Don't let the government push you out! - Rainbow Village

There is a very strange but alluring village on the edges of Taichung City, it is known as 'Rainbow Village'.

Rainbow village is a small village that has been crazily painted; the streets, walls, ceilings and roofs have all been painted with different variety of pictures including animals and people. It hasn't always been a colourful village for it was once an old veteran village, which is quite normal to find in the surrounding countryside, these villages were for the Kuomintang soldies and their families, after they retreated from mainland China.

The Taiwanese government have been slowly trying to get rid of these small veteran villages to make way for new development, a lot of the villages nowadays are on the doorsteps of the cities and as time goes on the cities are only going to get bigger.

Rainbow village which was one of those villages that was due to be torn down, it had already lost some houses which saw the village slowly declining, but one man who goes by the name of Mr Huang was the final resident of the village. One day Mr Huang started to

paint the empty, derelict village, he started to paint animals, dolls, airplanes, manga characters, hearts and much more which eventually filled nearly all corners of the village from top to bottom.

When I walked around the village I was lost in amazement by the idea that one man had painted all this, is work was astounding, I examined his work to the smallest of detail. I had to push my way through crowds of chattering Taiwanese tourist's who were blocking my path, the roads of this village are very tight which can be quite frustrating.

I was warned before going that there is not much to see at Rainbow village which is true, you could spend at least a good ten minutes there but I tried to take it in more, I wanted to look at everything close up and really try and feel how Mr Huang was feeling when he saw his village slowly getting smaller house by house and tried to think why he thought this would be a good idea to just start painting. I haven't got a lot to say about this place, there isn't really a lot to it, the most interesting part of this village is the history, overall Rainbow village is a small, old, veteran village surrounded by the city full of vibrant colours that really catch your eye and messes up your vision as your eyes move fast in all directions, I would recommend you to come and visit but don't make this a day trip, my advice would be to visit more of Taichung after visiting this little strange village.

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