Yingge town, center of Taiwanese ceramics industry

I would like to introduce my home town: Yingge town. (鶯歌鎮, 莺歌镇)

I was born here and I'm living here for over 30 years now. (Oops! Now you know my age.) Yingge town is famous for its ceramics and porcelain industry. How did Yingge's ceramics become famous?

"Pottery-making came to Yingge in 1804, when a man named Wu An emigrated here from mainland China and set up the first pottery business. Owing to its strategic position close to a plentiful supply of good-quality clay and the Dahan River (which in years past was deeper than it is today and offered convenient transport downriver to Taipei and the sea beyond), the pottery industry, and later the production of finer-quality ceramics, flourished. Today, exquisite objects d'art produced by the town's artisans is highly regarded by collectors. Indeed, one of the town's producers, Taihwa Pottery , regularly makes artistic pieces for the Presidential Office, which find their way in the form of gifts for visiting dignitaries to the world's four corners." [ Source here.]

We did not have any ceramicists in my family, but some of my classmates' did have them. When I was a little girl, the industry flourished at that time and a lot of pottery from Taiwan actually came from Yingge town. I remember I liked to pick up some faulty cups and plates near the pottery factories, because the factories would discard the imperfect ones, but the quality of some of those were still good, just the decoration was messed up or the color was not perfect, but apart from that, the ceramic was still good. Finding those faulty cups and plates was like a treasure hunting game for me, it was a lot fun.

My review of 2009 and resolution for 2010.

This is my second English post. I still write rarely comparing to others, but I hope I can write at least one post a week. This is my target and I hope I can reach it every week this year. Last year I wrote my review of 2008 on my Chinese blog, but this year I decided to write the review of my 2009 here, as well as add my resolutions for 2010. It will be interesting to check my  achievements by the end of the year and see, if things went the way I hoped they would. Sounds great! I'm someone who likes to set targets for herself and plan every step to achieve them.



The first part is my review of 2009. I think the most frequently used word last year for me must have been "busy". Yep, I was busy doing many things: I had a busy job, a busy leisure time, busy weekends. I think that's because I always want to finish everything the way I plan it before, so I kept myself busy working all the time, like a busy bee, hehe.

Here are some important things that happened to me in 2009:

10 honest things about me that you may find interesting.

This post is my first English post, god knows I am so afraid to write a post in English. Because I DID NOT DO IT BEFORE. Actually, I don't think my English is good enough to write a blog post, but my teacher Nino encouraged me to create my own English blog, and tagged me with the "10 honest things", therefore, I decided to try to write it in English. I still don't have much confidence that I can write it well, but I'll try my best. I hope you all could understand my post. :-P

First time I saw this topic, I didn't know what to write. After reading Nino's, Shingo T's and Toothfairy's posts, and after I asked my English teacher for his advice, I decided to confess the following 10 honest things about me: