesting dynamic as people interact with one another on the streets.
This Sunday was the mid-Autumn moon festival. The festival involves giving and eating mooncakes, and barbequing with one’s family. I was offered numerous mooncakes in the days leading up to the festival, but due to my dietary restrictions didn’t get a chance to taste them. They are wee compact cakes, similar in shape to an English pork pie, with sweet filling and usually an egg inside. Legend has it that these cakes were utilized during the late days of the Yuan dynasty as a way to communicate messages of dissent, calling for citizens to rise up against their Mongol overlords. Notes were hidden inside of the cakes organizing an anti-Mongol uprising on the day of the full moon, hence the moon festival.
The Barbequing portion of the festival takes place on the sidewalks and streets of the city. Families are everywhere, squatting or sitting on small stools around barbeques eating, talking, and drinking. Everyone shares the public space here. Often families are sitting outside of their shops doing business and celebrating the moon festival simultaneously. In places where there are sidewalks they are smoky and smell of food. In places without sidewalks families are sitting on the streets with cars and mopeds zipping by as they barbeque their meat and fish. At the same time people take advantage of being outdoors with their barbequing implements to burn some ghost money. They have special portable fire-pits just for the purpose. They start a fire and feed it with wad upon wad of ghost money. This pays respect to their ancestors and presumably ensures that they need not go without creature comforts in the afterlife. All of this outdoor activity adds a sense of community to areas of the city, whose North American counterparts are populated with well cocooned individual family units which rarely interact with one another. I enjoy the street culture here. It adds a vitality to Taipei which is lacking in many cities around the world.