Pingtong

The second stop on our Chinese New Year tour was in a city called Pingtong in the south of Taiwan. As I mentioned before, there is nothing famous or spectacular about Pingtong, but knowing that any place of note would be teeming with multitudes of Taiwanese tourists on holiday for the New Year, a faceless, nameless town was exactly what I was looking for.

At this point, Nok and I still didn’t have any real idea of where we would head after Pingtong, but after examining a map I decided that the city would put us in an ideal location to head out to any number of interesting places. So after being sort of booted from our hotel in Tainan at 9pm on Thursday evening (they tried to change the rate after we’d already been there for a day!), we hopped on a train and headed south.

We arrived in Pingtong at about 10:30pm with no idea what the city was like or where we might spend the night. After nearly an hour of wandering the streets in search of a hotel, we finally found a hotel with ancient, shabby rooms that wasn’t fully booked or charging triple the rate just because it was Chinese New Year. Across from our hotel was this enormous and elaborately decorated temple.

The giant temple in Pingtong. This picture really doesn’t do the temple any justice… It was HUGE. A giant furnace for burning ghost money can be seen on the right.

The front of the big temple. It was pretty crowded inside, as going to the temple is an important part of Chinese New Year.

The giant furnace for burning ghost money.  The old lady sitting next to it was selling stacks of ghost money.  These furnaces are found outside of every temple.

Tainan

Tainan was the first stop on our recent trip for Chinese New Year. Tainan is one of the oldest cities in Taiwan, and in fact used to be the capital. The city is famous for its many old temples, museums and other cultural sites. It was a rather pleasant place, very clean and not so crowded. It was nice to spend a day there walking through the old streets, taking in the vibes of old Taiwan.

We came across this massive, incredibly strange looking sculpture while walking towards the first temple of the day. Stray dogs like this are pretty common in Taiwan, but they’re all very friendly.

The front of an old Confucian Temple. This was our first stop of the day.

This was actually part of an old fort called the Great South Gate. It is one of the last remaining pieces of a giant wall that used to surround the old city. This was taken on top of the wall, about 15 feet high.

This tree was taking over the wall of the Great South Gate.

This little temple was also the tomb for the five loyal concubines of the old king.

The garden outside the temple of the five concubines.

This temple was by far the most interesting we saw. Tucked away on a quiet little side street, this nearly 300 year old temple seems to have been all but forgotten by the world.

This ancient dragon-like creature was next to the entrance. Old pictures like this were throughout the temple, though inside everything was much more colorful.

Inside the front gate of the old temple. Just to the left was the main hall of the temple, where a group of monks was busy singing and chanting.

The front room of the temple was filled with these massive, rather intimidating looking creatures. Each of the four giant statues was crushing some poor soul under its foot. The enormous inscriptions of a heavily bearded, ax carrying ogre on each of the doors was also rather frightening.

This tall, much newer temple had been built next to the old one. These spiral-like structures are almost always found next to temples, and I’ve always wondered what they were for. After looking inside an open door on the backside of the building, we soon discovered its purpose.

This was what we found when we looked inside the open door at the back of the tall, spiral temple. It was a room packed full of human ashes, many of the urns complete with pictures of the departed. Apparently, these tall structures are like vertical cemeteries, and are a somber feature of most temples in Taiwan.

The ugly and the surreal converge. Sights like this are very common in Taiwan, seeing ancient and magnificent temples crammed in between old ugly apartment buildings. Wandering through the cramped streets of Taiwan, you never know when you’ll stumble across some old beautiful gem like this one.

Mixed in with all the Buddhist temples, there is also a surprisingly large number of Christian churches. This was a rather large church on a busy street of Tainan.

Another Tainan church, this one with a rather funny illustration of Jesus leading his sheep.

This smoky temple was an extremely grim place, and seemed to be some sort of a temple of death. The walls were covered with old inscriptions of the Buddhist vision of hell, and it was indeed a somber sight.

Also from the temple of death, this woman was throwing wads of “ghost money” into a raging furnace. Taiwanese Buddhists believe that after a person has died, it is necessary to burn special “ghost money” for them to spend in the afterlife.

On a more pleasant note, Nok and I came across these four little kittens in a quiet alley. We came back to feed them many times during our stay in Tainan.

 

Chunghua and another Giant Buddha

Last Saturday Nok and I ventured the farthest away from Fongyuan since we arrived 6 weeks ago. We hopped on a train and traveled over to a place called Chunghua, which is the next county over and about 40 minutes on the train. Chunghua city is a little bigger than the one we live in, and is most famous for a hill that rises up in the middle of the city. The hill is covered with a nicely groomed park topped with a massive, 70 foot tall Buddha. This Buddha was a distinctly different style than the giant golden Buddha of Taichung.

To be honest, the icons and imagery of Buddhism have never really held much interest for me. As such, I really don’t know much about the different styles of Buddha found in all the many countries where Buddhism is practiced. But this particular Buddha seemed more in keeping with the traditional Buddhas I saw while in India and Nepal.

Not far from the hill park, Chunghua also harbors a lesser known Confucian temple. The temple is unique in that Confucian temples are not so common anymore, and this particular temple is more than 200 years old and built largely from wood. It was covered with elaborate woodcarvings and colorful paintings. All in all, Chunghua was a very pleasant city and definitely worth a visit.

The giant front gate of the Confucian Temple.

The front of the Confucian Temple.

We came across these dogs at the entrance to the park. This set of stairs was actually part of a university.

A shot of the giant Buddha from the front. Beneath, a massive fountain of carved dragons can be seen. Later, they blasted some Yanni and the fountains came to life.

A closeup of the giant Buddha. You could actually climb up inside it, as there was a sort of museum inside depicting the life of Buddha. The head was blocked off though, as going into his head is considered disrespectful.

Taken just in front of the giant Buddha. The city of Chunghua can be seen in the background.

This huge, four-story temple was just behind the giant Buddha. It was flanked by two tall spiral style temples and two long halls for the monks to live and study.

Inside the temple. There was something similar to this on every floor of the temple, with loads of Buddha statues and a huge open space for prayers and incense.

A vendor selling an assortment of eggs. I have no idea what animal these eggs came from, but they were massive. They looked more like potatoes than eggs.

By the time we started to walk back, the musical dragon fountain was in full swing. Nok and I sat and watched the fountain and listened to Yanni and Doraemon as the sun began to set.

Nok and I stopped for a photo on the way down.

 

Chengchung Park

When Nok and I first arrived in Fengyuan, we set out one day towards the hills in the hopes that we’d stumble across some hiking trails. Unfortunately on that day, we found nothing but impassable jungle. It turns out, if we’d headed in just a slightly different direction, we would have come across an excellent park filled with miles of hiking trails.

Today Nok and I went for a stroll there, a place called Chengchung Park.  The name Chengchung Park is particularly amusing, because it is so close to the Thai word for “go pee.” But that’s another story.

We spent a few hours hiking through the trails there and came across some interesting sites along the way. We were feeling rather lazy today since I’m six days into a nasty cold/flu, and had to teach four hours in the morning. But it was still a nice day and we’ll definitely be back in the future.

This giant statue was at the bottom of the park, with the trails beginning just behind it. I have no idea who he is, and the sign was in Chinese.

A view of Fengyuan City from the first hilltop. The air was surprisingly clear today.

Little shrines like this are found on the tops of many hills. They remind me very much of India, accept the Taiwanese shrines are metallic and shiny.

This giant temple was on top of one of the hills. Chinese style temples are incredibly ornate and remarkably creative.

A closer shot of the front of the temple. The walls were covered in what appeared to be granite carvings.

The inside of the temple. This was a difficult shot to take because there were no lights inside, just the sun reflecting off the floor. I didn’t really feel comfortable going inside, so I had to take this from the doorway.

A giant stick of incense in a shrine in front of the temple. Many Buddhists in Taiwan and Thailand believe that burning incense is respectful to Buddha and can bring good luck.

Resting in a swing before the walk down. It was pretty hot today, especially after the cold weather of the last couple of weeks.

The walk down. I think Nok was getting bored of being in so many pictures.

A picture of the cameraman. This was taken in a strange little gazebo we found near the bottom of the trail.

Taichung and the Giant Buddha

Taichung city is the third largest city in Taiwan and just 20 kilometers from where I now live, in Fengyuan. With over 1 million people, it’s a pretty good sized city with lots of interesting things to see and do. It’s also surprisingly clean and modern, so Nok and I have spent more than a few afternoons there.

One of the more interesting sites is this giant golden Buddha:

Nok is the little red ant on the bottom of the picture.

 

This giant mural was on the side of the Taichung Cultural Center. We went there to see an exhibition of Rodin, but unfortunately it was closed when we arrived.

In the park next to the Cultural Center.

Call me a sucker, but I just really like this picture. There was something about the light in the trees that just made this a really pleasant place.

I look up in disgust after flipping through my crappy Lonely Planet guidebook. The people who wrote it were either incredibly lazy or incredibly boring. I suspect it was a bit of both. Never buy Lonely Planet!