[UPDATE 04/14/2018: Hello! I’ve been receiving messages telling me that the National Taiwan University wasn’t used as filming location for Meteor Garden. I doubt this post is popular enough to drive hordes of MG fans to the university just to take photos. But if my post, in some way, has contributed to that, then I apologize. Taiwan has recently been visa-free for many countries, and that might have contributed to the influx of tourist? I’m not sure.

In my defense, I did some research before going and some blogs did say that the university was used for filming. I’m still not sure what’s true and what’s not, so if you plan to visit the school, then please note that there’s a likely chance that it really wasn’t used for filming. Thank you and apologies for the confusion. 🙂

UPDATE 07/21/2018: A friend recently visited Taiwan and came back with proofs that the university was indeed used as one of the filming locations of the first Meteor Garden. She visited the exact spot used for this scene, and yes, it was in NTU. :)]

It was May 5, 2003 when a local TV channel first aired Meteor Garden. I was 12 and prepubescent and was deeply attracted to the four Taiwanese boys who ruled Ying De University. So when people asked me why I decided to travel to Taiwan, I wasn’t joking when I said it’s because I’m a Meteor Garden fan.

Surely, San Cai, Hwa Ze Lei and Pineapple Head no longer roamed the grounds of the fictional Ying De, but there’s no stopping us from visiting National Taiwan University, one of the campuses used to film Meteor Garden. It’s in Taipei and easily accessible from the subway, that’s why we opted for this instead of going all the way to Chiayi County for National Chung Cheng University.

It was our last day in the country when we visited National Taiwan University. After spending the morning at Yeh Liu Geopark in New Taipei City, we rode a provincial bus en route to Taipei that passes through NTU. It was a long and bumpy ride, and we almost fell off our seats a couple of times. We almost missed our stop, too, because we all fell asleep!

Since we had a flight to catch that night, we could only spare an hour to roam around the grounds of F4’s Ying De University. [Read more…]

Before I went to Taipei, I thought there’s nothing much to do in the city. But during the trip planning and the actual trip itself, we realized that four days are still not enough to see everything. But despite the lack of time to explore the capital, we still decided to go easy on ourselves and start our first day quite late instead of the planned 8:00 A.M. No regrets, though! We had an awesome first day.

After going around the neighborhood looking for a cheap place for lunch, we finally started our tour! 228 Memorial Peace Park in Taipei wasn’t part of our itinerary, but it’s right next to our hostel and it’s also where the nearest subway stations was located. So of course it had to be our first stop.

Too bad we didn’t know then what the park signifies, but it’s apparently the oldest park in Taipei! It’s been through so much history and went through so many name changes, and it still stands. It’s also a beautiful place, and we were lucky we saw it everyday during our stay. [Read more…]