What I didn’t say at the beginning of my last post was that I’m planning on coming up with a list of twenty goals for my experience in Taiwan. I figure this is quite doable since we’ll be there for a year. But, especially since I’d like to get some of this done in the first couple weeks of us being there, I’m trying to pick especially cheap endeavours. Next item on the list: Storyland!
No, not the Storyland you would find in New Hampshire, US:
photo from headtripusa.com ... how appropriate.
The Storyland you’d find in New Hampshire is themed around kid’s fairy tale stories, and features Humpty Dumpty and everyone else in between. It also features a large fake cow with rubber udders from which you can squirt water. No joke:
I don't want to know how many kids have secretly put their mouths on it.
But I digress.
The Storyland in Taipei is much, much different than Storyland, USA. The Taipei version is a recreation of Taipei streets in the mid 60s-70s. Using all the aesthetics like ice shops, cart vendors pushed into crammed, dimly lit streets with paper lantern lights, it’s supposed to be a really accurate depiction of life back then before Taipei became very mordern.
Taipei then, according to Storyland:
image from filigallery.com
A street from Taipei, present day:
image from wikipedia.org
As a foreigner, I think it would be very interesting and maybe even valuable to see Taiwan as it was before. I’m extremely curious about the culture, even more so than I was about Japan when we were planning to go there. I think perhaps because Taiwan seems to be quite prideful – but for much different reasons than other countries. It is a very new culture, the Chinese intermingling with the Aboriginal Taiwanese to create something brand new, only in the last century. And because they are so brand new, they stress so much of their old culture as well as finding ways to create new culture, in order to preserve it in the future.
This is all my own observation from afar, of course. I don’t know this for sure. This is just what I read and hear. From what Dave tells me, most Asian countries are all about preserving their old culture. But not all seem to be that concerned with creating new culture. More about that in a future entry about artist villages. But I am just aching to see this other side of the world. I am romanticizing everything a bit, admittedly. But why the hell not?
Amelia's Accidents and Adventures in Taiwan 
I’m excited to watch and read about your adventure, Amelia. And this totally sounds like an interesting place to visit. Are the services in the park private businesses or run by the park itself?
Hi Devin! Thanks for following along. 🙂 I’m going to try and be a good and entertaining blog updater.
That’s a very good question. I had to look this up to find out. Apparently, a guy named Wu Chuan-zhi created it, who is the head of a company called Taiwan Banana New Paradise. Very strange name, I know. I can’t seem to find out exactly what this is, but a rudimentary search on Google tells me that this is actually yet another retro adventure – for lack of a better term – in Central Taiwan. It seems that this guy wanted to create another experience like this in Taipei, so he created Storyland. It seems to be immensely popular, and I’m all for retro stuff.
I know this doesn’t fully answer your question about independent versus run by the park. But after all my searching, I suspect that the shops are independently run but are ultimately controlled by Wu Chuan-zhi.
Sources:
http://www.taiwanfun.com/north/taipei/recreation/0607/0607Storyland.htm
http://www.taiwanfun.com/central/taichung/articles/0604/0604OldTaiwan.htm