Tainan and Sun Moon Lake Trip

The biggest trip in Taiwan… we made it with our wonderful Geography Class and it was really fun… this time we had the pleasant pleasure to visit several places down south of Taiwan, we visited Tainan and its surroundings, several famous temples full of history and exotic handcrafts, frames, sculptures, etc.

First we went to National Anping Harbor Historic Park, over here we walk through its market until we got in the Eternal Golden Castle, this place was built in was built in 1874 in the famous Qing Dynasty. At that time it was used to fend off the Japanese and defend Anping from attack from the sea, around this castle there are several canyons and other kind of weapons for wars. When Japan took over Taiwan, the Taiwanese resisted the Japanese's warship from this fortress. During the Russia and Japan war the Japanese government sold some of Eternal Golden Castle's guns in order to pay for the war. Afterwards, the fortress lost its military value, it was good to listen from some of the tourist guides being there who show people around, I still practice my Chinese in these trips, good thing that I am taking advantage in Taiwan. A few blocks downs the castle there was a really nice temple where I went too, over here they were having a special ceremony with fireworks and lots of people around.

After Anping we went to the most relaxing place I have ever been in Taiwan… “The Confucius Temple” also called Scholarly Temple over here we could see the school and Confucius´ laws giving to its students, the rooms were so relaxing and full of stuff they used to use in the past, around this placer there are several courtyards with very pretty small trees, I think the arquitecture in this temple was different from others and its very pleasant with a lot of meaning. Right after this temple we visited another temple related to Dutch people coming to Taiwan… it was a really nice looking temple with some new arquitecture but we saw it during the night so the light show focusing the temple makes it really pretty and attractive to the tourist, right here there some Chinese sculptures a bit ugly though but with a lot of wise being represent in them. After our long trip to Tainan and being really tired we went to the hotel to rest.

This first day I learned a lot about Confucius temples history, why they were built, what was going on those times in these temples and that most Confucianist temples were built in Confucian schools, either to the front of or on one side of the school. I also did a search for myself on the internet since it got me really interested and o found that in south of China was built the first one and they are all over Asia, countries like Vietnam, Taiwan, Korean, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan. What I notice and I investigated about is that Confucian temples do not normally have images, so I found my answer that says that in the early years of the temple in Qufu, it appears that the spirits of Confucius and his disciples were represented with wall paintings and clay or wooden statues. Official temples also contained images of Confucius himself. However, there was opposition to this practice, which was seen as imitative of Buddhist temples. It was also argued and that the point of the imperial temples was to honor Confucius's teachings, not the man himself, I think this is a very reasonable answer to my question while I was in that temple asking myself why it was so different.

During our second day we went all the way to Sun Moon Lake, while going there we stopped at this really crowded train station, we realized that it was a fast growing city in Taiwan most of the things are around the train station, and the market and all kind of business goes at its surroundings, we also get to know Taiwan´s economic growing in this kind of trips, things like that don’t happen in my country anymore.