Photo festival part 2-A: Adjoined slum and cemetary in Taipei: Part 1-Slum

This is the second installment in my rapid photo gallery posting series to prepare for my new camera, following Part 1 Osaku amateur photographers in Akihabara.

Last summer when I was in Taipei I stayed for a week and change at my friend Cerise’s house, located in a nice new looking development up the hill a bit from Xinhai Station, on the Muzha MRT elevated train line. The area immediately around the station looks to have been a center of carpentry and similar workshops since well before the station was built in the early 1990s (Muzha was Taipei’s first MRT line, built from 1988 and opening in 1996), and still surround it.

Behind the station are several of the aforementioned workshops, beyond which is a hill, upon which is a traditional Chinese cemetery of the kind popular in Taiwan. This is not particulary weird, but what is kind of weird is that in between the cemetery hill and the immediate vicinity of the station is a small cluster of private homes that I can’t describe in one word any more appropriate than “slum”. These photographs are of the area from the station to the beginning of the cemetery, and Part 2-B: Cemetery is the continuation.

All photographs here taken with a Canon 300D camera with 17-85mm EFS lens, on August 1, 2008.

Here are a flash slideshow, recommended for full-screen mode, and HTML for the flash challenged.

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The front of Xinhai station.

The first house you see past the station, built in the classic Chinese U shape but with cheap metal siding in place of the traditional brick.

Child walking down an alley between homes.

The roofs of the slum, with station in background.

One house.

An old man checking his mail.

Some child’s toys left outside.

Looking down from up the hill.

Light cat, dark cat.

Some good luck charms, etc.

A very Taiwanese door.

The Republic Of China flag.

Me.

The village guardian?

Growing some food on the edges of the cemetery.

A drainage channel running past the food garden.

The open court of the community.

Some things piled up behind behind a house, presumably organized in some fashion.

A “Happy new year” announcement. In July.

Piles of junk, near the tracks.

In order of near -> far: Hot Wheels poster, wheelbarow, house, grave, shed, garden, cemetary, woods.

A carpentry workshop almost under the tracks.