Sanyi, it Wood Be Wrong to Omit You

Since I’m home right now, I thought it might be a good time to catch up on some things that I should have written about before.   Like the trip to Sanyi, Taiwan last fall.

Before we headed into the town itself we visited a temple whose name I have no idea of.  But the place was impressive, as they almost always are.  They were undergoing some renovations, so the front gate had building supplies piled all around it, but that’s the price of progress, right?  I wish I had gotten the name of the place, but language difficulties prevented a whole lot of detailed talking.    The place seemed fairly new, as temples in Taiwan go, but it’s really hard to tell.  I heard someone estimate that there are over 30,000 temples in this small island nation.  Plus, they’re building new ones all the time.   And the new ones seem to look just like the old ones in many cases.

Entrance gate

There was this adorable sculpture just inside the main gate of a giant gold teapot, continuously pouring tea and a bunch of kids lighting firecrackers.   So cute!  Also quite large.  The kids were more than life-sized.  We then walked up a lovely marble staircase with large metal lotus blossoms on the top of each post.   As we turned the corner at the top of the stairs, the main temple came into view.   The courtyard had large, marble lotus blossoms in the pavement.  The stairways and front were surrounded by flower gardens.  There were many worshipers inside, I have no idea which deity  the place was dedicated to.   But there were a whole lot of people volunteering to keep this place going.  (Hmmmm, kind of sounds like the church I go to, in that last regard.)

Temple courtyard

fire cracker kids

As we were standing in front of the temple, a bunch of people came out of the temple wearing purple vests.  One of them had a bullhorn, the rest were carrying what appeared to be fake purple lotus blossoms.  They all lined up in front of the temple for some kind of ceremony, while we continued on around behind the temple to view the rest of the grounds.  The temple serves a free meal to all who visit and there were lots and lots of volunteers sitting around preparing the fruits and veggies that go into the feeding of the masses.  I have no idea what most of the plant-life was, it was not stuff I was at all familiar with.  Well, except for bamboo.  Bamboo is cooked into a lot of things in Asia.  There were many, many tarps laid out in the courtyard with bamboo slices on them, drying.

procession

Preparing to feed the masses

There was a lot of lovely landscaping around the temple grounds, huge pots of water lilies and a  hillside covered with greenery and fake cranes cavorting about.  We then came to the place where all that food we had seen being prepared was being served.  It was pretty amazing to see how-oiled the machinery was that managed to feed hundreds of the visiting faithful (and just plain tourists!) each day (no, we didn’t eat there.  We had just finished lunch shortly before arriving at the temple.)    At the back of the hall there was an enormous block of jade, maybe 4 by 8 feet.  It was carved with dozens of horses on each side, galloping across its face…both faces.  Truly inspiring.  Fabulous work!

jade panel

After that it was a stroll back to the parking lot and a second viewing of some of the great statuary at the front of the grounds (they’re really into realistic anatomical detail on their horned lions!  Uh, the horns were on their heads, but they were most decidedly male lions…).  Then it was back to the parking lot and on to Sanyi itself.

Horned lion

Sanyi is known for wood carving.  They host an international wood-carving festival and it truly is international, entered by carvers from a lot of different countries.  I know this because we visited the wood carving museum there and saw some of the past year’s entries.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This was another trip where friends of my brother’s drove us up to a special place we wanted to see.    As I recall, the drive up was quite nice, but I was impressed with the town the moment we got to the edge of it.  There was a great piece of sculpture as soon as we got off the freeway.   Good start!

Sculpture at the edge of Sanyi

Then it was on to main street, store after store of (primarily)  carved wood.  (Surprise!)  However, we didn’t start our visit to Sanyi there.  Instead we went  to a street that led to the wood-carving museum.  This street was full of all kinds of stores selling artistic-type stuff, including some pretty incredible sculpture, in wood and stone.  Pieces that were several thousand US dollars….and worth every penny.  I was blown away by some of the things  I saw in those stores.   These were not your average something-for-a-tourist-to-take-home stores.

After visiting a few of these stores we went up to the museum.  Outside were two sculptures of elephants. made of something that looked like giant pieces of driftwood, although it probably wasn’t.   Unless it drifted in off some really giant trees!   The museum was great, unfortunately they didn’t allow cameras.  Which was totally not cool, because the stuff was awesome.  But what can you do?

Museum elephant

After some time in the museum, we cruised the high-end tchotchkes on the avenue again for a little while, then we went to an art gallery that the woman who was with us apparently frequents fairly often.  They seemed to know her quite well.  Which means she has really, really excellent taste in art because the stuff in the gallery absolutely blew me away.  There was one piece in particular that I seriously considered tapping out my IRA to own.   It just made me feel that free and alive.  I think we ended up spending more time at the gallery than we did at the museum.   And it was worth every minute.

I know I should have written about Sanyi closer to the event, when things were still fresh and the details were…there.  Still with me.  But I didn’t.  The big things though, the highlights, they’re still there.  The flavors of the place.  Standing before one of the infinity pools at the gallery, looking at the mountains in the distance, soaring on the feeling of airiness and space.  Or looking in the other direction and watching the people having lunch in the courtyard, with striped bamboo all around them; the sing-song of their voices and the ring of their laughter.  I almost hated to leave, but we had yet to walk through any  of the stores we passed on the way into town.

That, unfortunately,  was a bit of a disappointment.  The prices of goods in these stores had become what I have come to call “Americanized”.   The prices are no longer what the average Taiwanese would pay, but are based on what the average American tourist would be willing to pay.  Which I wasn’t.  I left disappointed with no memento of Sanyi in my bag.  Just my photos and memories, which are far more important than “stuff” anyway.

On the way out of town there was a fence alongside the road.  Someone had planted a flowering vine across the top of it, then trained it to undulate along the fence top.  As we reached the end of the fence, I saw that they had carved the end of the vine into the head of a serpent.  A half-mile long snake.  Unfortunately, that picture didn’t come out.  Too bad.  But still, a lovely day in Sanyi.

A Dragon and Tiger’s Tale on Lotus Lake

One of my trips in Taiwan was to Lotus Lake.  It was a day-trip I would have to take on my own as Brian had to work.  Emma gave me a ride to the train station in Yuanlin, which is where we realized that I had just missed the train that would take me to the high-speed train station.  And there wouldn’t be another one for almost an hour and a half.   I was tempted to give the idea up as something that wasn’t meant to be, as it was already getting pretty late in the day for a long trip, like this one would be.   But Emma (bless her heart) wasn’t going to let that happen.  Instead, she offered to drive me to the station for the HSR.  Such a sweetie!

So I made it to the HSR and purchased my ticket for Kaohsiung and settled into my seat. (Oh, while in the station I noticed a little kiosk selling baked goods–called the Pasadena bakery.  How cute.  A bakery in Taiwan with the same name as the city where I went to High School.)  I had gotten a window seat so that I could view the countryside on the ride down.  And there was plenty to see.  We passed a park with a small lake that had a path around it.  Over the path was a sculptural “roof” that was like an undulating golden serpent….well, to me anyway.  Someone else I showed the picture to told me that it looked like a tapeworm!  Well, I guess I see the world a little nicer.

power plant stack

Pasadena, the Taiwanese bakery!

A little shade for your walk

Once I arrived in Kaohsiung, I looked around to see if I could tell where the lake was, because it appeared to be quite close on the map Brian had printed out for me, but I couldn’t see a way to get across the train tracks from where I was.  But I had a nice walk around the area by the station while hoping to find a simple way to the lake.  Didn’t find it, but I did find a nice little park with a pretty floral clock and a sculpture of over-sized eggs that was interesting.  Then I got smart and took a cab to the lake.  Because of the multiple train tracks and  small hill, it was about a mile and a half to the lake.  No direct route.

Eggs

floral clock

Lotus Lake is a man-made lake in Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan.  It was created in 1951 and the various temples were then built on its shores. There are several temples on the lake, but one of the most noted is comprised of  side-by-side pagodas, one with a dragon theme and one with a tiger.  When you visit the temple, you enter through the dragon’s mouth and exit through the tiger’s.  This is supposed to symbolize turning bad luck or circumstances into good things in one’s life.

Tiger and Dragon Pagodas

Dragon pagoda

Before you can enter the dragon’s throat, you have to  walk along a zigzag bridge that takes you across the lake to the pagodas.  The reason for the pattern to the bridge, instead of a more direct route, is the belief that ghosts and bad spirits can’t make sharp turns.  Those 90 degree corners are too much for them and they fall off the bridge into the lake.  Yikes!  Poor ghosts, so clumsy.  (They also can step over raised ledges.  So temple doorways on regular streets have wooden door sills that are several inches high that us live beings step over to enter the temple.  Ghosts are stumped by these and must remain outside.)

Walk a crooked bridge

Once you enter the dragon’s mouth you are treated to various scenes painted on the walls of the dragon’s insides.  The inside of both pagodas, like all temples I’ve seen in Asia, are painted with all kinds of pictures and scenes and ornamented within an inch of their lives.  But it’s done oh-so-beautifully.  In the case of this temple, many of the scenes reflect themes of filial duty, plus pictures of heaven and hell meant to inspire people to do good deeds and avoid wrongdoing.

More inside paintings

Painting inside tiger’s body

What really inspired me was the beauty of the place–the detail of the carvings, the intricacy of the paintings and sculptures.  On the third  floor of each pagoda there are three or four dragon or tiger figures placed around the roof edges.  The figures are about four or five feet long.  Each is finely detailed and made of hundreds on small tiles of various shapes and colors that make of the fur of the tiger and the scales of the dragon.  They appear to be made of ceramic of some sort.   There were lanterns on the balcony eaves that were solid carved wood, but they were painted and detailed to look like traditional paper lanterns.

lantern

Tiger figure

Dragon figure

It just amazes me how much time, energy and detail is put into each of these temples.  I had a hard time telling which temples I was viewing had been built in the past century and which ones were hundreds of years old.  They really go all-out on upkeep on these places.  So the ancient temples don’t look any older than one built 20 years ago.  These places are about the only things in Asia that get a new coat of paint whenever things start to look a little faded around the edges!

Temple altar

Directly across the street from the Tiger and Dragon pagodas was another temple.  I’m not sure what the name of it was, but again, another beautiful temple.  So I crossed the street to view that temple.  Lovely.  There was a wonderful embroidered hanging in the front of the temple.  Traditional Chinese embroidery.  Quite large, very colorful.  I’m not sure who this temple (or what!) was dedicated to.  Normally the god the temple is dedicated to occupies the center altar of temple.  In this case, that central position was occupied by a dragon!  After viewing the temple, I got an ice cream cone, then had some fun feeding bits of the cone to the fish in the lake.  They went crazy over the cone.  One fish actually jumped up out of the water to snatch a piece of cone out of the mouth of the first fish to grab it.  It was hilarious!

traditional embroidery

The temple across the street

Just a little way up the lake are the Spring and Autumn Pavilions, dedicated to Kuan Kung  (god of war).  Guanyin (Kuanyin), goddess of mercy is in front of the pavilions riding on a dragon.  Legend has it that the goddess appeared above the clouds, riding a dragon and signified to her followers that they must erect a statue depicting the event between the pavilions.  This was done, giving the shrines their current affect.

goddess riding the dragon

Kuan Kung

The dragon the goddess rides is hollow and lined with stories of her existence.   A lot of them are very graphic.  But  also very interesting.

Lady breaks the sword of a beheader

Dragon innards

After I left that temple, I headed down the lake towards the next one.   As I was nearing the gate of the next temple, I noticed an area set up for karaoke.   This was a permanent, covered, outdoor stage, attached to a small eatery.  These folks love their karaoke!  When I was first walking up, the guy on stage sounded like someone strangling a cat.  But that’s acceptable when performing karaoke in Asia.  Just strangle that cat with gusto!  The next guy had a voice more like velvet, very smooth, nice to listen to.  Couldn’t understand a word, but  still good listening.   He loved it when I took his picture.

I went on up to that temple and took my walk around then spent some time admiring the birds wading in the shallows and mud flats.  There were a lot of different birds in the area.  Since I love bird watching, this lake was a good spot for me.  I particularly loved the swallows.  They were nesting on every structure in the area.  Small birds, very pretty.  They were quite at home there, and not very shy at all.

lotus

wading bird

After that I continued on to the far end of the lake, to the Confucian temple.  This place was really peaceful and pretty.  Like all the temples here, it appeared to be very old, but was actually built in 1977.  I had the place mostly to myself; a couple of other people wandered through while I was there, but that was about it.  Like I said, pretty place, although not as ornate as any of the other temples i had been in.  There was also a monastery on the grounds, but it was “fenced” off from the rest of the grounds.  Not so much a fence, as ornate grill work, but sufficient to afford the monks their privacy from visitors to the temple.

main temple

temple entrance

Confucian temple gate

 

 

 

 

As I was visiting each of the above temples and shrines, I kept seeing one more place across the lake that looked interesting.   Another temple with a giant seated figure on the roof.   So I continued on along the path that runs around the lake to the temple.   The figure on the roof was Master Qing shui, AKA Chen Chao-Ying.  He was born in 1044 AD.   He became a monk at the Great Cloud temple and followed zen teachings.   According to the pamphlet I was given at the temple, he was quite the teacher and did a lot of good for a lot of people.   After he died, he was “listed in the class of fairies”.  I’m not sure what that means, but I have a feeling that he was pretty highly regarded.

Qing Shui Temple

The seated figure is 50 feet tall and sits at the top of the four story building.  The entry leading to the temple has a pair of fire-breathing dragons on either side of the path.  There are furnaces in the bases of the dragons.  When they are fired up, the dragons belch smoke and flames from their mouths.   I imagine they would be pretty cool to see when they are smokin’.   There was actually quite a bit to see inside the temple as well.  This included a display on the third floor where there was a dragon and a peacock (among other things) made out of porcelain spoons, bowls and plates.   As I was leaving, a young man stopped to talk to me.  He looked to be about 14 years old and spoke English quite well.  He told me that there was a big festival scheduled for the next day and night at the lake–lots of fireworks, music, etc.  and kept encouraging me to stay at the lake for the festival.  I wish I could have.  It sounded like it would have been fun.  But I had to leave Taiwan in two days, so the next day I had to start packing to leave the next morning.  Staying on for the next 36 hours just wouldn’t have been possible.  Bummer.

Fire breathing dragon

pretty flower on Confucius temple grounds

 

 

 

 

 

After that, I started hoofing it back to the train station.  It turned out to be quite a lot farther than it originally appeared.   While walking I passed a couple more interesting places I would have liked to visit, but I was running out of time and energy was even lower.  Sigh.   But I really did have a great day at the lake.

Tai O, Away!

A couple of quick things.  I think I said something about having to step up to the bathroom in Japan.  I can’t remember if I mentioned that it’s been like that everywhere I’ve gone in Asia, to a greater or lesser degree.   I have yet to find a bathroom without some kind of impedance when entering the bathroom.  In my hotel it’s a marble sill about two inches high.  Just high enough to catch your toe when you stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night.  And send you stumbling head-first into the shower wall.

All the bathrooms have a drain in the floor in addition to the one in the shower.  Not only do they not expect all the water to stay in the shower, most of the time they don’t even try to keep it there.  In my current digs,  the lip along the edge of the shower stall is lower than the one in the doorway!  Which means there is a small lake on the bathroom floor when I get out of the shower.  If I don’t keep the mat far enough away from the shower, it’s soaked by the time I get out.   The bathroom floor in my hotel room doesn’t slope toward the drain in all places.  One area slopes toward the rear of the toilet.  I have taken to using the bottom of the trash can as a sort of squeegee to scrape the water toward the drain when I get out of the shower to help drain the swamp.  Oh, and lest I forget again, Asian beds are basically rocks with sheets.  There is no “give” whatsoever.   I’m just thankful that they have normal pillows instead of the actual stone or wood “pillows” that they used to use.

The other thing that is oh-so-common here are shops that sell everything your dearly departed family members need in the afterlife.   It is a firm part of their belief system (we’re talking about non-Christians here, which covers the majority) that if you don’t provide properly for you dead relatives, they will haunt you.   Not only haunt you, but make bad things happen.  You want to get audited by the IRS?  (or their version thereof), don’t send granny that beemer she always wanted before she died.

So, how do you get it to her?  You go the the afterlife store (They don’t actually call it that).  You can buy anything you can think of there, all very inexpensively, because it’s all made out of paper.  Suit and tie? Check.  Rolex?  Check.  Big fancy house complete with butler and maid and the BMW in the driveway?  Check.  The house will fold out like a doll house and everything those in the next life need to live there is already printed on the walls.  Should the appliances that are printed on the house walls not be spiffy enough, you can buy paper versions of the top of the line stove, TV, computer etc.

But how to get it to them without actually crossing over yourself?  Why, you set it on fire, of course!   The smoke carries it to them.  As for money, well you don’t want to set the real stuff on fire, so you take your money to the nearest temple and exchange it for fake money you can burn.  The temple gets to keep the real stuff for its own upkeep.  I don’t know what the going rate is for a million bucks, but it’s not a one-to-one ratio.

OK, enough for the small oddities department.  Today I returned to Lantau Island.  Not to ride the cable car again, but to go to another section of the island to see Tai O village.  To change things up, I went by ferry to Lantau this time, then took a bus into Tai O.  It was a pretty ride through the mountains, with stops at a few small towns along the way.  We passed a reservoir that was really  low.  It had a shoreline that looked as bleak as Lake Mead’s, in the low-water department.   The bus was passed by an ambulance, a couple of fire trucks and some police cars as we neared Tai O.  Seems that a mountain got set on fire somehow and they were trying to get it under control while the police were busy questioning a couple of young men that could have reported it, or could have started it, who knows?  But it was out within an hour of my arrival at the  village.

Tai O is the Hong Kong equivalent of an American Indian reservation.  There’s a small museum full of artifacts from the towns earlier days with specimens of the type of clothing the people used to wear, old fishing nets, household items and the like.   Once you leave the museum, it’s stall after stall primarily of dried fish.   But not all.  Some people make bean paste in huge plastic casks, stirring it with a power drill to which a huge mixing blade has been attached.  Others make and sell traditional teas, jewelry or resell items from mainland China.  Whatever will make them a livelihood.

The inhabitants have lived in stilt houses on the tidal flats for eons.  They have always been fishing folk.   They just have bigger boats and nicer nets now.  But most of them don’t fish anymore.  They just dry and cook the fish to sell to the tourists who flock to the town.  Or sell the fish fresh.  Really fresh.  As in still swimming around in a plastic tub when you pick out your dinner.   I saw tubs with all different types of fish, plus crabs and one with lobsters climbing all over each other.  A whole lot of antennas waving about in the air as the water wasn’t all that deep.   While I was watching the lobster antics, I saw a tentacle flop over the edge from the next tub, grope about then withdraw.  The octopi were restless, but that one apparently didn’t find what it was looking for.

If fishing isn’t lucrative enough, or too much like work, a villager may buy a small boat, put a few seats and life jackets in it and sell rides to the tourists.   For $20 HK you can get a 20-25 minute ride that takes you a little ways up into the village so that you can see some of it from the water.   Then the boats go out past the breakwater so the tourists can view a rock formation that’s called The Old Man’s Nose, or something like that.   Then you cruise around the area aimlessly for a few minutes trying to spot some of the famous white dolphins, which are actually pink.  (They have pictures of them, so they must exist, but I sure didn’t see any).  The ride back into the harbor was a blast. The captain of our little vessel got into a race with another boat and we were flying!  Jumping over the wakes of the other boats entering and leaving the harbor.  Leaping into the air and whacking back down sending big sheets of spray off to the sides, while also rocking side-to-side.   It was great.

Once we were back on land I wandered around the village and watched the various ways the natives make their living now.  Yes, many of them do still fish, but it seemed that the majority sold stuff to tourists.   I saw one house where the occupant was very into bonsai.  He must have had 50 to 80 trees of various sizes and types in his front yard.  They filled the whole yard, except for a small normal-sized tree that was doing double duty as a place to hang various guages of wire, some small rope and whatever else was needed in the bonsai dept.  They also  played mahjong.  I think Tuesday must be mahjong day.  Everywhere I went today, I saw people playing the game..   Since I hadn’t observed anyone doing so before this, I’m wondering if it’s a coincidence, or a Tuesday thing.   I’ll never know…

When I had had my fill of Tai O, I went back to the bus stop to leave.  Uh oh.  The line for the bus back to the ferry dock was several blocks long.  Literally.   I just couldn’t deal with the thought of standing in another line for over an hour and possibly two.  I started looking for another way back to my hotel.  I found another ferry that would take me from Tai O to Tung Chung, where I could get the MRT back to Hong Kong.  The only problem was that all the departures were full until 6:20 PM.  And it was only 4:05.  I was not a happy camper.  But sitting on a bench by the ocean for two hours beat the thought of standing in line for the same amount of time, so I bought a ticket.

I passed the time wandering along a lengthy causeway over the tidal flats, watching the egrets soar, the little fishes flashing silver as they jumped out of the water and the water bubbling up through grates that allow the ocean to flow in and out as the tides change.   The sun slowly set over the sea and I made my way back to the ferry dock to await my ride.   I got back to the hotel a lot later than I would have liked, but at least I wasn’t standing in a line becoming more tired and frustrated by the moment.  Instead I spent the time surrounded by the beauty of nature and inhaling that wonderful salt air.

I got back to my hotel with a plan to work on this post, then pack everything up so that I could leave the hotel early and ride the peak tram to Victoria Peak and walk around the park up there for awhile before I had to leave for the airport to return to Taiwan and begin the journey home.   What actually happened was that I was so tired when I got back that I did very little work on the post, ate some instant oatmeal in lieu of dinner, took a long, hot shower and went to bed after setting my alarm for an early wake-up.

Unfortunately, when the alarm went off in the morning I was dead tired, had a sore throat and was aching all over.   Great.  My last day of the trip and I’m sick.  Plus the one thing that every single tourist that comes to Hong Kong does without fail, I can’t do, unless I want to risk getting so sick that they might not let me on the plane.

They take their illness very seriously around here.  You actually walk through an infrared scanner as you get off the plane.  If you’re running a fever they pull you into a quarantine station.  I don’t know what it takes to get out of there, but I’m sure it entails proving you don’t have some deadly disease.   Which I have a feeling would mean missing your flight.  Something I did NOT want to have happen.  So I slept in.  Packed my enormously multiplied “stuff” just in time for check out then rode the trolley one last time for giggles.  After that I caught the shuttle to the airport.  I paid the extra money for the direct shuttle rather than take the free transfer from the hotel to a shuttle station.  My caution paid off.  I made my flight and passed the infrared coming into Taiwan with flying colors.  You can view yourself on the screen as you go through.  It’s pretty easy to spot anyone who’s engine is running a little warm.

About that multiplied “stuff”.  Next time I travel, I’m taking two changes of clothes, a dozen pair of socks and underwear and two empty (or mostly empty) suitcases.  I just couldn’t help myself.  Some things were just so cheap here that I did all my Christmas and birthday shopping for the next year!  The deals were too good to pass up.  At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

This paragraph is just for the ladies, Japan has the best underwear.  They are so comfy.   They don’t ride up in the wrong place, or slide down to below the comfort zone.  They fit like a glove that you never notice you have on, come in every color of the rainbow, and are cute as can be.  I guess since Japanese women have to dress so conservatively at work, they like to have something on that’s frilly and pretty and nice, so they wear those things where they don’t show.   I have never seen so many fancy bras, panties, slips, etc. in my life as in Japanese department stores.  Lacy and racy, flowers and colors, feminine to the extreme.  Of course some of the prices on those items where unbelievable, but I got a kick out of looking at the variety.  Then I just bought  the items that had me hooked on their sheer comfort.  I guess that shows my age more than anything.  The sexy stuff is cute to look at, but give me comfort every time.  It’s some much more important to me these days.

I’m writing this from a hotel in Taoyoan, Taiwan.   The Majesty Hotel.  It’s older, like just about everything in Taiwan, but it seems very nice.  Clean, good sized room, plenty of amenities, and they offer free taxi service back to the airport in the morning!  That will save me $500 NT right there.  Plus high-speed internet and free breakfast.  Can’t ask for more.    Night all!  (Pictures to come later…)

I’m Off the Island

Today I took the Star ferry from the island city of Hong Kong to the Peninsula, which is Kowloon.  I almost took the ferry across last night to watch the light show, but I was so tired that I scrapped that idea and just returned to the hotel.  Which brings me to something I found very interesting.

Yesterday I noticed hundreds of women in variously sized groups around  the central bus terminal,  MRT station and post office, which are all adjacent to one another.   These were women of differing ages and the groups could be from four to about a twelve people.  There were no males; there were no children.  It looked like dozens and dozens of little encampments of homeless people, except that all the women were nicely dressed, clean and obviously well fed.  Many had shopping bags from department stores or electronics stores, etc.   They generally had large quantities of food that the whole of each group was sharing.  The whole thing was rather mystifying to me at the time.

The women had  laid out flattened cardboard boxes to mark out  a space for their group.  The edge of the cardboard was the edge of their space.  All the places they congregated were wide, covered walkways.  So unless there was a monsoon and it started raining sideways, they were protected from whatever.   Mostly that’s the sun this time of year.

It seems that there a LOT of Filipino maids in Hong Kong.  These maids get one day per week off, on Sunday.   When their day off comes, they congregate in groups with their friends and/or relatives.  They eat, gossip, do each others hair and nails, go shopping and probably talk about their employers.  I even saw one young woman piercing another’s belly-button!  They do it all.  And they do it one the street.  By around 7 PM on Sunday night, city workers or staff start coming around and collecting the cardboard to haul it off the street.   There is a nightly light show at 8 PM that is best viewed from the other side of the bay but I think they want these women out of the way when the tourists are returning to their hotels for the night.

Oh, and as long as I’m talking about things Asian, they still use bamboo here for scaffolding when they’re constructing a new building.  Yes, still.  Really.  If you see a big pile of bamboo on the street you know that construction in the area is imminent.   It’s strong, pretty much impervious to the elements, cheap, very light weight and it can be used over and over again.  They put netting or plywood across the bamboo at street level to protect pedestrians and netting all the way around the building being constructed or rehabbed.  Everything is so close together that they can’t allow falling construction materials to go whichever way they want to.  Runaway items must be kept close to the building lest they smash into a car, another building or a person walking by.   It looks a little strange to the Western eye, but it works and seems quite sensible.

Anyway, enough of that.  Let’s move on to what I did in school today.  (The school of my international education anyway…)  Let’s see….I had taken the ferry to the peninsula.  The ferry costs $2.50 HK,  $7.20 HK equals $1.00 US.  So it’s cheap.  It takes about seven minutes to cross.  It gives one a nice view and some good photo ops, but I really wanted a little more, so I walked down a couple of piers and paid $80 HK for a one hour narrated tour of the harbor.  It was very informative and really interesting.  It also gave me a great orientation on how the various places I’ve been and things I’ve seen thus far interconnect.

Kowloon skyline

Hong Kong skyline

After the harbor tour, I headed for the MRT to go to bird park.  On the way to the MRT
(Subway, remember?), I passed a building advertising Chinese handicrafts.  OK, I’ll bite.  I like crafts, as long as they’re good.   So I went in.   Wow.  Let me say that again.  WOW!!!  These were handicrafts like Monet is finger painting.   Carved jade sculptures of the most fantastic workmanship I have ever seen.  Mammoth ivory.  Coral.  Jade in white, green, purple, rose.  Bunches of grapes with birds eating them, life-sized and carved from a single piece of jade.  Floral arrangements.  People doing various tasks. Animals, dragons.  Coral, jade, mammoth ivory in every direction, each piece more fantastic than the last.

Public art near ferry pier

One mammoth ivory piece was one of those balls inside of balls inside of balls things, on an ornate stand.  Each ball was open-work lace carved in ivory.  35 balls in all, each rotating freely inside of the other.    This is the stuff that fine are museums are made of.   This was the same kind and quality of art work that I saw in the Palace Museum in Taiwan.  Only all of this was for sale.

more sculpture

There were many antique pieces for sale also.  As I was looking at one of the cases an Aussie gentleman turned to me and said, “can you believe the prices they have on this stuff?  That one little bowl is over $1000 Euros!”  He was incredulous.  He also apparently thought I could relate to what a Euro is worth, but whatever…  I gently pointed out to him that the piece he was looking at was made sometime between the late 1600’s and early 1700’s and that it was something of a miracle that it was still intact and looking like new.   Only then did he read the rest of the card beside the bowl, that fine print below the price with all the details.  He said, “oh” rather quietly, “well I guess that explains it.”   Yes, I guess it does.

From their I rode the MRT to a point near my destination and walked to the Bird Park.  Well, eventually I got to the bird park.  First I passed the goldfish market.  About a block of every kind of goldfish you can possibly think of and quite a few I’m sure very few of you have seen before.  Plus turtles, salamanders, tiny lobsters, crayfish, you name it.  All for sale.  Many in plastic bags of water, hanging on pegboard in row upon row of fishies in baggies.   All very much alive, swimming in tiny circles.

bags of fish for sale

After the goldfish market, I came to the flower market.  This was larger, covering about three square blocks.  Every kind of plant and flower you can think of was for sale here.  And more orchids than I have seen in my life.  All at prices so cheap it almost made me cry.  And I couldn’t buy a single thing because there was absolutely no way for me to carry it legally back to the US.  Crud cakes (keeping it clean here…).

more flower market

flower market

Finally I reached the Bird Park.  I had read that people here are very fond of their birds.  That’s a really massive understatement.  The blurb I read said that people take their birds to this park in their little cages and sit around in the park with them.  Sort of.  Primarily this is a block-long birds and everything-related-to-birds market.  Yes, there were some people in the park with their pets.  The cages for these pets are ornate wood affairs with fancy porcelain bowls for their food and water.  Intricately carved wood and ivory holders for bits of fruit for the bird are hooked onto the wood.

someone’s pretty baby

more birds

birds anyone?

Some of the cages, which averaged about 10 inches across and 12 to 14 inches tall, easily ran $100 to $150 US, without the bird.  That’s just the cage and the goodies to make it a special home for Tweety.   The birds that were visiting the park with their owners were obvious points of pride.    And almost all of the owners strutting their stuff were men.  There guys were extremely proud of their little feathered friends and I could pay no greater compliment that to take a picture of one of these birds and their ornate “house”.   The guy holding the cage tended to preen more than the bird.

another pretty baby

Not so with the birds that were for sale.  A couple of times when I was about to take a picture of some birds that were for sale, the sellers got right up in my face and started chewing me out in Chinese.  I’m not sure why.  They weren’t doing anything illegal.  The birds were well cared for.  I don’t have a clue what ticked them off so much about my trying to take a picture, but they were absolutely P. O.ed about the whole thing.  Whatever.  I just moved on to another seller that wasn’t so touchy about their birds.  No rhyme or reason to it that I could discern.

Prime birds for sale

About the birds.  Most were small.  Almost all were songbirds of some type.  Beautiful to listen to.  Beautiful to look at.  A few were larger birds, parrots, mynahs, conures, etc., diverse and usually colorful.   Many shops sold bird food.  But not just seed or dried fruit.  We’re talking live food, crickets, grasshoppers, meal-worms, etc.   All kinds of stuff.   Plus all the cage furniture and the wood cages.  A small, nice-looking wood cage could go for as little as about $12-15 US, and up (of course).   They were really inexpensive for what was a really nice product.

I kept wishing I could find a way to get one home without the airline crushing it, but I’m not sure how.   Without adding another suitcase, hard-shell this time, and paying even more over-my-allowance fees. (I have made a vow to myself.  After this I’m traveling with one or two changes of clothes plus extra underwear and socks, and washing them often.  Either that or I have to completely refrain from buying souvenirs for everybody I can think of.  Plus, a trip like this causes me to do most of my Christmas and birthday shopping for close friends and family for the next year, ’cause, hey, when am I going to see stuff like this again?  And at these prices?  I think I’ve gotten a bit carried away.  OK, I know I’ve gotten a whole lot carried away.  But it’s all so pretty and so cheap!)   Can I justify or what?

Anyway, out of the bird park, which is more market than park.  Back past the flower market.  Another pang of regret for the things that could have graced my garden and home.  Back to the MRT.  All the while getting more and more hungry and looking for a place to eat.  Back to the docks and, in desperation, doing something I had thus far avoided, eating at a chain restaurant.  But at least it was an Outback, not a McDonalds!  Real food.  Red meat.  I even made them give me a salt shaker.  That’s another thing, Asian restaurants do NOT have salt and pepper shakers on the tables.  They look at you strangely if you ask for salt.     But I’ve been sweating like a pig for almost a month now (St. Louis isn’t humid.  Asia is humid.  And it never cools off.  Not even at night) salt and red meat (another thing that isn’t all that common here) have become a constant craving for me.  I satisfied both tonight.   Well, mostly.  I’m still salt deprived.   And there’s not enough water or juice on the planet to completely rehydrate my body.   Believe me, I’m trying to drink enough.  But I have to breathe sometime…Oh yeah, they have a soft drink here called “Pocari Sweat”  really.  It’s popular, supposed to be sort of a Gatorade-type thing.  I just can’t bring myself to drink something called “sweat”.  Ick.

After I ate I went back down by the ferry docks and found a spot on the raised viewing platform for what is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest, longest-running light and music show in the world.  A couple dozen buildings on the Hong Kong skyline near the harbor light up to music.  There’s a lot of neon and color here on most of the buildings.  Not as overwhelming as Las Vegas.  Sort of Vegas with taste.

HK adores its bling.  Everything is colored lights, bling and glitter.  Lots of crystal, chandeliers, etc.  Most commercial buildings have some kind of moving colored lights on their exterior walls at night.   So add some lasers on top of a few buildings that already have their own private light shows going on, co-ordinate them all, have them strut their stuff individually  and in concert with one another and set it all to music.  Voila!  You have HK’s nightly light and music extravaganza.  It was nice.  It was pretty to look at.  Maybe I was too tired.  I was underwhelmed.  But I’m glad I saw it.  I would have felt like I’d missed something if I hadn’t seen it.  It’s the one thing that everybody here talks about and says you just have to see it.   So see it I did.

Night skyline after the light show..

Light show

The I went down the stairs and walked the HK walk of fame.  Like the stars on Hollywood Blvd. in CA.  Except that I never saw a single name I recognized.  Plenty of stars and hand-prints in the concrete.  Just nobody most of us have ever heard of.  Granted, I only walked about two-thirds of it.  I’m told Bruce Lee is on it.  Him, I’ve heard of.  Never seen one of his movies, but at least I know who he is.   His star must have been on the other end of the walk.  Then I went back to the hotel.  And now I’m going to sleep.

Ngong Ping, Something

Since I got so far behind in Taiwan by not posting daily I’m going to try to avoid that here.  Which means I don’t  know when I’ll catch up on Taiwan, but I will sooner or later.

Today I took the trolley to Hong Kong Central station.  The trolleys here are a great value.  Each trip runs 2.30HK, or about  35 cents US.   They run the length of the island and get you to almost any metro (subway) station you could want.    I rode the length of the orange line, the Tung Chung line, to reach the Ngong Ping aerial tram.  The subway ride ran 22.30HK, or about $3.50 US each way.   I know it’s cheaper if you buy their special card, whatever it’s called, but I don’t know that I would use it enough to make it worthwhile.

The trip was quick, quiet and uneventful, even peaceful.  I did get a laugh when I reached the spur line that runs out to HK Disneyland.  Yep, Disney has it’s own MRT line here.  Not just their own line either, they also have their own special train where all the windows in each car are shaped like Mickey’s head and all the cars are painted dark blue with white stars all over them.  Cute.

Anyway, next stop the Ngong Ping 360.  Turns out the whole thing is run by some big HK tour company that pushes its tour packages all the way up the line from the time you get in line to buy the tram tickets until the time you manage to escape with any of you wallet intact.  All the shops above and below are owned by the company and staff by earnest young people dressed in the company’s signature green and gold (tan?) uniform.   I think they took their cue from a mixture of Disney and the cruise lines.  Everything is a package if they can sell it to you!

Ah, but enough on that.  It’s Sunday here today, which means oodles and oodles of people every which way you turn looking to see the sights.  So the line for the tram was long.  It took about an hour for me to actually be able to board the thing.  And I had to decide if I wanted to pay extra to ride in one of the glass-bottomed cars.  I passed as I tend to get vertigo when looking straight down from any height over about 30 feet.  I shouldn’t have.  The price difference was only about $3.00 US and the line was 75% shorter.  Which I didn’t find out until I turned the corner after buying my ticket.  I could have saved myself a whole lot of waiting if I had just kept my gaze straight out to the side.  Isn’t hindsight wonderful?

just getting started

The ride to the top was fabulous.  The mountains were beautiful.  The ocean was beautiful.   The view of the islands was beautiful.  The scenery along the tram route was beautiful.  I think you get the picture.  It was worth a lot of pictures.  Oh, there is a trail up the mountain.  You can hike up; you and hike down.   Either way you would do a whole lot of up and down.  And thousands of stairs both ways.  I have no idea how many hours it would take, but you had better be in pretty fantastic physical shape if you intend to try it.  But it looked lovely as I was floating over it in my comfy tram seat with a gentle breeze wafting through the car.

small section of the trail

The purpose of all this isn’t the picturesque tram ride.  That’s just a nice way to get to the top.  There are buses that go to the top.  I think you can just drive up if you have a vehicle.   The reason for the tram and the theme village the tram company built at the top (with lots and lots of gift shops!) is the Po Lin monastery, ancient temple and giant Buddha that are also up there.   The religious community is renowned for their possession of an actual artifact of the Buddha.  It’s a tiny fragment of bone that was left in the ashes after his cremation.  It’s housed in a little crystal shrine inside the giant statue.   You can view the crystal gizmo that holds the artifact and there is a photo of the bone fragment posted above it.  Looking at the two things I’m guessing that the fragment is about a quarter of an inch long.

just a few steps away

big Buddha

Once you manage to get out of the money-sucking portion of the journey, the mountain top itself is just a really nice place to be.  It’s much cooler than the city.  You’re above the smog.  There are great views in every direction and flowers, birds, butterflies and dragonflies galore.  In short, a little slice of heaven sitting just a 15 minute tram ride from the ant-hill apartment highrises of Hong Kong.   I hadn’t been there 30 minutes before I was wishing there was a hotel I could transfer to for the night just so that I could walk around up there after all the tourists had gone home for the day.   I also wished I had gotten there earlier in the day so that I could have had some time to spend hiking part of that trail that went up the mountain.

There was a wonderful slice cut between two folds of the mountain not far from the upper tram station (maybe 3/4 of a mile) where a small, crystalline stream flowed, tumbling over rocks into a series of small waterfalls and gentle pools that had my name written all over it.  But I had to choose.   The Buddha statue, monastery and temple, or the hike.  It was not a choice I enjoyed making.   But doing both would have meant missing the last tram down the mountain.  I probably could have still caught a bus down…or not.  It might have meant hiking down the mountain in the dark.  Not a happy thought to someone who is pretty much night-blind.

I truly enjoyed the things I did see.  Including a very old monk who was visiting from Tibet who was tying little woven bracelets around the wrists of people who were visiting the temple as a sort of blessing, something about health and long life.  He was attended by two younger monks whose job seemed to be keeping the old master comfortable and happy as he communed with the faithful.  I watched them rubbing his legs when he was tired and adjusting his wrap when his shoulders got cold.   They were really dedicated to the old guy.   They obviously cared for him deeply.

old monk

The temple at the Po Lin monastery is getting an enormous upgrade.  There is a building going up behind it that will be about five times the size of the current temple.
The current temple is beautiful and extremely ornate, as they all seem to be.  It is surrounded by lots and lots of flowers and on both sides of the “street” leading up to it there are places for the faithful to burn incense.  Not the little incense sticks we’re used to seeing.   The smallest of the incense sticks these people burn are at least 18 inches long.   The big ones can be close to three feet long and about and two inches thick.  And nobody lights just one.  They light the smaller ones by the dozen.   Everything is done in threes also, I don’t know why, but they do have a reason for it.    They clap three times before they worship.  Temples have three doors.   Worshipers bow three times when they bow.  It’s all part of the package.  I’ll have to look up the “why” of it all sometime.

figures in shrine

temple altar

temple courtyard

new construction

temple

 

 

 

 

 

 

flag courtyard

incense

Anyway, all good things come to an end and I figured my “end” here should come about an hour and a half before the last tram to avoid the rush of people who had to get down the mountain.  I should have headed down about an hour before I did, apparently.  I spent an hour and 15 minutes in line before I finally got to board a tram down.  I went down wedge between some Israeli guy, who spent the whole trip down talking animatedly with his friend sitting across from him (neither one bothered to look at the scenery until they were about 2 minutes from the bottom from what I could see) and a Chinese man on the other side who sat like a statue beside his wife all the down, neither of them speaking a word.

islands

The subway ride back wasn’t nearly so peaceful.  The car was crammed full of people and I couldn’t get a seat until about 2/3 of the way back to my station.  The trolley was just as crowded.   Everyone trying to get back home at the end of their weekend I guess.   Since my “weekend”, all 31 days of it, isn’t quite over, I wonder where tomorrow will find me.  Guess I’ll wrap this up and do some research on that.

dragon fruit in the market

Goddesses worshiping Buddha

Hangin’ in Hong Kong

I’m skipping forward to the present for the moment.   I still have three or four posts to write up for Taiwan, but i thought I’d actually write about today today!

This morning i slept in.  How’s that for excitement?  I don’t know what it is about airports, customs, immigration, dealing with baggage  (and over-weight charges…) and all that that wears me out so much, but it does.  So, this morning I slept until I felt like getting up.  Which meant that my day actually started around 11 AM by the time I had breakfast and showered, etc.

After that I went downstairs to the concierge desk and looked at tour brochures, then started talking to the most delightful young man behind the counter.  He let me know very quickly just how over-priced all the tours were and how to do it all on my own for a lot less money.  This had the added benefit of allowing me to decide how long I wish to linger at each venue.  I so adore honesty.

He gave me a map, highlighted the bus and tram routes that would take me to each place (including the bus numbers!) and told me how much each would cost so that I could have the exact change required by each method of conveyance.  I started off by going to the Hong Kong Botanical and Zoological Park, with plans to take the tram to Victoria Peak afterwards.

The tram dropped me about 1/2 mile from the zoo.  It wasn’t a long walk, just a very steep walk.  There are a lot of streets here that could give San Francisco a run for its money.  When you see a sign at the base of the street warning you to beware of cars rolling backwards, you know that the darn thing is steep with a capitol “S”.

Needless to say, with the high humidity and temperatures here, I was drenched with sweat by the time I got to the zoo.  But there was a nice breeze and a lot of big, shady trees, so I cooled off while lingering amongst the aviaries.

It’s not a big zoo, hardly a zoo at all, really.  A lot of beautiful birds, a mammal section that was pretty much completely primates and a reptile house that I never actually found.  I still managed to spend three hours there before I knew where they had gone.  I had lunch at the park at their “light refreshments” kiosk.  An egg and ham sandwich and a cup of very, very hot milk tea (it partially melted and deformed the little plastic spoon that came with it.  How hot is that?)  both made fresh by a little old man in the back of the kiosk as I waited and watched.  along with a snickers bar for dessert or a later pick-me-up I spent $38 HK–about $5.30 US.

Back to the birds: there were a lot of them!  I’ll add some pictures with their names.  Please keep in mind that the pictures could be better.  The wire on the cages was pretty heavy-duty and my camera kept wanting to focus on the wires rather than the birds.  When I did get it to focus on the birds, the wire became a blur over parts of their bodies.  Still, most of the pictures are quite clear.

Silver pheasant, male & female

wood duck

Malay peacock pheasant

Grey crowned crane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue crowned pigeon

 

 

 

 

 

The primates were a hoot.

Several of the cages had blue plastic barrels hanging inside from the roof.  the barrels had large openings on all sides and the primates would  pile in one at a time, or swung from the bottom while their fellow inmates got a free ride.  It literally was more fun for a barrel of monkeys.

The plant and flower part of the park was beautiful.   I’ll eventually get around to posting some of those too.

cherodendrum

cotton rose

Afterward, I headed for the tram to Victoria Peak.  Bad idea.  It’s Saturday here.  Saturday afternoon.  And the line was loooooooooong.   So very long.   After about half an hour I could see the ticket window.  Then I found out that after the ticket window (still about 20 minutes away) I would have to wait for the tram in a big hall with about 200 hundred of my closest friends (the way they were all packed in there, they would have be become “close” friends…), all sweltering in a pretty much airless space, waiting their turn to board.
A process that would take approximately another 45 minutes.   I bailed.  I’ll go again either early tomorrow or wait until Monday when things are less crowded.

Dongding, We’re Here

This is really a continuation of the day we went to Sun Moon lake (which I hope to get to soon…)   I just  decided to split the day into two separate posts.

After we left the lake we drove to Dongding for lunch.   It was a pleasant drive through pretty countryside.  There were (of course!) many temples and a couple of small parks along the way.  Gogo Baba (note: this is a nickname that translates to “doggie daddy”, as he is very fond of dogs and rescues strays all the time), a local man who was driving us around that day, could not understand the interest I had in the temples.  They are so much the part of the landscape here that most of the people who live here don’t even see them anymore.  They just can’t figure out what’s so interesting about them that foreigners have such a  fascination with them.

Park on the way to Dongding

Gogo Baba is also someone who knows everybody.  Almost literally.  After all, it’s a very small island nation and if you get around much you meet a lot of people.  This guy has worked for the railway as an engineer for a long, long time. (The kind of engineer that fixes trains and solves problems, not the kind that drives the train.)   He is also a lifeguard training instructor.  Between those two things, and a host of other interests, he’s gotten to know a lot of people pretty well.  And from what I saw, they all seem to love the guy.

One of the people he knows is a potter and sculptor who bought a bunch of land on top of a mountain in Dongding many years ago.  This man and his wife built a hotel, restaurant, pottery studio and school and their home there.  Now it’s a well-known destination in Taiwan.  It may be off the beaten path, but a lot of people seem to know where it is when meal time rolls around.  The food is good, the menu extensive and the portions generous.  And the view is to die for.   While you are dining you are gazing down the terraced hillsides at row after row of tea plants interspersed with the ubiquitous betel nut palms.   Swallows of some sort and many other types of birds swoop and flit about the buildings.  And in the hazy distance there are the valley towns.

Not in Kansas anymore Toto….

View from the deck

Sculpture on deck rail

After we ate we toured the pottery gallery and the studio.  We went out on the brick patios and admired the views, the sculpture and the gardens.  Along with the many types of flowers there were a lot of types of edibles growing.  Everything from 3 types of eggplant, one of which is small, bumpy and orange to starfruit, tea and papaya, etc.

After we left Dongding, we drove around the area and visit a famous elementary school, built in Japanese style, saw a spider that is reputed to have a human-looking head (the ones we saw were too small for me to be able to see what their heads looked like…) and then visited a place called “Monster Village”.  It was a strange little place (and I do mean little), set up on the side of a hill.   Most of the buildings looked like something that came out of a fairy tale or The Hobbit.  There were odd looking “monster” on rooftops and scattered about throughout the “village’.  Some had stories behind them based in fable and lore, others were weird constructs of someone’s imagination.

big nose monster

As it wasn’t a large place, it didn’t take us long to see what there was to see and to walk through a few of the shops.  I think it almost took longer to find a place to park than it did to see the place!   But there were some good photo opp’s and the bird’s nest ferns that grew all over the place in the village were the largest I have ever seen.   So it was worth the stop and rather fascinating.

Peeing baby fountain

Drunkard monsters

chimney monster

Gollum’s ugly brother

After we left Monster Village we stopped and had tea at the shop of another of Gogo Baba’s friends.  A very upscale tea establishment that serves tea and coffee.  It also has one of the only coffee roasting ovens in the area and small-scale growers of niche coffees bring their beans there to be roasted.  Three different coffee farmers stopped by with bags of beans to be roasted while we were there.

What I really thought was interesting was the background music being played in the intimate and quite upscale tea and coffee house.  Don McLean of the American Pie and Starry, Starry Night fame.  His songs were in the background for the entire hour we were there.  Which I found somewhat amusing as the only English speaking people in the place were my brother Brian and myself.  Sure Gogo Baba can speak some, but only understands very much if you speak slowly and explain that words that aren’t common to him.  So I doubt that he could catch much of the lyrics to the songs.  Everyone else didn’t have a clue what they were about.  But I guess music is universal, and pretty music is pretty music, even if you don’t know what is being said.

After we left there, Gogo Baba wanted to take us to yet another place for dinner, but I was pretty wiped out, so we begged off and had him take us home.   He had a brief stop at another small shop as he was driving us back to Yuanlin, at the establishment of yet another friend, and came out with a bag of some kind of meat wrapped in a sticky dough made primarily of yams for us to take home for dinner.  What a guy!

Alishan and Back Again

My first major sight-seeing trip here in Taiwan was to Alishan.  This is an area high up in the mountains, known for its beauty and for a lovely little railway you can ride to visit various mountain shrines, lakes, ancient trees, etc.  As we started up the mountain we passed a park-like setting where a young couple was having their wedding photos taken.  They were posing in front of a pair of cartoon-esque creatures that I was told are the traditional figures for the farmer and his wife.  I wondered if this has some connection with a wish for prosperity and fertility, who knows?  Just beyond this scene of newly married bliss was a very long suspension bridge and an ornate temple where we stopped for a few photos.

sculpture near temple

temple near suspension bridge

Suspension bridge

The farmer takes a wife..

It’s quite a distance from where I’m staying up to Alishan and it took what seemed like half of forever to reach it.  The mountain road up to the forest is very narrow, barely two lanes wide…and not always that, er, “generous”.  There were several places where there had been landslides or some other damage had occurred to the road and they were in various stages of repair.  Which is to say they were passable, but not always by more than one car at a time.  Which gets very interesting when you factor in the huge amount of tour buses which were also on their way to Alishan.

road repairs

But make it we did.  As we were approaching the actual entrance gate to the park (where we paid what was an enormous entrance fee, for Taiwan anyway, of over $20 for the three of us who went) we passed row after row of tour buses that had discharged their passengers, then went lower to park.  I quite certain that we passed at least 60 to 80 buses.  (Yikes!)  That’s a seriously large amount of tourists.  Almost all of whom were Chinese or Taiwanese.  And this was on a weekday, after tourists season had ended. Then, once inside the park, there was an additional fee to ride the little train up higher on the mountain.

We took some pictures on the platform while awaiting our little train, then were finally able to board for the 8-10 minute long chug up the hill.  It had become quite overcast the further up the mountain we had gone.  By the time we reached the little train, clouds had rolled in in earnest, and they were sinking.  By the time the little train reached us so had the clouds.  So any pictures we were able to take were “through a cloud darkly”, to borrow and misquote.

sculpture at the station

extra trains for “busy” days

Still, there is a grace and beauty to a perfect fog.  A fog not so deep that it hides all, nor so light that it is a mere will-o-the-wisp.  A perfect fog wraps everything in a tenuous mist; a veil that both obscures and illuminates.  It sharpens the senses, yet dulls the sounds.  It is the smoke that hides and the magician that directs the eye.  Nature’s prestidigitation, weaving it’s spell and binding your imagination to the story it desires to tell.  Dimming the lights here and allowing they spotlight to shine…There!….for only an instant…allowing your mind to fill in the details.  That’s the fog we found ourselves in, for the most part.

As we left the train station, we allowed the tour groups to get ahead of us so that we could enjoy a little solitude (only a little.  There were a lot of people on that mountain!)  and get some pictures where the desired subject was not almost completely obscured by a wall of bodies.   (A side note here:  Alishan is known far-and-wide for its sunrises.  It is the place to be when the sun comes up.  There are several hotels at the top of the mountain just so people can be there when the sun first starts lighting the sky.)  By positioning ourselves behind most of the large groups that had just gotten off the train we did manage to get some shots where the scenery was the major focus.  Not always easy, but occasionally doable.

Into the mist

fallen tree “arch”

off the train & on the trail

The trail on this part of the mountain winds around small lakes, a section of petrified forest, a temple or shrine or three, ponds, bridges, waterfalls and the like.   There are many places where enormous trees, hundred of years old, had been logged in the past.  Their decaying stumps formed grotesque and beautiful sculptures, depending on your point of view and the tree’s.

When we reached Little Sister Lake and Big Sister Lake the fog had condensed into crystal droplets on the spider webs in the trees around the lake.  Elsewhere it played tricks on the eye and ear, first obscuring a waterfall we could hear from the path, but not see, then lifting a few feet farther on to show us the same small waterfall.   We wandered among wooden giants that had escaped the lumberjack’s blade, some as old as 1200 years.  We viewed the “three generation tree”.  A tree that had been felled, had a new tree rise from growth put out by the stump, then aged, fell and began to rot with a third start rising out of the remains of the second.

Big sister lake

pig stump

3 generation tree

We entered an ancient shrine that sat beside a small koi-filled lake where large, ghostly-white calla lilies hovered beside snags that had lifted themselves just above the water’s edge.  Like all temples here, a huge incense burner, filled with dozens of sticks of incense sat in front of the entrance.  The burners are almost always metal and stand usually six to eight feet tall.  the center part is open and filled with sand or the ashes of thousands of sticks of incense that burned out there in the days, weeks and months prior.  Inside were the usual old or young, wise-looking or warrior-appearing, male or female gods that are part of every temple here.  Every surface inside and outside the temple is carved, embellished, painted, gilded or otherwise ornamented.  But here the roof and eave carvings were dimmed and partially obscured by the fog.

calla lilies

We continued on, up a small rise and across a bridge where a small stream sang its way across rocks and waterfalls, disappearing into the fog below.  We eventually found our way out onto a long wooden walkway that wound through the oldest and largest of the remaining ancient trees then led us back to the train station and thus down from the upper reaches to the parking lot where our car was now easy to find, as most of the people had departed into the fog and were no doubt wending their way down the mountain to their homes.  And shortly we did likewise.

However, we did make a brief stop in a town about halfway down the mountain for dinner.  In the back of the restaurant where we are there was a woman doing traditional Chinese embroidery.  It’s a dying art and I just had to add a picture of her work-in-progress.

Traditional Chinese embroidery

Odawara Castle

So let’s back-track a little.  I never got around to posting about my trip to Odawara Castle in Japan.  I had planned another hike in the mountains to yet another ancient shrine, but the man I met the night before on the train (Hi, Ken!) told me about a castle that was just a few stops down the line, more-or-less.  As I have never been in an actual castle before I altered my plans for the day and set a course for Odawara.

I will tell you up front that this is not the original castle.  That was destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed again before being fairly recently rebuilt.  But they did a really good job of restoring the building.  Using, wherever possible, original materials and methods to restore the building as near as possible to one of its earlier configurations.  I read a couple of on-line reviews where people panned the castle as a fake.  All I can say is, how many 900 year old buildings do you know of that haven’t undergone enough restoration that they pretty much are a new, old-looking building?  Especially after earthquakes and conquerors bringing down the walls.

That aside, I arrived at the train station and promptly left through the wrong side of the station.  I say, “wrong side” because the castle couldn’t be seen from the side I was on and there were no obvious signs pointing to it.  But I stopped someone on the street and said “Odawara Castle?”, they pointed in a direction and I headed out.  After about a block I saw a sign for the castle showing me where to turn and shortly I could see the grounds and then the roof of the castle.

I found an path into the grounds, but couldn’t tell if it was exit or entrance, or if, indeed, it made any difference.  But not wanting to go in the “out” gate, I walked around, following signs until I found the actual front entrance.  The current bridge over the man-made lake in front of the castle was obviously of fairly recent construct.  There was a much older bridge to one side but it was closed to any sort of traffic and my only picture of it turned out fuzzy.   Bummer.  After the bridge there were a lot of ancient cherry trees that appeared to have been around at least a couple hundred years.  Their trunks were thick and gnarled–arthritic-looking wood that had rotted and regrown many times over the course of their lives.   Their tenacity was truly impressive.

bridge to the castle grounds

ancient cherry tree trunk

I continued on around the grounds and viewed a reconstructed wall, copper-clad gate and also a section of wall that was broken down to show each of the layers/steps involved in building the castle walls.  Then I climbed a stairway with a sign saying they were the original stairs to the castle and went over another bridge that spanned the remains of the moat.  It’s dry now and planted with something that looked a lot like the rice I had seen from the train, planted in fields around the town.  Then I went through another wall of massive, hewn stone and another metal-clad gate and was in the courtyard below the castle proper.  Here, for some reason, there was a cage of very smelly monkeys with very red faces and butts to match.  There was a sign by the cage, but it was only in Japanese.   I’m just guessing, but it probably said “don’t feed the monkeys”.  It didn’t seem to have enough characters to contain an explanation for why they were there.

Copper clad gate

wall construction

The grounds in that spot were lovely, peaceful and delightfully shady and cool.  And they afforded a great view of the castle above.  After a few photos I went up more stairs to the castle itself and paid the entry fee to go inside.

The inside of Odawara Castle is a museum.  Unfortunately they don’t allow any kind of photography.  It’s a shame because there were so many beautiful and interesting items inside.  There are four floors filled with implements of farming, war and everyday life; clothing, books, swords, hats, tea sets and lunch boxes, etc.  You name it, they have it.  There is a lot to see.   On the top floor is the requisite souvenir/gift shop, plus an outdoor terrace that goes all the way around the building affording views of the bay, the city and the surrounding mountains.

Like so very many places in Japan, the gift shop didn’t accept credit cards so my spending was kept mercifully light.   I really had bought too many gifts for people back home already….at this point I will have to break out the extra collapsible suitcase I brought with me just to get everything home without an extra fee.  The bag I check when I fly was almost four pounds overweight by the time I left Japan (but I’m allowed two checked bags, tee hee).  Fortunately haven’t found much to tempt me in Taiwan.  Unfortunately the couple of things I have found are somewhat fragile.  Sigh.  I hope they survive the trip to Beijing and then back home….but I digress…

After I exited the castle museum I wandered the grounds for awhile longer and found a tiny amusement park for small children and another shrine with a beautiful koi pond and lots of lovely trees and sculpture.  As I went back towards the castle, I watched some gardeners hanging off the side of an almost vertical hill by their fingertips, trimming the plants that grew there.  I think they must have been part mountain goat.  They all wore hard-hats, but there wasn’t a safety line of any kind to keep them from falling should they lose their footing.

Fountain in koi pond

Koi

mountain goat gardeners

After my trip to the castle I meant to visit a nearby shrine that was reputed to be quite lovely, but it started to rain.  So I changed my plans and made my way back to the train station and thus back to Isehara.   Fortunately I boarded before the evening rush was fully underway and thus got an actual seat where I could view the scenery along the way which included several crossings of a lovely river.

river seen from train

By the time I reached Isehara, the rain was behind me so I had a nice, dry walk back to Natsuo and Mia’s apartment.

This is How Things Are (in Taiwan anyway…)

I did a post on small oddities in Japan, so I guess I should do the same for Taiwan. It’s a little harder though because many “unusual” things are the same here. And I’ve been in Asia for close to 3 weeks now and a lot of it is becoming more “normal” to me.

That said: Taiwan is dingy and somewhat dirty. Not garbage-in-the-street dirty, but dirt-and-old dirty. It’s gritty. The buildings are old and renovation is something you do only if it’s falling down or leaks in typhoon season. If the paint hasn’t completely peeled off the walls and is falling in your dinner, the room doesn’t require a fresh coat of paint. Dust and rust really are protective coatings and commercial buildings are NOT what an American would call clean. Cobwebs are the norm and dust bunnies aren’t quite as big as real bunnies, but they’re almost as dense and substantial.  There is, however, virtually no litter in the streets.  In spite of the fact that outdoor trash containers are pretty much non-existent, people here tend to not litter.

Typical Taiwan cityscape

But still, you can’t say that they don’t care about their properties.  Many, many homes have pots of plants in the front and most of those include a mini water garden with blooming water lilies.  But there are almost no trees in the cities or anything growing that isn’t in a small pot in front of someone’s home.  Everything is paved over with concrete or asphalt.  I constantly feel like I’m running out of air here.  It’s starting to make me miss Japan….not to mention the US!   I definitely have the US bias toward clean, less cluttered landscapes with lots of green.  But this is their culture and their culture has other priorities.

So the entire affect is that all cities (except Taipei, which considers itself thoroughly modern and caters to people of all nationalities and wants to make them feel at home) look their age. And if you get out of downtown Taipei, it’s still pretty much the same.  If the building was built in 1951, it looks the part.  And probably has only been painted one time since then, if at all.  People sweep the street in front of their home or business (sidewalks are virtually non-existent in most cities), they don’t litter, I’ve seen only one place with graffiti.  Add to the over-all run-down nature of the country the fact that it’s humid and thus hazy almost all the time and it’s just kind of depressing.   Cars aren’t washed.  Scooters either.  A clean scooter or car really sticks out as unusual.  Come to think of it, I have yet to see an actual car wash.

Then there are the bathrooms.  A good 80% of the public bathrooms I’ve been in here have no toilet paper.  About half of the ones that do have paper have one dispenser on the wall just before you go into the stall aisle.  You take what you think you’ll need and go into a stall.  But most of the time that dispenser is empty.  So buy pocket packs of tissue and carry a couple of those at all times.

Also, strengthen those thigh muscles ladies.  If the bathroom doesn’t have a handicapped stall, there’s a good chance that all the toilets are the in-the-floor squat variety.  Also, it seems that a lot of women have very poor aim so there’s a good chance the floor will be wet as well.  So as you squat there, trying desperately to squeeze it all out in a hurry before your trembling thigh muscles give out completely, remember, if you fall, you will be sitting in someone else’s urine.  And don’t forget that all-important aim lest you fill your own shoes with your own.  Because we aren’t used to squatting, we don’t get down as
low as most Asians can and that aim becomes all the more important.

Speaking of tissues, Taiwanese people use them for everything.  They are napkins in restaurants, and toilet paper in bathrooms.  They wipe noses, butts and tables.  I have yet to see a roll of paper towels or a roll of T.P.  It’s tissues or nothing.  And don’t call them Kleenex, people won’t know what you’re talking about.  But the Kleenex brand is sold here and is upscale, thicker and more absorbent than other brands sold here.

People drive like lunatics here.  Bicycles and scooters frequently pull out into traffic without so much as a glance at oncoming traffic.  Red lights are a suggestion.  Traffic “laws” are suggestions, not laws, unless you cause an accident, then they dictate who’s at fault….more or less…..Oh, and there’s a box painted on the street at almost every traffic light.  That box is for scooters and bikes and cars stop behind it.  Which allows the scooters to pull away from the lights first and autos trail behind and pass if possible.  Which mostly isn’t possible.  And everything, including the entire family is carried on the scooter.

Everything is carried on the scooter including the dog

The family carry-all. I’ve seen 4 on a scooter…

a gaggle of scooters taking off at a green light

Another “oddity”, if you will, is that almost every home has a shrine to the family’s ancestors in it.  The shrine will be lit by red lights and often takes up the entire top floor of the family’s home.  The family will burn paper boats, cars, horses, houses, etc. to send to their ancestors for their use in the next life.  They also send those who have passed on money by giving real money to their local temple in exchange for fake money they can send to the ancestors.  This supports the temple and the temple money becomes the real thing once it is burned and passes over to the ancestor.  And you must honor and provide for your ancestors or they will wreak havoc in your life, haunting you big-time!

Speaking of temples, they are everywhere.  And they are painted, carved and detailed within an inch of their lives.  They are richly decorated and nothing is done on the cheap.  Carved stone is granite or marble, not something that looks like granite or marble.  Doorways and altars are always in threes and doorways have a piece of wood across the bottom that is close to a foot high that you have to step over to enter the temple or shrine.  This is because bad spirits can’t perform that action.  Stepping over something is beyond their capabilities.  They also can’t turn corners.  So a sharp bend in an alley or street will keep the baddies away.

Signs in Taiwan can be interesting.  They can be strange combinations of old and new characters, with English translations above or below and very, very inventive spellings.  If you’re driving, signs are either virtually non-existent, or highly misleading.  A sign may say 3 Freeway with an arrow pointing left.  Then you drive 5 miles before you see another sign for the 3, with another arrow either pointing in the same direction or sending you off on another street.  This can go on for 10 minutes or 30 minutes before you come to the actual freeway.  Or, even more fun, can stop entirely, leaving you guessing where it is that the freeway went.

Note the different spellings for “vegetarian”