Out and about in Kaohsiung

I enjoyed an interesting day wandering around Kaohsiung, especially the Lotus Pond area and the small offshore island of Ciji. Both of these places are popular with locals and with Taiwanese tourists. Like

Lotus Pond comprises a large lake and a number of ‘attractions’ around it. It’s very kitsch, mostly, although there are a couple of temples of note as well. The picture at the top shows the Tiger and Dragon pagodas, which are about as kitsch as it gets. Like Chinese temples, the paths to the entrance of the pagodas are zig-zagged (I think to prevent evil spirits from chasing someone – they have to keep turning corners; not sure).

As you can see below, you enter the pagodas via the mouth of the animal. There is another example below, from a bit further around the lake. It shows a dragon, but another picture shows the insides of the dragon, which is filled with all sorts of beings from Chinese stories and legends not recognisable to me.

 

The lake was also decorated with this enormous statue. It was also possible to go up inside the statue, where there was a small temple of some sort.

Kitsch it might be, but the workmanship of these kinds of things was pretty impressive, as the next couple of pictures suggest. Lots of intricate carvings are involved and the whole collection has an air of fun about it.

 

Less obviously fun-like were the genuine temples around the lake, although these too had fabulously detailed carvings and paintings in them. These few photos give an idea of the extraordinary work involved in some of them:

 

I’m always a bit uneasy around religious sites, never quite knowing how to behave, and very conscious that my own religious upbringing had very strong views about ‘proper’ and ‘respectful’ behaviour. It seems to me that the Chinese religions and temples are rather more relaxed than are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim sites of similar significance, but it’s hard to tell and there are certainly protocols that need to be observed. I am often struck by the wildly fantastic nature of the temples, but it is too easy to forget that other religions probably have a similar view of Christianity! It’s hard to break loose of the things you grew up with and of course everybody claims that their own religion is the ‘right’ one and all the others are mistaken …

I enjoyed the Confucius Temple at Lotus Pond, rather different from the Buddhist and other Chinese temples above. The Confucian philosophy is deeply ingrained in much of the Chinese world, so much so that I have colleagues in the Far East who talk of a ‘Confucian Heritage Culture, valuing education, scholarship, ethics, meritocracy, etc and claim that this is one of the reasons for the success of many students on Chinese origin in the west. Here are a couple of pics of the temple, clearly different from the others and much more sedate:

 

In fact, when I was there, there were some people dressed up in traditional garb; I’m not sure if they were rehearsing for a wedding or an advertising shoot …

 

Lots of other things caught my eye, wandering around the lakeside. A few of them are captured below in the snaps:

 

I was puzzled by the Wheelchair gates (of which I saw several) … it looked to me as if they were making it harder for wheelchair people; since I never saw them being used, I didn’t understand them. The innate sense of humour of it all was captured for me in the hen with her golden eggs and with the Lego block display version of the Tiger and Dragon. I saw lots of morning shopping opportunities, with countless food stands, fruit and vegetable stalls and even live shellfish. Just walking around revealed lots of things to me that I am sure were of no interest at all to locals – as it is all familiar to them. No doubt the same would be true if Taiwanese wandered around Perth suburbs …

My trip to the island later in the day involved travelling on the excellent MRT system, common in the Far East but sadly rare in Australia. It is a quick, easy, safe and efficient way of getting around. Lots of things caught my eye – too many to record here, of course – but here are just three examples:

 

Everyone seems to be dressed up as if it is cold (it is actually ‘winter’ but the days often reach into the 20’s Celsius, so it’s hardly cold, at least by my standards). I was impressed that some of the ladies here had matched their hats to their outfits. I was also impressed with the large stations, which had lots of facilities, shops, etc (and free toilets, unlike too many countries), including breast-feeding rooms, as you can see. The High Speed Rail stations are exceptionally large, as you can see, and there is of course a very large number of motorcycles parked there.

I was (slightly) uneasy about my ferry across to Cijin Island – bringing to mind all those stories about ferries sinking in various Asian places in recent years, but only slightly, as the trip was very short and across a harbour!

There was a ferry every few minutes throughout the day, taking people as well as people on their motorcycles, so there was no need to wait. [As for the MRT … no need to find a timetable, as the next one is almost here already.]

The island is very popular with locals, who seemed to day trip across mostly to eat seafood, walk or ride along the beach front and also to watch the sunset.

 

There were many places apparently designed essentially as sunset watching places, it seemed to me, so it was a shame that the sunset was spoiled a bit by cloud cover. There were seats and little stands available for watching the sunset and even this massive shell-like construction to allow people to photograph the sunset through the shell. many people hired bikes or carts to wander up and down the beach (but didn’t get much exercise as many of them were electric! I walked and so got lots of exercise!)

People were very relaxed on the island, and often seemed to be there in family groups. I enjoyed the experience as well, and so stayed to have a beer and some dinner, waiting for the sunset, a very pleasant way to end an interesting day.