Big city lessons in traditional lifestyles

Visitors spend most of their time in the Folk Artifacts Exhibit Room (open 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.) in the basement of the building at the back of the park. Admission is NT$50 – senior citizens, students and children can get in for NT$20 – and it's worth every dollar.

The collection includes classy pieces of furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl, old machines like looms and rice huskers, agricultural implements and items from Taiwan's aboriginal tribes.

Not everything is labeled in English, but there's more than enough information to please monolingual visitors. Panels explain the importance of blacksmiths and buffaloes to the 19th-century rural economy, and there are recreations of traditional businesses such as a foundry, a fortune teller, an herbal doctor's clinic, and a seller of votive candles and spirit money.

Many items, such as the hand-cranked telephone, date from Japan's 1895-1945 occupation of Taiwan. Some are far older. For everyday items like pillows, it's worth comparing traditional versions (small, rectangular and made of wood or porcelain) with their modern – and surely more comfortable – equivalents.

Especially interesting is the collection of religious paraphernalia: Dozens of censers, fifty-odd josses (most of them wooden, but a few ceramic), plus robes and headwear used to adorn icons. There are pendants inscribed with words and symbols that can ward off evil; small bells, horns and whips used by Taoist priests during rituals; and a few of the special weapons used by shamans to cut themselves during trances.

There's also a carpenter's ruler that bears characters to help the workman ensure the items he's making are auspiciously dimensioned. Artists will enjoy the dozens of woodblock prints.

Before or after viewing the collection, spend a few minutes exploring the building it's housed in. It's an imitation siheyuan (四合院), a four-sided courtyard house. Like the park's other structures – among them a two-story faux-traditional house full of souvenir shops, and a small dwelling made of pounded earth, it was built in the mid-1980s.

Vegetable pickling vats like the one next to the pounded-earth abode are nowadays very seldom seen in Taiwan. The one here, made of wooden planks, is as tall as a man and almost two meters in diameter.

These structures are attractive, for sure, but the old-world effect is somewhat undermined by the nearby apartment buildings, which seem to get into the shot however you take photos. Nevertheless, as a place where one can learn how Taiwanese lived in the days of yore, the Folklore Park is a great success.

HOW TO GET THERE:

The park's address is 73 Lushun Road Section 3, Beitun District (北屯旅順路二段73號). The telephone number is (04) 2245-1310. The Web site, www.folkpark.org.tw, has some information in English and hundreds of photos. A few bus routes link Taichung's main railway station with the park (among them #131, #132 and #136), but services are infrequent. By taxi, the journey won't cost you more than NT$150.

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