On Tuesday, we all went up into the mountains to Puli, a small town where there is a manufacturer of traditional handmade paper. They give tours and offer the opportunity to make your own paper. We all did this and had great fun. Most of us made a single sheet, but Lillia made a fan, which required two sheets to be glued to each side of a fan frame.
A factory worker making a giant piece of paper.
Lillia making her first sheet, Aunt Lori (Da Jie) helping with her swishing technique.
Lillia put flowers and leaves in her first sheeet.
Water being pressed out of our new paper.
Further drying on the hot table.
The paper store.
Landscape around Puli.
Then we drove to the beautiful campus of a nearby Seventh Day Adventist school (!) for a little picnic. We were heading back to the cars in a light rain when I spotted a sign that said “A Secret Garden B & B/ Café Brazil open for Afternoon Tea”. I was interested in checking it out, so we went down the little path that led from the road into, well, a secret garden. We found the café in a really interesting house. The floor was suspended about a yard above the ground and in some places the floor didn’t meet the walls, and plants grew from the ground up into the house. The whole back wall was a two story tall greenhouse. By this time the light rain had turned into a full-on tropical monsoon storm, with thunder and lightning, and buckets of rain hammering on the greenhouse roof. Lillia and I shared hot chocolate and smoked chicken and apple quesadillas, which were very good. Yen-Wen ordered pancakes with bananas and chocolate for herself and her kids. Look at what she got!
Panorama of cafe interior.
When the rain had let up enough, we went to a place called the Paper Dome, which was billed as a church made entirely of paper. When I saw that it was encased in plastic, I was pretty disappointed. But it was surrounded by lovely water lily and lotus ponds.
Paper Dome. Everything you see in this picture, except for the floor and the TV screen, is made of paper.
Lillia and Emily were fascinated by the huge snails there.
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