A month ago I embarked upon a day trip to Zuoying to check out the famous temples and pagodas of Lotus Pond 蓮池潭, one of the main tourist attractions of greater Kaohsiung. Afterwards I wandered over to have a look at the old city of Zuoying 左營舊城, originally built in 1722 by the ruling Qing Dynasty in response to the many uprisings that regularly plagued Taiwan Prefecture 臺灣府.

I have been living next to the magnificent ruins of the Qiáoyǒu Building 喬友大廈 in Changhua City for the last several months. Not a day goes by where I’m not walking or riding by this hulking derelict, looking up and wondering about what I might find inside. I had some general idea, of course, as I already recognized the building for what it was: one of many shopping and entertainment complexes built in central Taiwan during the economic boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Most of these former showpiece properties have been abandoned in the decades since, usually due to some combination of mismanagement, declining fortunes, and fire damage.

My last night in Changhua City was surprisingly eventful thanks to a fortunate accident of timing. Earlier in the day I had noticed an unusual uptick in the amount of activity on the streets while cycling around. Banquet tents had been setup on major thoroughfares, police were standing at major intersections, scooters flying yellow banners were buzzing around like angry hornets, and the air was filled with a palpable sense of expectation and excitement. After an early supper next to a coffee shop I often work at I approached to one of the staff (who speaks passable English) and asked, “What’s going on?” Their answer, “It’s the…” Trailing off, hands aflutter, obviously searching for the right word—and then: “Mazu!”

Kowloon was my first experience of Asia back in 2012. Anytime I return to Hong Kong I stay there for at least a couple of nights. It helps that many of the most affordable hotels are located in Kowloon—but I also like how gritty, rundown, and real it is, particularly when compared to the naked display of wealth and privilege seen on the other side of Victoria Harbour on Hong Kong Island itself.

Last weekend I crossed the strait for a brief visa run and, after finding an excellent deal on a hotel on Agoda, once again found myself lost in the immensity of Kowloon. Naturally I spent a good part of my trip wandering around the city documenting my impressions. Collected here are several of my photos from this trip…

Nanmen, Tainan’s great southern gate.

Dànánmén 大南門, also known as Níngnánmén 寧南門, is one of two great gates remaining in Tainan, the most historic city in Taiwan. Built in 1725, it has been renovated several times but maintains its classical charm. Nowadays it can be found in a gorgeous park just south of the Confucius Temple on Nánmén Road 大南路. The gate itself is surrounded by a secondary fortification, a barbican or wèngchéng 瓮城, which provides additional defensive capabilities. As usual, Tainan City Guide has an excellent write-up about this historic landmark.…

The Red Hair Well 紅毛井 (pinyin: Hóngmáojǐng) in Changhua City is another curious footnote. Located behind the Changhua Arts Museum at the foot of Baguashan, this well supposedly dates back to the mid-1600s, in the midst of the Dutch colonial era. The Dutch sunk this well to provide for soldiers and missionaries passing through the area but never actually controlled this land. The name derives from âng-mo, which is literally “red hair” in Hokkien or Taiwanese, an obvious visual contrast to the black hair of Chinese people.

A year ago the Taiwanese people stood up to their elected government and halted the passage of a controversial free trade agreement by occupying the Legislative Yuan. This act of mass civil disobedience was soon christened the Sunflower Student Movement. I was living in Taipei when it all went down and visited the protest on several nights to watch history unfold. I am not a professional photographer, political observer, nor journalist, so please excuse the poor technical quality of the images and lack of elaboration in this gallery. It is my hope that these pictures capture something of the spirit of those wild, uncertain nights when anything seemed possible.

Not long after moving to Wenshan in Taipei I went out riding to explore the neighbourhood. At some point I found myself on the opposite side of Jingmei River from where I was living at the time. Nestled into a bend in the river, this small nub of land was home to several factories, office buildings, and hotels that looked like they probably charged by the hour. There were almost no homes whatsoever—which seemed rather strange for that part of the city—but as I cycled along a Bǎoqiáo Road (寶橋路) laneway I noticed a traditional home hidden in the foliage to one side and stopped to investigate.

Pǔtuóshān White Temple (普陀山白衣道場) is one of the more unusual temples I have visited in Taiwan. Named after Putuoshan, one of the holy mountains of Chinese Buddhism, and dedicated to the worship of Guanyin (觀音), goddess of mercy, it appears to have been built in 2004. Apart from these basic details it seems like very little is known about this mysterious temple.

Xunfang Fortress 巽方砲台 is another obscure historic site in Tainan that I found while digging into the archives of the excellent Tainan City Guide. This Qing dynasty era ruin can be found on the grounds of a monastery in East Tainan not far from the location of Dadong Night Market 大東夜市.