Taipei: Old and New

Taipei was not the bustling bright new city I was expecting it to be. It was actually quite traditional in many ways, the buildings were quite old, and the translations were, well, what I remembered them being back in China. What I will say, is that though Taiwan is seen as a crucial ally of the US, and somewhere that’s on the conscience of your average American, Taiwan is NOT westernized. (I say this after having spent a week in Tokyo, I’ve been incredibly sick and have been using every ounce of free time as sleeping time…). So here’s some of the old, and new traditions I encountered in and around Taipei.

Buddhist Prayer

A few minutes’ walk from our hostel is Longshan Temple, Dragon Mountain temple. This is where we met Bryann, as mentioned in the other post. He taught us how to pray in the Buddhist way, which, you may find to be quite odd and different from western methods of prayer.

Before you pray, you must find a Buddha to pray to. These Buddhas each have their own specialties. Ones for good harvest, good fish, success on examinations, love and marriage, fertility, etc. I personally found it funny that whereas Western religions teach to help the poor, to give charity, and to be humble with your money, Buddhism teaches to pray for money, and to give money to the Gods as a method of prayer.

Beginning to pay, you stop in front of the Buddha you’re going to pray to. Then, you may wish to offer a few coins as a form of payment to the Buddha. He’s more likely to respond to your wishes if you give him an incentive! Fold your hands and speak, telling the Buddha your full name, your birthday, and where you live before you ask him a question. See, praying to Buddha isn’t asking for things, it’s asking about things. You can either ask him a yes/no question, or a more open-ended question. To ask a yes/no question, you pick up two blocks, each in the shape of a clove of garlic, made of wood. When you throw the blocks, they can either both land flat side up—a no—, flat side down—ask again—, or one up one down—a yes.

I’m not sure what the answers are for the open-ended questions, but to get those, you take a number out of a box, and then find a scroll corresponding to that number, which gives you your answer.

We were able to pray like this at several temples scattered throughout Taipei and the surrounding area.

On our third day, we got to visit the Maokong mountain area, which was filled with beautiful hikes and stunning temples. When we first approached the main temple, we saw it from below a set of hundreds of steps, with the stunning bright red light glowing out from the gates of the temple, attracting us upwards. We climbed until we reached a panoramic view of Taipei to our front, and the temple to our back. We entered the temple, spent nearly an hour admiring and praying, before continuing on the path to a second.

The ceilings are so intricately done, each shrine to each Buddha is so unique and ornate, it truly is a special place. It’s really something left described to pictures because I cannot truly explain just how beautiful these two temples (collectively Zhinan Temple) are.

On our last day in Taiepi, we passed by Longshan Temple once more on our way back from lunch. And we stumbled across a huge parade! We had read that there may be a parade in the national museum the day before, but we were amazed to stumble across it! It was, we think, for the arrival and birthday of the City God. For this parade, each “act” would stop at the gates to the temple, and when it’s their turn, they get to enter in the gates, perform in front of City God, and then they leave. There were several kinds of acts, and each was very cool. The first thing we saw, actually, was a hilariously inappropriate dance troupe, dancing suggestively (with enough clothes) to some K-Pop. Katherine and I were a little confused at first, but once the more traditional acts began, we were more onboard…

One kind of act was with very tall people, which were people wearing costumes where their heads go through the chest of the costume. These costumes are ornate depictions of royalty and semi-god figures, which dance towards each other and towards the Buddha. We even saw them do-si-do at some point…

Another act is when a cart comes in with something on it, which they charge at the City God quickly before recoiling, doing that a few times. Some other acts also involved dragons, masks, and Prayer Wheels (more common in Tibetan Buddhism as a method of prayer). Each act had its own assortment of coronets, cymbals, erhus, and drums, which completed the ceremonial and iconically eastern atmosphere.

Old Chinese Streets

A decent ways outside of Taipei are two iconic “old streets”: Jiufen and Shifen. These streets are lined with old architecture, sell iconic Taiwanese food and drink, and, of course, are aimed mostly at tourists. Jiufen is really an entire town like this, and like the temples, I’ll mostly let the photos speak for themselves.

Both of these streets were very crowded, both with international tourists (mostly from Asia) and with domestic tourists, off to explore their roots for a day. The more interesting thing to talk about is our activities at Shifen.

Shifen is just a singular street with a railway that runs through it. Yeah, it’s super touristy, but actually I had a blast there. It’s a really cool, nice vibe, and though you’re being yelled at constantly to buy things, I feel like that’s second nature to me by now, lol. We ended up making a lantern to send into the sky. I don’t want to think about how many of these lanterns land in the Taiwanese countryside, affecting the locals, because I’m sure it’s LOADS, but I enjoyed doing something a bit spiritual anyways.

Each color on the lantern has a different meaning, and we were able to paint it in the way we wanted, with calligraphy brushes and ink. Each side’s meaning was a kind of luck, sending into the heavens that these are the kinds of luck that we are hoping for. The three of us agreed on “Money Luck,” “Career Luck,” “Health Luck,” and “Love Luck.” After painting it, we went to go send it to the heavens, but a train came right on the tracks right as we were about to let go! So we had to quickly evacuate the tracks before letting it go for real. They run a tight ship there, no wasted time whatsoever…

Overall, it was a good experience, as silly as it was.

Modern Taipei

The thing to do in Taipei is not during the day, rather, it’s a Night Market. This is where you can find clothes, carnival games, knickknacks, and of course, street food and both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. We actually got mostly bubble tea from the Night Markets, and on a few occasions we got deserts and even once dinner. It’s fun to go from stand to stand, getting small things that can be shared and trying a ton of things. We got fried sweet potato balls, bubble tea, duck wraps, soup dumplings, ice cream rolls, beef noodles, among many other things from Night Markets. See, the prices at the Night Market is so cheap that most locals opt to go straight from work to the Night Market for dinner instead of cooking their own. They don’t have to buy food, prep, thaw, and cook everything, which is very time consuming. Instead, they can pay less to have a huge variety of delicious, hot, safe-to-eat food at their convenience. So these markets are very local, and especially, the smaller ones.

We visited a few different markets. One by Taipei 101 that I forgot the name of, one in our neighborhood: Nanjichang, and the big famous one, Shilin.

Finally, one thing I feel just a little obligated to mention on the topic of food is the very interesting restaurant behaviors they have. Basically every restaurant is fast-casual—you order first with a form-menu, and they bring your food to you with a food runner, not a waiter. You write on the menu the number of each item you want, and then they tally it up for you. And the tally system they use is so unique; it creates the Chinese character zhēng, 正, meaning “right,” building it stroke by stroke. See description here.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for Taiwan, this trip is at Breakneck speed, and I’m already one leg behind, so I’m imagining blogs will be less comprehensive, focusing more on smaller things as I move through. Otherwise, I’m excited for another 15 weeks of traveling around the Old World!