Over the weekend, Taiwan Observer traveled south of Taipei to check out the hot air balloon festival in Hsinchu. The festival was easy enough to get to with several locations offering shuttle buses to the event, with each ride costing about NT$ 10 a head. It was a blistering hot day with temperatures in the mid 30’s, but only a few tents were set up to accommodate the thousands of visitors expected to turn up for the festivities. The sponsors had prepared a market with all the usual fixings you find in local open-air food markets. An enormous green field had been cleared out to make room for the hot air balloons. There was also a hip little area devoted to kids, furnished with slides that went about 3 stories down, on top of other playground amenities.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. What was it like? In all honesty, it was rather underwhelming. To begin with, we had traveled almost 2 hours to the location, only to find that none of the balloons were on display. We were told by the organizers to return at 4:30 PM to see the balloons in action. And so, we hopped in a cab and went for a few drinks with a friend in town, and headed back 3 hours later, returning just shy of 5 in the afternoon. To our disappointment, there was not a single balloon in the air. With the wind speed being as high as it was at the venue, the organizers prohibited any of the balloons from taking flight. Deciding to make the most of the situation, we decided to live stream the event as is, without the flying balloons, on Taiwan Observer.

The event provided a couple of hot air balloon baskets for people to snap some photos in. A festival attendant was posted next to the balloon and tasked with releasing the burner on top of the basket to spice up the photo op. There was also a large balloon on the ground where children could run around on as wafts of air blew the balloon up around them. The third balloon-related activity involved a large hot air balloon that one could go inside of to take a tour and grab some pictures of. Other than these activities, there wasn’t much else going on, except, of course, the aforementioned slide and market.

We’ll give the festival organizers the benefit of the doubt, as obviously, the weather was out of their control. The balloons did go up for a bit early on Sunday morning, but were grounded for the vast majority of the day, so we had unfortunately missed the opportunity, and weren’t presented with another one. Also unfortunate was the stench from the bathrooms, one that the festival-goers had no choice to endure, as it traveled far downwind. This was a problem only exacerbated by the heat.

The festival was a modest one and was great if you had kids, but this was more than likely a major disappointment for any serious balloon-watchers out there. So, all in all, you could say it was an OK festival. Hopefully, the winds will blow in the festival’s favor next year.

Hot air balloon Festival live stream

 

Hot air balloon festival market live stream

 

Photos from the festival

At the top of the slide

The market

more sellers

Information booth

Today very early in the morning a couple of voluntary Taiwan Observer reporters went to central Taipei to check an autonomous mini city bus that is currently being tested there. The test took place on a short stretch bus lane protected from both sides by concrete barriers on Xinyi rd. (信義路) between Fuxing South rd. (復興南路) and Dunhua South rd. (敦化南路).

After successfully ‘hunting down’ the Ghost bus(driverless bus) in question, which wasn’t difficult at all by the way, our reporters proceeded to broadcasting two Live streams from the scene at the same time:

‘Ghost Bus’ Stream #1

‘Ghost Bus’ Stream #2

 

And below there are few stills from another video:

 

 

 

These buses should soon be implemented as a part of public transportation in bigger cities. The company which develops the technology is 7StarLake Co., which hopes to continue testing the bus in Taipei, and have an even larger stretch of road to test the bus on.

 

There was a 4 hour delay this morning when a downed power line stopped trains on their tracks. The incident occurred this morning at 6:18 am on the tracks between Keelung’s Chidu and Badu districts. The trains didn’t get moving again until 10:18 am, a four hour delay. There were approximately 14,300 passengers delayed, seeing a total of 54 trains that were ultimately affected by the stoppage.

 

https://goo.gl/1fWWtj

Kenbo Liao is a very interesting persona inhabiting the very heart of Taipei City. He lives just a block or two away from Taipei Main Station, three blocks or so on the other side to the Presidential Palace; talking about a Taipei urbanite he is definitely one. His family  has been living in this area for about a century or maybe more, Kenbo’s mum witnessed  bombardment of Taipei on May 31, 1945.  In spite of his what most would call senior age, he is still very active on Taipei’s nightlife scene, too. Meeting and talking to him is like unwrapping another layer of unknown but interesting stories, experiences and vantage points.

Over the years Kenbo has been around and had a chance to meet many interesting people. Many had a chance to find out that he has been an animator for over 40 years with a few breaks. These are photos of one of his studios from early through to late 1980s. These set ups totally look like from another epoch but modern at the same time.

This studio led to creation of many interesting videos like this one:

The Taipei Times covered the animation back in 2007

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2007/10/13/2003383034

One time he sat down in his studio in 1988 and after two years of one-man hard, laborious work he has produced a very interesting masterpiece indeed. This work was completely done on personal computers by Kenbo himself. It came second in a animation video competition ran in Taiwan and it became the first ever computer generated Taiwanese computer video only made digitally.

Now Kenbo has bigger plans. He is allegedly going to start a new cultural entity called Taiwan Culture Ministry 台灣文化部 . It is planned by him to set up a place where artist can come and collaborate freely. Then in longer picture there are plans to take his art around the globe to display as well as perform.

https://www.facebook.com/Taiwan-Culture-Ministry-%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96%E9%83%A8-213248738757427/

Kenb Liao is a Taipei urbanite always trying what is in his power to make the capital city more free, liberated and ready for free, uncontrolled or restricted dialogue.