Today's Flower #135: King Car Orchid Park

Following a short stay to see the migratory birds at the wetland of Yilan county, my trip with "Natural Kingdom" continuos with a visit to the King Car Orchid Park.

The name "King Car" sounds very strange, it is the name of a company that started its business in soft drink.  It makes a particular brand of canned coffee called "Mr. Brown", which can be seen in most Chinese supermarket around the world.  It is also very popular in Taiwan.

After the success of its coffee business, they have branched into many other businesses, from growing orchid, shrimp farming, human disease diagnosis to whisky making.

Yilan was separated from Taipei by a huge mountain range.  A few years ago, it was finally connected through a tunnel, which is the third longest tunnel in the world.  The tunnel shrink the traveling time between Taipei to Yilan from 2 hours to half an hour.

"King Car" has been quietly investing in Yilan for a long time, purchasing many large stretches of land.  For example, the wetland where we watched migratory birds is right next to a "King Car" future shrimp farm.

Its biotech research center, also located in Yilan, developed the first approved in vitro diagnostic test by Taiwan health authority for human papilloma virus using microarray technology.

The other amazing business venture of "King Car" is to develop a whiskey making business in Yilan.  The county has been famous for the purity of water from its mountain spring.  The company hired engineers from Scotland and built a state-of-art whiskey making factory.

The whiskey is called "Kavalan", named after the aborigine tribe native to Yilan.  It has won many awards since it has been marketed.  It is perfect to pour into the "King Car" coffee to make a Yilan version of "Irish coffee".

"King Car" has been into orchid business for many years.  Taiwan is one of the world largest Orchid producing country.  Because of its tropical climate, many exotic orchids are originated in Taiwan.

One of the three world largest orchid exhibitions and trade shows is held in Taiwan this week.  "King Car" is one of the major industrial orchid producers and exporters in Taiwan.

With such good business mind, it is not surprise, that "King Car" is also in the tourism business in Yilan.  We can wonder at the natural beauty of Yilan in its natural park, admire the beauty of orchid in its orchid farm, have a good tasting of Kavalan whiskey in its distillery and finally have a cup of coffee at its coffee house headquarter to keep us awake on the way back to Taipei.

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Skywatch Friday: Sunset at Dasyueshan (大雪山) National Forest; Camera-Critters #153

After my trip with "Natural Kingdon" on Thursday, January 24 to Fu-shan Botanical Garden, we went with them again for a two-day tour to Dasyueshan National Forest for birdwatching and natural tour.  The mountain range is about 3000 meters heigh and is located at the center of Taiwan.  It used to be a major area for timber production, now it is completely preserved and famous for bird watching.  When we arrived at the top of the range, it was almost dark.  We were treated with this amazing sunset.

We were not idle after dinner, the guide took us out for a drive in the forest and searching for animals using spot light.  We were very fortunate to see this Formosan serow (長鬃山羊), Capricornis crispus swinhoei.  

This is White-face Flying Squirrel (白面鼯鼠), Petaurista alborufus len.  They stay high-up on the pine trees.  Their eyes shine like ruby when we scan the tree top with spot light.  They are so puffy and cute.

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ABC Wednesday: H is for High Speed Chase

I am not talking about the High Speed Chase that we have often seen in the police movie.  I refer to chasing the bird in the mid-flight what the photographer often called "panning".  This Spot-billed duck (斑嘴鴨), Anas poecilorhyncha was taken at a wetland in Yilan county, east of Taipei.

I was on a tour with "Natural Kingdom", the only government registered natural tour operator in Taiwan.  The trip was to go to the Fu-shan Botanical Garden at Yilan county, but the guide took us first to this wetland to see migratory birds.  It was a sight that I have never seen in Taiwan.

I have seen the massive colony of Sandy Crane in New Mexico, and heard of the large number of migratory sea birds on the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge on Cape Cod.  But I have never expected to see this massive showing of migratory birds in Taiwan.  The main species at this location are Black-winged Stilt (長腳鵴), Himantopus himantopus, Gray heron (蒼鷺), Ardea cinerea and Egret.

The most impressive showing was by the Black-winged Stilt.

Hundreds of them would suddenly take off into the air all at the same time.  It is a sight to behold.

The area used to be rice fields and shrimp farms, now it is under heavy pressure from land developers.  I hope there will always be enough wetland left for this natural wonder.

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ABC Wednesday: G is for Gold Reflection

Grace went to San Francisco for the ASCO GI meeting.  She had some time left after the meeting and went to visit her old colleague at Stanford University.  It was late afternoon.  She got the chance to see the beautiful gold reflection from the fresco of the Memorial Church.

Here is the church just before sunset.

Here is a closer look.  She did not get the chance to go in.  But she heard that the inside is also very impressive.  Only the alumni of the University can get married inside of the church.

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ABC Wednesday: F is for Taipei International Flora Exposition

Taipei International Flora Exposition is held from 2010/11/6 to 2011/4/25.  It is an International Horticulture Exposition recognized by AIPH, the International Association of Horticultural Producers and by BIE, Bureau International des Expositions.  The first exposition is held in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1960.  Taipei is very proud to host this event and the city has spent a lot of efforts and money to organize this exposition.  By mid-February, there had been over 5 million people visited this event.  Since last December and most of January, the temperature was around 10 degree C.  For your people in the Northern Hemisphere, that is such a nice comfortable temperature.  For us it was too cold.  Only till last week. we had a nice warm half day with beautiful sunshine.  I went for a nice walk around the beautiful ground.

The most impressive exhibition is revolved around several exhibition halls.  However, that requires  standing in line for long hours.  I took the next best, to walk around the massive planted flower beds.

Not many exotic flower plants, but it is the massive planting that is impressive.

All the flowers are in perfect condition and in full bloom.

You can imagine the amount of work needed to put in to maintain these flower beds.  They are replaced according to the flowering season.

As always, photographing flowers is not the easiest thing.  The exposure meter always tend to over expose.  I have to read the RGB histogram of the image on the LCD at the back of the camera to make sure the exposure is correct, especially the red is not over exposed.

Many countries come to participate in the exposition.  These beautiful tulips are from, guess who, Holland!

I did not bother to bring my macro lens with me.  However, my new 28-300 VR lens performed quite well in close-up.

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ABC Wednesday: E is for Excursion in Victoria Harbor

We went to Hong Kong on Friday, February 6.  There were two reasons for the trip.  One is to attend the wedding of Grace's niece.  She already had a formal wedding in LA, but came back to Hong Kong, her birth place, to have a wedding banquet for all her relatives and friends.  For a very long time, the ceremony of the wedding banquet is more important than the formal registration to the local magistrate.  Thus a man can be charged for marrying twice, simply because he has a wedding banquet with another women other than his wife.  It has happened quite often to Taiwan merchants doing business in China.

The second reason for the visit is to visit Grace's parents in Hong Kong.  They have been living in Hong Kong for over 20 years to be closeby to their youngest daughter, who married to Hong Kong.  Chinese New Year was February, 5 this year.  It is the Chinese tradition that married daughter should go back to visit her parents' home on the second day of the New Year.

The newly wed invited us and many of her friends to have an excursion in the Victoria Harbor.  We had fantastic view of the Hong Kong cityscape on the boat.  But the real highlight is to see the Hong Kong Chinese New Year firework.

We have never seen fireworks from the boat before.  As you can imagine, there were a lot of boats on the water, from giant cruise ships, smaller yachts to typical Hong Kong junks.

The added advantage of viewing the fireworks from the water was that we also had a fantastic view of the reflection of the fireworks from the water.

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ABC Wednesday: D is for Door

This Door opens to a cave carved into the mountain.  It is on the roadside where we stopped for overlooking the Tuscany Town of Sorano, which we have shown in our previous post.

Here is the detail of this very old, but colorful Door.

How an old stone wall, steel-barred window and an old door in an old Tuscany town, such as Sorano can be so beautiful.

Here is the detail of the Door.

Not everything is old in Sorano.  The arch of this Door way to a local restaurant is real stone.  The stones on the right hand side of the picture is painted.  They probably ran out of the money during the restoration.

Here is the detail of the stone Door of the restaurant.

This photograph of a very colorful garden door was taken by Grace outside the lakeside town of Marta, Italy.

Who said we have to travel half of the world in order to take photographs of some colorful old door?  This door is not too far from our condo.  It is the door of some old houses that have not been taken away during the road expansion project.  The letters on the left hand-side mean No. 22.

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ABC Wednesday: C is for China

This Wednesday is Chinese New Year Eve, So Grace and I are saying Happy New Year to everybody.  We were in China last October and was in time for the Shanghai World Expo.  Even in September, the weather was too hot for us.  We only visited the Expo in the late afternoon and evening.  This is the China Pavilion.  There were so many people, we did not even attempt to get in.  Same thing were true for most Country's pavilion.

But at night, most pavilions were lighted up and looked probably better than at day time.  To the right of the China pavilion is a huge rabbit lantern.  The coming Chinese New Year is the year of rabbit.

Right next to the China Pavilion is Taiwan Pavilion which was a giant cube with a giant ball in the center.  The images on the ball are flying lanterns for good luck .  After China Pavilion, it is one of the next most popular one.

This one is for Korea.  We have not anticipated to do so many night photography.  Although both Grace's DX 18-200 VR and mine 24-300 with VR can do a descent job.  But we sure hope that we had our prime large aperture lenses with us.  Anyhow we did have some good fun.  So follow us and let us have a tour of the Shanghai World Expo as we saw it.

Qatar Pavilion

Sweden on the left and Iceland on the right, do you see the full moon?

Ireland

A special Pavilion, I think it was made by Germany and the whole structure as the big beams that you can see from this photo were made of bamboo.  

The folded "paper cut-out panel" inside of the Poland Pavilion.

Russian Pavilion

Serbia Pavilion

Luxemburg, the "Gelle Fra" (Golden Lady", the most important national symbol of Luxembourg, traveled outside of the country for the first time.

Spain Pavilion was completely made of hand-weaved wicker.

Angola Pavilion

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