Tuesday, December 7

Dec. 7: Taipei International Flora Expo

We did something a little different today and visited the Taipei International Flora Expo. The expo opened in November and will continue through April. There are exhibits of flowers from all over the world.


The Flora Expo is big deal here. To say that people are excited to have an international expo in the city is an understatement. The government has been promoting the event heavily; even decorating entire MRT trains (the city’s subway system) to advertise the expo. The station closest to the expo was all decked out for the occasion.


I was surprised by the number of people at the expo. There were more people at the flora expo than at Cedar Point on opening day and the wait to get into some of the popular exhibits was even longer. To get a ticket to enter into building with various different Chinese medicine herbs at 12 pm you would have to wait until 7:30 pm to actually enter the building. We did not wait to see this one.


There were probably hundreds of school groups visiting the expo ranging from pre-school age to high school.  The younger kids were pretty cute but the older ones – not so much. They were mostly just in the way and annoying, but to be fair, this is true for American high schoolers as well.


Some of the exhibits that we did see were pretty cool.  My favorite was a traditional style Chinese home that was included into the expo. The home would have been for a wealthy family. The buildings were considerably opened to the outdoors surrounded by abundant ponds and gardens. The home would have been inhabited by a large extended family.


The expo is huge and very crowded so we didn’t get to see everything, only about half, but we may go back later to see the rest


No comments:

Post a Comment