March 5, 2015 Beitou Hot Spring
It was my third business trip to Taipei. The itinerary was a bit messy. After arriving on Monday, I discussed the contract details with the agent. On Tuesday, I was able to gain product knowledge for the agent’s salesperson. Training, ready to go back on Wednesday. As a result, the agent arranged a meeting with his biggest client on Friday, and had to postpone the return flight to Friday. So, he had two days to take a break from the busy schedule and visit Taipei City. When
was training agents’ salesmen, there were some small episodes, which may reflect the different aspects of cross-strait education. Because it is an Israeli company, some introduction to Jewish must be included before product training. I put the photos of "Three Jews Who Changed the World" on the first few pages of the PPT. They all knew Einstein and Freud, but none of them knew Marx. They actually said in unison, this is Lenin makes me a little confused. At the end of the training, I mentioned " Nostalgia " by Yu Guangzhong , and several people were able to recite it casually, which was really touching. And when I mentioned Bei Dao's poem: "Nobility is the epitaph of the noble, despicability is the passport of the despicable", of course they had never heard of it, but someone also wrote this poem down in their notebook. It seems that The company's cultural atmosphere is very good.
There were basically no plans for the next two days. I first took the MRT to Beitou. Looking at the photos from that time, the weather that day was not good, with dark clouds and a bit of rain. When we arrived at Beitou Station, the air was filled with a strong smell of rotten eggs, which is the characteristic of sulfur hot springs. On the streets of Beitou, there are many older buildings with obvious Japanese characteristics. If it weren't for the Traditional Chinese characters all over the streets, it would seem to be in a Japanese hot spring town.
First, we visited the Hot Spring Museum. This is actually a public hot spring bathhouse built in 1913. The entire building adopts a Japanese-style wooden structure, backed by green mountains, with scattered flowers and trees, and has a country villa style. As soon as you enter the house, you can feel the strong atmosphere of Japanese culture. The interior is simple and clean, plain and ordinary, but the quiet atmosphere immediately makes you imagine the prosperity here back then.
Along the way up the mountain, the Millennium Hot Spring on the roadside finally opened. A hot spring bath is NT$40, which is a reasonable price for ordinary people. I bought a pair of swimming trunks at the door, rinsed them off, and then got into the pool. It's very lively inside. It seems that as long as locals are enjoying the hot springs, there are also tourists from all over the world joining in. The local uncles go back and forth between cold water and high temperature, and when they meet European and American pretty girls, they still forget to exchange a few words in English. It seems like this happens every day.
As we continued up the mountain, the smell of rotten eggs became more and more intense, and we entered the geothermal valley. The valley is filled with smoke, and hot water bubbles out from each spring. Occasionally, a certain spring spurts out a stream of hot air, which may be more than ten meters high, which is very shocking. Walking to the highest point of the hot spring source, you can see that the water is clear and light green, like jade. The water is filled with steam all year round, like a fairyland, and is known as "sulfur spring jade mist".
On the hot spring street in Beitou, I found another hot spring hotel with lunch, booked a suite with an outdoor courtyard, and soaked again for more than an hour, until my skin was red and I was sweating profusely. , completely washed away the chill of early spring, and then left reluctantly.
