Yingge Town, center of Taiwanese ceramics

A wonderful day in my girlfriend's hometown

Yingge is a lovely small town 30 min away by train from Taipei City. A while ago Lily wrote about her hometown and made me very interested. I thought I need to see it with my own eyes, experience the atmosphere and get to understand how's life in this quite famous Taiwanese small town. And last week I had the chance to finally see it.

One thing is sure: There are ceramic products everywhere in Yingge, but most of them are sold in the famous Pottery street (or Old street). Tea sets and pots of all kinds are sold in almost every shop there, art and souvenirs are seen everywhere. And there were quite many foreign tourists. I've seen Americans and possibly some Europeans. It was crowded, but I liked it.

The Old street however is not very long. Of course, if you walk slowly and go into every shop, you can spend few hours there and browse through all the wonderful ceramic products. It's definitely heaven for people like me, who love tea cups and pots. But if you just walk normally, you can finish Yingge's Pottery street in about 15 minutes. There are three main streets and few side streets reserved only for pedestrians. Best is you make one round, enter few shops, try some food and you will have a wonderful afternoon.

It says 鶯歌鎮 (Yīnggē Zhèn) translates as something like "The small town of the golden oriole song". Isn't the name lovely? :-) The golden oriole is this bird, btw.

See my photos of Yingge:

Outside the Yingge railway station.

The main road of Yingge is busy.

The creek and the bridge.

A typical back street in this part of town.

A very nice apartment building.

The Yingge Town Ceramics Museum, the main entrance.

Part of the ceramics museum.

More info about it here.

The inside of Yingge's Ceramics Museum with red lanterns.

The main hall.

There are three floors, on each there's a certain theme of displayed ceramic products.

There's a lot more displayed than this. This is just a tiny fraction. The museum is definitely worth to see and there was no entrance fee.

The famous Pottery street of Yingge.

A common sight.

It was a warm afternoon, there was a lot of people that day.

A side street.




The same apartment building as before, photo taken on the other side.

A park, that used to have a pond.

The creek. Or is it a small river? I don't know.

Yingge at dawn. I ate in that restaurant on the far right side (the black sign board).

Towards the evening, people go to the night market.

All in all I had a great time in Yingge. Me and my girlfriend spend a lot of time in the ceramics museum and on the Pottery street, but we also walked through the park and along the river and the day just seemed to pass too quickly. Yingge is definitely worth to spend one afternoon or few hours and it's really easy and to take the normal train from Banqiao and if you're starting from Taipei City, just take the blue line MRT to Banqiao and then transfer to the normal train.

Hope you enjoyed my photos and impressions of Yingge.

[My TAIPEI page][My TAIWAN page][All photos by MKL, 2010]