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Photos by MJ Klein

Some time ago, we brought you a series on the re-engineering of a large road near our home.  Continuing with that series, we’re now going to take a look at the road that runs behind our house.

This is a shot of the sidewalk, or at least, where the sidewalk used to be (referred to as “pavement” in the UK).  A few days ago, jackhammering began and ran into the night.  The next day, the sidewalk was broken up. A day later, the broken pieces were all removed, and since then it’s been as you see it here.

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Photos by MJ Klein

By the looks of things, this will probably be the last article on the recent makeover in our neighborhood.  If anything else happens I’ll write another article about it and amend it to the series for your convenience.

The way these cars are parked illustrates how much easier it is to park your car for lunch at our local food outlets.  Notice the road has been patched and all traces of the transformers that were in the road have now been cleared.  This was done over the weekend but rain in our area prevented me from going out and getting photos.

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Photos by MJ Klein

This morning, the road crew was back, hard a work to fix up the road.  I took a few shots from my 4th floor balcony and then went down to the road later to check things out.

In our first shot of the day, we see the asphalt truck (yellow) in the center of the frame, waiting for the little blue mini-dozer to course-grade the asphalt.   The asphalt truck laid down some asphalt and the smaller mini-dozer is smoothing it out (grading) before the actual paving machine comes by.

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Photos by MJ Klein

More work has been done on the main road in our neighborhood.

This is a shot from across the street from Shao-hui’s restaurant.  This shot shows the step-down transformers on the old pad at the (now demolished) traffic island, and the new pad to where they will be moved soon (yellow and black stripes).

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Photos by MJ Klein

Well, as you can see, the rubble is gone now.  So are any traces of the trees that once lined this street.  Now I think our neighborhood looks like everywhere else in Taiwan.

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Photos by MJ Klein

Recently, the county of Hsinchu has been modifying the main road near our home.  This is the road where the famous Shao-hui’s restaurant is located.  The road has 2 traffic islands and the county has decided to take those islands out.

I was awakened by the sound of jack hammering.  A bucket machine had a hammer attachment and was breaking up the traffic islands.

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Photos by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I were out the other day, with one of our longtime suppliers and friends.  We came upon this very old tree in the Taichung area:

This incredible giant camphor tree was made into a park to appreciate it.

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Photos by MJ Klein, Hui-chen and David

If I said that I loved Taiwan’s scenic beauty, it would be a classic understatement.  So when we had the opportunity to drive Highway 20 and cross from West to East, I couldn’t have been happier.

We set out from Kaohsiung and drove up towards Tainan, cutting east and then onto Highway 20 just outside of Tainan.  The weather was absolutely perfect!  See those mountains in the distance?  We got a lot closer to them!

Please note that I’ve geotagged this article at the point where we picked up Highway 20 outside of Tainan.

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Photos by MJ Klein

The next place that we went on our trip to East Taiwan was the Sansiantai or the “three faries” as they are called in Chinese.  The most striking feature is the beautiful 8-arch bridge and of course, the natural beauty surrounding it.

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Photos by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I took our good friend David on a whirlwind trip to the east side of Taiwan.  I thought I would share some photos of that trip.  East Taiwan is completely different than the west side of the island and there are many interesting things to see there.

In 2002, I visited an attraction called “Water Running Uphill.”  This is what it looks like:

It certainly looks as if water in this trough it running uphill, doesn’t it?

SPOILER: If you don’t want to know if the water really does run uphill or not, I suggest that you not continue reading this article because I will provide scientific proof one way or another!

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