It's a strange trip for me for a few reason. First being that it's so close to Taiwan that we got the same weather. The same rain, the same clouds and the same coldness in the air. It's also during the Chinese New Year holidays so the entire town was basically empty. Everyone has gone back to their home town, leaving just us... and the restaurant and hotel staffs who stayed to serve annoying tourists like me. So when we went to the supposedly main shopping street, it was rather empty. When we went to the supposedly tourist hot spot, it was not too crowded. You can consider us lucky being in China where there are 13 billion of them. At the same time, everything we saw was planned and set up by those who were paid to serve us.
Secondly, because the locals speak very similar language as Taiwanese do. This is because Xia Men, or rather Fu Jian Province is where most Taiwanese came from, hundreds of years ago as immigrants. The language is still preserved rather well. Taiwan grew earlier than China in terms of entertainment, so people in Xia Men watch Taiwanese media a lot. It's like the US media to the rest of the world. The rest of the world end up knows much more about the Americans than the Americans know about the rest of the world. In this case, People of Xia Men knows more about Taiwan than we do about them.
Thirdly, there are "Taiwanese merchandises" here everywhere. It's like as if people come to Xia Men to experience Taiwan! So for us Taiwanese to come all the way here to shop in Taiwanese stores... well, felt like we never left Taiwan.
In a way, we paid to come to a mirror site.
However, it's really strang...ly familar because this is technically our origin. The architecture style, the language, the food. We felt the relationship. We share the same stories, the same idols and the same history. Taiwanese were joined by folks from other provinces during the mid century due to the Chinese civil war, and the Taiwanese culture expanded in variety. It is very interesting for me to see what's the "original". What's the real deal and how they have been integrated, progressed and developed. I won't say that Xia Men is an entertaining place to visit, but I definitely felt it was a good trip.
Also, Xia Men was also one of the hot spots where immigrants moved from China to South East Asia. Having lived in Singapore, I saw familiar names of wealthy contributors that helped built my school, stories about their success and contribution to the Chinese migrant community and their value to me directly, as a student who have benefited through the education that I received, and as a person who have returned, as a milestone really. It's a pleasant surprise, one to be remembered.
Sorry for the lack of downtown photos... just contemporary highrises and such. I like the rotten stuffs better anyways.
There are MANY MORE photos of Xia Men, Click HERE!!!
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