Birthday Park

If you walk along the alley that leads from the harbour to the wine bar but instead of turning into the wine bar street continue on in the same direction you will shortly come to my favourite Kaohsiung park. 

I’ve not asked any official source for the derivation of its name - Birthday Park  - but locals have put forward three suggestions.  These are that when finally created the much-promised but much-delayed park felt like a gift to the townspeople; that its because a public library was built in a corner of the park - another gift-to-the-townspeople theory; or that it got the name because of the gift of a corner of the park to a developer to allow the building of an expensive apartment block there.

In the park in addition to a large open, grassed area, there is an area for children to practice skating,  a maze for children, a big pond, a shady area where people can sit at tables and the brand new library on the edge of the park. There are also a few sculptures and  a large sundial.

People visit the park at all hours though, in the middle heat of the day, there’s usually not very many people. Those that are in the park at that time are probably making their way to the library to enjoy the air conditioning.

People go to the park to walk, jog, dance - you’ll find groups of teenagers practising dance moves and usually recording them on their phones, to make use of the exercise bars, exercise themselves or their pets, or just to sit on benches and chat with relatives or friends.  

Under the trees you’ll see groups of elderly people doing Tai Chi or playing Go,  Chinese chess or some form of card game. Recently I’ve noticed these elderly groups have taken to playing a gambling game in which two coins are tossed in the air and bets placed on a showing of two heads or two tails. In Australia it’s called two up.

Gambling is illegal in Taiwan so instead of playing for money, they play for picture cards. Popular picture cards are those of animals or plants which are extinct or on the edge of extinction. Higher value cards represent those countries which have the highest rate of wildlife extinction. It’s a way one of the environmental groups have used to try to increase awareness of wildlife extinctions.

There are usually a few squirrels scampering about in the trees during the daytime but it’s very rare to see any of the koalas which were imported along with some eucalypts.

The Taiwanese call koalas wú wěi xióng meaning bear with no tail.  The inclusion of the word bear in the name is considered quite incorrect by people who believe koalas are not a type of bear. For some time they have been quite vigorous in calling for a change to the koalas’ Mandarin name.

At one time a lone protester would often be seen near the eucalypts. The protester had a bicycle adorned with hand-painted signs and old CDs. The CDs purpose was, it was thought, to gain attention to the bicycle and its signs by reflecting light in various colours. The signs the protester had prepared called on people to change the name from wú wěi xióng to ào kè.  This would remove bear from the Mandarin form of the name and thus not mislead people into thinking a koala is a sort of bear.

On the placards the protester wrote the Mandarin characters 澳客 [ào kè]  which would translate as Australian guest and would be quite a nice name for the koalas. Unfortunately, the protester didn’t think through that ào kè is a homophone and when spoken could be understood either as Australian guest or - a Taiwanese colloquialism  - troublesome guest. 

In verbal discussions on radio and TV  people claimed - perhaps deliberately - that they were unsure as to whether the protester was wanting a name change or wanting to get rid of the koalas.   

Both aims seemed perfectly plausible as some people welcomed the koalas while others thought that koalas, like the eucalypts, were a foreign species which would cause environmental damage in Taiwan. As a result the focus of the protest got lost. 

After some years with no official response to the protest the protester stopped coming to the park.  The bike with the placards and CDs attached was recovered nearby and, to everyone’s surprise, all the CDs were found to be recordings of the very unexpected bellowing, grunting and wailing noises Koalas make and every CD contained a different recording.

In the park, near the eucalypts, there is as now a small brass statue of a bicycle with a protester holding a placard sitting alongside it.  At the base of the statue are the words, “Their call was not heard”. 

At night - perhaps to make up for the fact that previously the koalas’ and the protester’s  calls were not heard - at random intervals the statue emits one of the many different koala sounds recorded on the CDs. These sounds can be quite frightening to hear especially if you are alone in the park but so far there has been no move to discontinue the practice.

The small lake in the park has a stream running into it. At the top of the stream there is usually a vendor selling sausages. When people order sausages the vendor places them on a small bowl-like boat which then floats down the stream to where the customers wait. A mechanical hand on the boat reaches out, customers put money in the hand and then another mechanical hand throws the sausage to the customer.

If by chance something goes wrong and the sausage falls into the water it’s eaten by a large fish which the locals call Korea Fish. The fish is named after a local politician, Hán Guóyú.  A homophone of his name in Mandarin translates to English as Korea Fish.  The locals use the English translation when talking about this fish. 

 It’s thought the fish got this name because, like every politician, Korea Fish is very showy and attention-seeking,  and is always looking for what in English we refer to as a free lunch. The sausages provide a lot of free lunches for this Korea fish. 

Children are amongst the vendor’s best customers. They often buy the sausages after having been to online skating sessions near the maze or after sliding down the sundial’s gnomon. This sliding does border on being slightly dangerous as the gnomon’s highest point is about 4 metres high. Parents wouldn’t be able to catch the children if they fall but so far there’s been no serious accident. Some consider sliding down the gnomon a good introduction to parkour which has a large following in Taiwan.

The maze too is very popular even though at one time one of the children was lost in it. The child was missing for such a long time that the parents worried it had disappeared altogether. When eventually found the child was carrying a small echidna which, the child claimed, had come out through a small hole in a nearby eucalypt tree. The echidna was taken to the local zoo but mysteriously disappeared not long after. 

The cart selling take away coffee located near the maze is now called Amazing Echidna and in addition to coffee - one choice being an echidna form of Kopi luwak  - sells some biscuits called Echidna eggs. Though not made from actual echidna eggs they are topped with slices of quail egg and the biscuits themselves appear speckled because of the variety of small grains used to make them. The cart also provides echidna quill stirrers though these are actually made from porcupine quills as echidna quills are hard to obtain in Taiwan.

My favourite time to visit the park is around 4 pm. This is toward dusk when, because temperatures are cooler, it's the time pet-owners bring their pets for exercise. The variety of pets and their different exercise regimes are extremely varied. The pets include, besides the ubiquitous small dogs, hedgehogs, frogs, lizards, and small and large varieties of birds including parrots or falcons. On occasion one or two police horses might be present but they are there as observers not for exercise.

At one time to try to make exercise opportunities fair, fun and efficient, lines were drawn up on a flat area of the park and pet-races were held.  Slower animals were given either a distance or a starting handicap. It was quite fun watching guinea pigs racing against frogs for example but in the end, as most of the animals weren’t very good at understanding race rules and because one of the hawks swooped down and took somebody’s frog the races ceased to be held. 

I often see the proprietor of the wine bar at the park.  She takes a chair to the area where there are lots of eucalyptus trees. She knows it’s not good environmental practice to import foreign species but it is a pleasure to smell the trees on a warm day especially when eating Violet Crumble bars or Anzac biscuits.

She can frequently be seen reading an oversize edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass.  By oversize, I mean about 50 cm tall and 35 cm wide. A little awkward to carry too far but fortunately the park is not far from the wine bar.

She once told me she used to alternate reading with watching the movie Alice Through the Looking Glass on a tablet but Johnny Depp is no longer an actor she admires.  She’s trying to find copies of the 1972 film Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which she’s discovered was directed by an Australian. In the meantime, as a substitute, she’s taken to watching Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. 

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