Blog 5

 Today is the 16^th and my day was quite full! I started the day by heading to NCKU to meet with my group to work on our design project. I spent most of the time doing user research on the wants, needs, and barriers of access for elderly people in urban parks. In my research, there were many points I expected, but there were certain design recommendations I hadn’t thought of myself. For example, one of the greatest fears elderly people have at parks is falling. To prevent that, environmental hazards such as uneven surfaces, lack of ground visibility, and trash must be addressed. The four main user values I found across multiple sources were safety, nature, accessibility, and socializing. Knowing these user values felt good because it feels like we are going in the right direction as our current ideas align with these values. Also, while we were working, I realized that the potato I was eating looked like a capybara! Do you agree?

After working, we visited Guang-Tsai Embroidery House, where we watched as masters and apprentices worked on an intricate embroidery piece for a temple. I’d never seen embroidery as 3D as these ones and was surprised when we were offered a chance to try sewing some parts of their design. The process looked daunting, but the workers fortunately had easier stitches they could have us try. It was fun to try embroidering, and I was surprised to see that they kept the stitches we made instead of undoing them (my stitches were far less straight!). Also, I learned that size doesn’t necessarily dictate the price in their store, as small designs can be significantly more taxing since there is a lower threshold for error and a higher need for precision. All in all, it was exciting to find yet another Taiwanese craft I hadn’t been familiar with.

Next, we visited the WU Wan-Chun Incense Sticks Store, a store that’s been in business for over 100 years! Their collection of incense was impressive, and I learned that there are different uses for different types of incense. There are longer incense with a section to hold that is explicitly for prayer and is the kind people use at religious sites and to worship and honor gods and ancestors at home. Shorter ones that rest on smaller incense holders are for burning incense to relax and unwind. The shopkeeper briefly went over the process of handmaking incense, and while I didn’t catch all of what he said, I was surprised at how intense the process was.

On the way to the last destination, I asked the tour guide about Taiwanese and learned that sorry in Taiwanese is pháiⁿ-sè. Taiwanese Hokkien is a particularly hard language to pick up since it’s primarily an oral language, so I cherish any moments I have to learn any vocabulary. I would really like to take my grandma up on her offer of teaching me Taiwanese, but it is tricky when also balancing a college schedule.

Lastly, we went to 舊永瑞珍喜餅, a bakery shop selling all sorts of traditional pastries. During their talk, I learned that a traditional wedding custom is sending every family you invite to your wedding a cake that are each roughly 8 lbs. The largest order they had ever made was 8000 lbs., meaning the couple had 1000 cakes to give to invitees. Impressive! I also learned that one of their specialties is black bean paste pastry. They don’t use black beans, instead, they use mung beans mixed with Chinese herbs to create the paste. I bought one of them to try, and I’m excited to eat it and the other pastries the shop graciously gave us for free tomorrow for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Each store we visited today is primarily family-run, much like the other shops we’ve visited before. It was exciting to see all these traditional crafts, and I’m eager to take this knowledge of ancient crafts into my modern work.