Taichung Jazz Festival

Last weekend, after spending a day shopping and cycling to Changhau looking for Nick, who was cycling round looking for an orchid shop (he hasnt got a phone), we were invited to the Jazz Festival by Sam.
At 8:30ish, Sam, Tim, Nick and I got on the train (only 66p) to Taichung (an hour away). We dint actually know where the venue was but thankfully our TPR for jazz paid off and the guy knew straight away.
We arrived at a small empty park: 'must have finished' said the driver... but then from up the street we could here the boom of bongos. So we followed the noise. I was impressed at how big and full of people the park was. There were big light displays beamed onto surrounding buildings. We caught the end of one Jazz Band playing what i think of as 'aimless jazz' and then saw some young local hearthrob (apparently) sing a few songs to the smitten girls in the audience - think Jamie Cullem without the voice - After that there was a far more funky set played by a purely Taiwanese group... the audience (probably typical of Taiwanese) were quite reserved, but we sang along anyway; Tim tried to see how many he could get to dance with him: result: one toddler!
This weekend, after a week of planning my trip to Thailand in Nov, we decided to make more of our time in Taichung (the No.2 city in Taiwan). So Nick and I took an early train (by early I mean before 3 o'clock) and visited the art museum. There were plenty of wierd and wonderful things to see.
Most of the art in the main room was what I'd call 'freaky art' - the art that makes you feel queezy. There were many pictures of people with distorted faces (all grimacing), a multiimage display of someone's heart with their body superimposed, a colouful collection of rags entitled 'child birth'.
The next gallery was far more up my street: 'the changing urban scene'.
Nick kept taking photographs of everything: we must have got told 'no photo' 7 times in an hour. He used to work in a gallery: he assured me that flash doesnt actually damage the picture, and nobody has ever been thrown out for taking pictures.
From there we walked across town (against the advice of the advice desk lady) to the Sculpture Park. The road was long and traffic ridden, but it helped work up an appetite. The park was lovely: a very mini Central Park. An oasis from the urban jungle around. There was a lake in the middle and as you'd expect: sculptures everywhere.
It was getting dark by this point, so popped into a noodle bar for some nosh. There was a picture board of dishes on the ceiling; sadly the reverse side (what the chef could see) did not match the side I was pointing to. So again in this country of surprises, we got pork dumplings in soup, instead of noodles and chicken. Still very nice.
We met Sam and Tai (her Taiwanese friend with car) at the park and enjoyed a nice night of Jazz.
There were some musicians from Brazil (outstanding) and one guy who obviously wasnt local trying to get everyone to sing along to *****. At one point he had 10 volunteers doing pelvic thrusts in time to the music.
At the end there was a competition. A free CD to anyone who could sum up the Jazz Festival in a short speech.
Nick needed little persuasion. He had to fight his way to the front, but he's an American, they couldnt turn him away. The speech went down very well -cant remember what he said exactly - and he got his CD.
On the way home, we were a little peckish, so Tai took us to the nightmarket in Taichung. It was large block of
stalls selling every type of snack you could think of; we had chicken blood soup, sweet potato balls, baked potato with everything on it, gooseblood rice. Delicious.