This's way outside the outer wall of the temple. The yellow things are the lanterns. Each one is way bigger than your head. And the crowds were, if anything, worse than the other evening, when we thought they'd be worst 'cause it was New Year's Day and we figured, like Christmas, most people would do this on the day. But no, it's a stream of people for at least a couple days.
This's my favorite photo. I can't believe the smoke shows up so well. It's all from the incense sticks (of which you can see many) that people stick in there as part of the prayer-offering. This also gives you a faint idea that, no, the crowds haven't really diminished.
Marie pointed out that she just heard that this temple is a combination of Buddist and Daoist religions, which means praying to one god or many elements or god-like deities as your religion dictates. I'm gonna rely on my very scant knowledge of eastern religions and Wikipedia and claim Daoism (Taoism) is a little more like a polytheistic religion because it involves praying to elements to help with the path of life, and Buddism is more about asking a venerated person for enlightenment. But the point is, one temple, two religions, no waiting.
This's a clearer shot of one of the altars, call it. It's a room which people pray to or at least in front of, but we've never seen anyone go in there.
It has a large person-like figure in it, and someone has set up offerings in the room, but if I didn't understand the rules of giving food and offerings to the temples, the deities, or the universe in general, I really don't get it now, 'cause in the lower left of the picture, those are in fact...
Choco Pies.
I have no problem giving Choco Pies as offerings, I was even telling Marie, imagine being a deity who likes Choco Pies but none are ever offered 'cause people think you're supposed to offer fruit and flowers, natural things of the earth. And this's not to make fun of anything, it's really just grappling with something completely unexpected and (as far as I can work out) illogical. It's just such a surprising thing to set up IN the altar-space for the deity-element. Especially since there are so many gorgeous flowers and fruits presented on tables; the Choco Pies just stand out as representative of a materialistic and industrialized society. Or maybe that's my western perspective screwing me up again.
But on to the ends of the earth, the earth being our island.
This's in Danshui (dan-shuway) or Tamsui (tam-sway). This place is just amzingingly packed. This was down one of the streets, so everything was really compressed but it was literally staggering as you bumped into people with every step. Even for here, this's packed. I will never, ever have a problem with crowds in the States again.
The crowds were probably caused by so many people having a vacation and a warm day. It was high 60s, maybe even low 70s. Many are still wearing big, fluffy coats, but whatever.
I did want to mention, I felt bad about calling fifties cold, 'cause then I read about the ice storm affecting like 17 states and people are trying to survive without heat in sub-freezing temps. We're not nearly that miserable. We're not threatened, we're just uncomfortable. We're wearing long underwear, socks, and even sweats to bed recently. But thanks to the flat sheet from Heather, the clothing is for the cold bed and getting up in the morning, not for staying warm in the night. Try it. It's amazing how much heat a flat sheet keeps in.
This's the real reason we came. They have this great boardwalk right next to the Danshui river which lets out into the Pacific ocean. You can get on a boat for a tour of the river, maybe even out to the ocean for 50 NT. We didn't go 'cause it was so hard to even walk a half mile or so along the boardwalk and then the line for the cruise was amazingly long.
This was worth it to see some of the place. The last time we went up there it was raining like mad and it was all we could do to find a specific restaurant, let alone walk the boardwalk. So, now we just need to find a happy-medium day.
Our next adventure was kinda like using an arbitrary point and learning to find our way around.
We've been to the ends of like four or five different points of the subway line. The Xindian line ends at the gorgeous riverside park with the long footbridge. The Muzha line ends at the Taipei Zoo. Danshui is the north end of the Danshui line. So we were thinking about going to Yongning, which is the end of the Nangang line. We've had good luck finding interesting things at the ends of these lines, but a couple (like the Nanshijiao line) end in industrial parks. Not good. So we decided to try for a specific place. Specifically, the Taiwan Nougat Museum. I am not making this up.
The station where we got off was just another urban collection of stores and traffic. Tho' Marie and I did decide that it seemed more suburban, for Taiwan, anyway. Fewer high-rises, wider streets, more green space especially in the middle of traffic. But it was still very commercial and as we headed for the museum, according to the map, it got very industrial. I think we passed an industrial sewage plant, and I know we passed a Nissan cargo truck dealership-maybe manufacturing plant.
So it was all very foreboding, and twice Marie asked, "will we recognize the museum when we see it?" So it was very gratifying, after passing blocks of shut businesses in dull taupe colors, to turn a corner and see:
The really funny thing was, this whole time we'd been worried about going in the right direction, 'cause the street signs way out there kinda quit using any semblance of English. But we'd seen a bunch of these cute little cows, and we'd had no idea what they were for.
But when we saw this cute little guy in front of the cheerful bright, red building we put two and two together and realized they were markers to find this place.
And because it's the year of the Ox, and that seems to be their mascot, Marie insisted on getting a kiss from the cow-ox-water buffalo. Actually, she first said I should get up there and get a kiss, but I said no. You want one, you get one.
The down side, we didn't actually get into the museum. It's still a major national holiday, so the place was closed up, but we were very pleased with ourselves to find the place, even if the company was doing everything they could, with the cute little cow-markers, to make the place easy to find. We overcame our illiteracy and found what we were after. Maybe in a couple of weeks we'll go back for the tour.
Finally, on our way back Marie took this photo of the truck dealership.
It's just a riot to decipher these phrases, which are even spelled right and not technically wrong, I guess, but the marketing people are just cracked. I'm assuming this's talking about the dependability of the trucks. Marie was thinking it was referring to the dependence on the employees. Either way, this's not the way to say it.
So it's been a couple of fun days. It's been really great to stay up late, get up late, not worry about when we're going, just go when we're ready.
But I will say, the fireworks are getting on my nerves. We avoid most of the noise by going to bed late. At least they haven't really kept us up. But this morning at six a.m. some son of a motherless goat let off a string that lasted for two minutes. It's not even a party neighborhood, but it is a celebrating neighborhood, very religious or old school culturally. And apparently a working neighborhood where people, even on their days off, get up early enough to light massive strings of fireworks. Sigh.
But that's been about the only neighborhood problem. We only have a couple more days off, then back to the moderate but unbroken grind. Oh, well, we've spent a fair amount of money, so it'll be good to get back on the pay wagon.
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