National Cheng Kung University & Tainan
After wrapping up our time in Taipei, our group hopped on a bullet train and headed to the city of Tainan in the south of the Taiwan island. We met the students that we would be working with at the National Cheng Kung University. They had prepared recommendations for their favorite local places to visit, and most importantly, the best food recommendations including spots for night markets, beef soup, milk fish soup, and mango shaved ice. The NCKU students gave us a walking tour of their campus, showing us the Banyan garden, the library, the pond, the west gate, and the student center. We then retreated to our hotel right off campus to prepare for the packed days ahead. Before diving into our agenda, the group had a full day off to spend exploring Tainan's streets and delicious food.
We regrouped in the industrial design building on the NCKU campus the following day, starting the day off with some insightful lectures. We learned about sustainable design and cradle to cradle product life cycles from our Professor Meichun Liu and cross cultural design from Professor Wan-Ling Chang. These thought-provoking lectures served as food for thought for our upcoming design projects.
For our next stop, we visited the Jonathan House Bookstore where we learned about the steps to harvesting, extracting, and preserving natural indigo dye. We were taught by an indigo dye expert how to prepare and dye fabric with the indigo dye to create some beautiful designs. Each student was able to create a unique result on each of their squares of fabric. Ice cream treats of various traditional and local flavors were provided as a sweet and cool treat while waiting for the indigo fabrics to dry. The flavors included pineapple, passionfruit, red bean, taro, peanut, plum, and milk.
We then headed to the local temple across the street where we had a tour of facility and learned about the history of the temple, the local city god, the matchmaking god, and the method of communicating with the gods.
The following day we started the day with another insightful lecture from Professor Wan-Ling about circular economy and how we must work towards that and away from a linear model in order to achieve a more sustainable production process. We then kicked off our group brainstorming for our design workshop project, each group ideating and affinity mapping concepts inspired by our recent lectures and cultural explorations.
Throughout the week we took field trips to various sites to learn about local craftsmanship and ties to natural resources in the Tainan area. Some notable experiences included a bamboo weaving workshop where we created our own bamboo vases, a boat tour in the Taijiang National Park where we were able to observe and participate in fishing and oystering, and the Anping tree house.
