Find your statue - Find your home

Jhubei 竹北 (Bamboo North), the district of Hsinchu County where we live, is newly rising.  Many locals have told us that it was nothing but rice fields about 10 years ago.  But it's full of development mode now, booming with high rise residences.  Perhaps because it sits between the High Speed Railway station and the Science Park district where high tech engineers work, it has become a hotspot for real estate growth.  Several people have expressed concern that the boom may bust, but so far the only direction things are going is UP!  

Unless you're willing to crane your neck to the skyline you might find it difficult to locate your new home in our neighborhood, as walls of granite transitioning to sandstone and then to marble along the uneven sidewalk pavers.  Addresses don't really help since the streets seem to have all the same name with different numbers:  LiouJia 1st Rd. through LiouJia 7th Rd. were laid out in a hurry as construction companies moved in.

Fortunately, an agreement must have been made among the developers to create a symbolic sense of community for each residence.  Modern abstract sculptures stand outside almost every doorway helping to identify home for the Whale Tale occupants or for Mr. Half Smiles residents, just down the street.

In the next two photos Mr. Half Smiles gazes mockingly at Pregnant Woman Begs for Mercy (or from another angle perhaps Backaches and Babies).  Here you have a choice whether you want to be greeted with agonizing pessimism or whimsical optimism at the end of your work day.

Clumsy Herons After a Long Flight or Cranes Have No Shoulder to Cry On:  Gives the appearance that this apartment complex welcomes all Romans still living in Taiwan.

Trying to outdo neighbors and still remain tragically aloof, this sculpture not only apparently got stuck to another sculpture meant for another building but then the artist (or perhaps the developer) thought it best to clarify this mess with a second statue just inside the door (see the yellow figure 8 inside).  Of course the Infinite Helix statue calling from beyond the Twisted Wreck, suggests that this gated community has much more inside than you could possibly enjoy on the outside.  I wouldn't know, I've never gone in.

  

Just around the corner you can find a pair of sculptures face to face like Zax in their tracks.  Standing as if to avoid acknowledging the presence of the other, White Marble Pants with Nobody Inside Them and Who Stole My Worm Fossil?!  stand guard on their respective corners.

  

  

Although our building is quite new and not yet filled to capacity, two new towers on either side of us are going up with more apartments to sell.  Scattered between the towers are showroom buildings for prospective buyers.  

Just down the street is one such show space with a large lawn dotted with a strange and fantastic collection of creatures.  A WWII era black Mercedes (or perhaps merely the statue of one), flanked by a white unicorn.  Across the lawn standing alone as if shunned by its monochromatic lawnmates is a pig in a coat of many colors.  Some of the attributes of said pig (such as it's coloring) suggest it may be some other creature of unknown origin.  None the less, this motley crew is there to sell you, your new home in Zhubei - a wonderland of opportunity and impossible odds.

At long last, like Harold with his purple crayon finally locating his bedroom window by drawing it around the moon.,. we come upon Twister Man, a squared off mod version of the Greek discus thrower, who seems to be gesturing toward the heavens above the Legoland tower where we live.  We are home -- at the corner of Jiasheng 6th Street Section 2 and LiouJia 5th Road Section 1, Bamboo North.