Visiting Hsinchu and NCTU

NCTU, National Chiao Tung (Jiao Tung) University, actually has two options for the business school. The first one was just across the street from my love hotel at the Taipei Main Station area, and the second one’s in Hsinchu (Xinzhu).

I visited NCTU Taipei on my first day in Taiwan. The business school is holding a few floors in the very old Taipei main post office just across the street from the old northern gate (beimen). A very friendly guy greeted me at the entrance hall telling me he just finished his PhD exams and offered me his help in looking around. He kindly took me to see the 2 floors of the small branch showing me the labs and halls. I even got to meet the one Taiwanese who helped me through e-mail when I was still in Israel and while talking things over I also got to meet some of the professors. Later on that day I met with David on Formosa and Vanina’s family.

Next day, I took the train down south to Hsinchu (Xinzhu). With the help of Harriet I was already booked with the guest house at the Kuang-Fu (Guang-Fu) NCTU campus. I struggled my way through with finding the right bus, figuring out where the bus station was, which direction I should take, where I should get off etc. but I somehow finally made it to the empty campus. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect but walking around the campus that night was a nice surprise as the lovely campus had lots of green, small lakes, and decent looking buildings. 

I walked around the city center and came across a few attractions:

• Starting from the old train station, I walked down through the Hsinchu old temples, the most lively being the old City God Temple (cheng2huang2 miao4) from around the late 18th century, I think. The temple was surrounded by a busy food market.
• Not too far away from there I went in to have a look inside a relatively big Cathedral and soon realized that the Philippine community of Hsinchu was holding the English Sunday service. It was interesting, but nothing nearly as inspiring and spiritual as my recent explorations of Christianity in Jerusalem.
• Crossing over the railway into the Hsinchu Science Park area (ke1xue2 yuan2qu1) I stumbled upon the nice and small Hsinchu zoo and then made my way through a Sunday market into the Hsinchu Glass museum.