Saturday July 10, 2010

My one full day in Lukang turned out to be a fairly pleasant though extremely hot and confusing one. It was pleasant because there are lots of interesting things to see in Lukang. It was hot because it was really hot (I ended up taking five or six cold-water showers during the day). It was confusing because I could never quite figure out where I was in the town. My sense of direction was off, and the simplistic map in Lonely Planet didn’t help at all.

I started the day with a cup of coffee at 7-11. It was the only place open. I sat outside at the one available table and sweat just poured down my face and the rest of my body. A Taiwanese man was also sitting at this table, and he took it upon himself to be my tour guide. He didn’t speak any English, but he pointed in the direction of a couple temples. He also hopped on his scooter and left and then came back with two large ice teas, Taiwan style. That ice tea hit the spot much more than my hot coffee did. I had trouble understanding this fellow, but I got the impression that he was running a business selling bicycle lights, and some kind of trip to Canada was in his future. He thought I might be a useful contact there.

After a quick shower and lots of wrong turns, I found myself at the Longshan Temple. I had brought my film camera and some slide film, but I soon stopped taking pictures with it. It appears that my slide taking days are completely behind me. I got out my little digital camera instead and took pictures with that.

The temple was attractive and interesting. A traditional band was playing music in the courtyard and lots of people were lighting incense and paying their respects. Longshan is a Qing Dynasty temple and is the best-preserved Qing Dynasty temple in Taiwan. To be honest, I’m not 100% sure that I really was at the Longshan Temple. There was something about the signs pointing the way that confused me. And on maps, Longshan Temple is located on a road going roughly east west. The temple I visited seemed to be on a road going north south. However, I couldn’t be sure about that. I never managed to get my bearings the entire day.

Part of my problem was that Lukang has very little English around. There are quite a few city maps on display on street corners and near tourist sites, but other than the title at the top, they are all in Chinese. In fact, Lukang seems very surprised to see me – a foreigner. I haven’t really experienced this anywhere else in Taiwan. People behave as if they rarely see someone from the west. The girls giggle and shriek. The older men shout friendly greetings. Other people do a double-take and stop and look. I don’t mind any of this, obviously. The attention one gets in Taiwan is about a thousandth of what one gets traveling in many other places. It just surprises me. I’ve gotten accustomed to the Taiwanese being very laid back and accepting of a foreigner’s presence.

 

Another problem I had was simply being on foot. Walking is such a slow and tiring way of getting around. On a bicycle or scooter you can cover much greater distances and do a lot of exploring and easily get your bearings. It’s no big deal to go six blocks in one direction, double back and go in a different direction. On foot, when you make a wrong turn and go several blocks in the wrong direction, it’s a major pain. It takes forever to get back on track.

A third problem is that Lonely Planet gives only the sketchiest of impressions of this town. The names tend to be inaccurate and few things are listed on the map. For example, Lonely Planet calls one temple the Matsu temple. And it is a temple dedicated to the sea goddess, Matsu, but I’ve learned that the actual name of the temple is Tianhou. That is how it is marked on all the local maps. Lonely Planet also calls one street the Old Market Street. Locally, however, it is called something like the Historical Preservation Area. Even the location of the bus station and my hotel and the nearby police station seem to be wrong. That is what confused me so much on the night that I arrived. Finally, there are many places in the city that aren’t mentioned at all in Lonely Planet. I found a tourism booklet at the Folk Art Museum, and it lists the Xinzu Temple, the Ding Mansion, Brand’s Health Museum, and the Taiwan Glass Exhibition Hall – none of which are in Lonely Planet. I’ve been looking for a good local map, but I haven’t come across one anywhere.

Later in the day, I went to the large Matsu temple – Tianhou. This temple was much more colorful and festive and impressive than the Longshan Temple. There was a large entrance and many rooms and different levels and even a fish pond. It was also very ornate, and people were pouring through with fistfuls of lit incense. There were so many rooms that they had to go to to bow and leave incense, that they needed a lot of it. The larger containers for incense had so many burning sticks in them that they gave off thick columns of smoke.

I often feel uncomfortable being a tourist in a temple. It seems sacrilegious to treat a religious place as a tourist attraction. Here, though, it isn’t a problem. With the recent boom in digital photography, every third or fourth person there was busy lining up artful shots of the incense and different statues. Also there was none of the reverence and quiet that I associate with churches. Children were running around screaming and yelling. Dogs were racing through looking for scraps of food. People were posing for pictures. Then the firecrackers started to go off. It felt like a war had started. My couple of snapshots of the incense burner taken with the camera down at my hip was hardly intrusive or sacrilegious.

I’m not sure why people here would be so devout when it comes to Matsu, considering that she protects those at sea. It makes sense that the fishermen would visit her temples and ask for her protection, but why would the general population? I often get confused when thinking about the religion in Taiwan. I keep assuming that temples are Buddhist and then I wonder how what I see connects to Buddhism. Matsu, however, has nothing to do with Buddhism as far as I can tell. She is what they call a folk deity. There are many folk deities in Taiwan, and they are generally based on real people in history who did great things or had special qualities. Matsu, for example, was a Chinese fisherman’s daughter in the 10th century. She stood on the shore in red clothes and guided ships to shore. Other stories have her drowning while trying to rescue sailors or find her father. People began to ask for her help when going to sea, and over time she became what she is today. But to a casual observer, a Matsu temple could easily be seen as a Buddhist temple.

Even Buddhist temples confuse me. I don’t associate Buddhism with worshipping any kind of deity. I think of it more as a philosophy than a religion. Yet, inside and outside Buddhist temples, one finds the 18 Lohan, descriptions of which aren’t that far from how one would describe different gods (or superheroes).

The neighborhood around the temple had been closed to traffic and a very busy food and drink market had sprung up. I walked around and took pictures of a few of the more visual things for sale, like barbecued squid on a stick. Hundreds of Taiwanese tourists were out for the day. I also saw large groups of young people speaking English. They were all Chinese in appearance, but clearly were visiting from America.

As I went to these two main temples, I passed down the Old Market Street and the Nine-Turns Lane. I checked out lots of smaller temples, as well. I filmed a traditional procession of some kind and peaked inside all kinds of arts and crafts shops.

The highlight of the day, however, was my visit to the Folk Arts Museum. The collection is housed in two old connected buildings that used to be the residence of a famous wealthy man. The buildings and the land is interesting and beautiful enough to be attractions in their own right. However, the rooms are also filled with fascinating artifacts. Most of it consists of objects that were part of daily life. There were entire rooms furnished as bedrooms, living rooms, meeting rooms, and other things. There were also more standard museum displays of artwork, fashion, money, almost everything you can think of. I was very impressed with this place and would recommend it to anyone. I particularly liked the photographs from the 1930s that showed Lukang as it was back then.

 

Tags: incense, Lonely Planet, Longshan Temple, Lukang Trip, Taiwan, Taiwan Glass Exhibition Hall, temple