Monday April 26

We got a relatively early start today after not enough sleep. The hotel breakfast buffet included strong coffee and a mix of Chinese, Korean and unidentified foods, some of which I tried. Different but good.

We walked about fifteen minutes to our subway stop and took the train to Longshan Temple. The subway is cheap, fast, and very clean and it covers quite a bit of the city.

Longshan Temple is a Buddist/Taoist temple that was build in the 1800s. The major diety of the temple is Guanyin, the goddess of Compassion, but there are a number of other dieties represented. In the entire pantheon of asian deities, Guanyin in my favorite since Compassion is, I think, a critical quality in how we relate to others. Compassion for others is missing more and more in the American political discussion.

While the temple is ornate and the statues of Guanyin and the other gods are all beautiful, the most striking thing to me was how busy the temple is. During the hour that we were there, a steady stream of people came in and presented incense to the gods, worked on divining their fortunes, or kneeled and read Bhuddist prayers. The temple-goers were of all ages and probably most of them were not Buddists or Taoists.

We got some incense and I said a few words to Guanyin about the lack of compassion in the world and I put some incense in both of the two huge bronze containers in front of Guanyin. I also presented incense to Mazu(who protects people on the sea), the deities that protect women in childbirth and the moon god (I think).

We then wandered around that part of town for a while looking for the Dizang Wat Temple where people petitioned the diety in charge of Hell. They ask not to be sent to Hell or at least not to be sent there for too long. When we found it, the temple looked like a garage from the outside as described in the guide book. It only had a few room but there was very cool and scary looking statues in there. We were the only people around so we didn't stay long.

There were a lot of alleys full of stalls selling nearly everything and we wandered through two or three. One of them was the herb alley which was packed with things I did not recognize. Other alleys had stalls and storefronts selling everything from clothes with Chinglish on them to live or freshly butchered animals. I got some veggie dumplings in one of those alleys that I thought were very good.

We walked north and saw the Qingshui temple, small but very pretty with very ornate carvings. We walked west toward the river and saw the Qingshan temple which was a beautiful building with three levels of prayer areas.

We looped back through a partially open night market and went to the new train station. We bought tickets there to travel to Hualien tomorrow on the Limited Express. There's a high speed train too but it  doesn't seem like an extra hour is all that important when you have two weeks.

The main danger we face isn't heat (it was warm but not hot) or street crime, it's motor scooters. I think everyone in this city has one an they drive them on the streets, on the alleys, and on the sidewalks where they park them in large numbers. You have to always watch for them or you'll get hit. BTW, contrary to published reports, car drivers appear to be pretty good drivers.

After crashing for a while we went on an unsuccessful hunt for a restaurant that we saw in a guide book. We wound up eating at a similar buffet where the food looked very fresh but was kind of bland. While we were walking back we found some interesting other restaurants to try and an interesting outdoor art piece using laser light at the Museum of Comtemporary Art.

Time for sleep!