today peter and i went to chiufen for the afternoon. chiufen used to be a big gold mining town back in the day. also part of hou hsiao-hsien's city of sadness was shot near here. now chiufen is basically a commercial tourist attraction. some of my students have told me that a lot of artists live in chiufen and work there. but most of what i saw on display were similiar to the cheap machine made things you see in other taiwanese tourists spots.

we did go to this small gold mining museum:

but i liked the mural on the outside a little better than the museum itself. they did demonstrate various menthods of gold mining, but i was more interested in the old chinese music they were playing in the museum.

we also saw what once was the first film theater in northern in taiwan(north of taipei i think):

the inside is a mess, and looks something like this:

the most exciting thing that happened all day was when some rude middle aged woman jabbed peter in the back with her umbrella while we were walking through the crowded market area. when he asked her why she did that she said she was in a hurry. apparently being in a hurry means you don't need to speak, but just jab people with your umbrella. i'm not real clear on the details of what happened next. words were exchanged, but apparently the words "shut up" and "old woman" lead to her being super offended and a torrent of very loud obscenities followed. i suspect she was more upset at being called old, than at being told to shut up.