Breaking the Silence

Well!...I'm done with training! That's basically what's kept me from this blog for the past few weeks. It's been pretty rigorous and I pretty much had only enough energy to eat and sleep between working. Now that that's done I can fill you in on some shenanigans that went on and on one of my day trips outside of the city on a day off.

First- I discovered a pack of semi-wild dogs living inside a park at the MRT station next to mine. They basically sit under this large tree in between the roots and I think of them as guardians of the park, watching over the children and people playing there. Some are friendly but most want to be left alone. I've been really careful around them because of my experiences with Ronan, but I made a soft whistle at them when they walked by and one or two came over and asked to be petted. A large typhoon just came through northern Taiwan and I was worried about them. I don't think anyone takes care of them, but they must get enough food because pigeons hang around their spot all the time. I hope they were okay during the storm. 

The second interesting thing that's happened is that a bookstore near where I worked had an event where they invited a Japanese manga artist to sign autographs. He must have been pretty famous because there was a long line of people around the street for two days... Turns out this artist only draws adult comics and only guys were lined up!!!! Here's a picture of them camping out before the store opened.

Okay on one of my days off I managed to get to Jilong city (Keelung in the adopted English spelling). I was a little over an hour and a half by bus and it's a fishing port. I went here before with Albert during Ghost Month to see the parade, but I wanted to come back to see the "gate of hell." Basically, there's a special door in a temple here that is opened on the first day of Ghost Month to let all of the ghosts come out and have pretty much a vacation from hell, and then this door is closed on the last day. I was on a quest to find this door to see what it's like.

Here are a couple of pictures- one on the bus, and one right near the port. I've been playing with this Chinese selfie app that supposedly beautifies your face depending on what settings you choose. I tried to pick what's closest to how I look but it still made my eyes a little bigger. The picture on the left is the doctored one and on the right is just my pure self.

Along my quest I found an interesting street sign- the English spelling seems to be influenced from Taiwanese instead of Chinese- normally it would be Zhongshan not Diong-san! Cool!

 Okay! I made it finally after a long drudge in pouring rain. Lao Da Gong Temple. Even with my umbrella I was soaked and when I reached the top I saw some long tables in a wide open space and an old man peacefully writing calligraphy on one of them. I sat across from him and proceeded to take off my shoes and and wring out my socks. It was thundering and lightening as I rested.

 

  

This man turned to me and said I could watch him do calligraphy and after a few minutes he beckoned me over to his side and asked me if I could read any Chinese characters. Then we walked me through what he wrote on the picture above- it was a poem he composed about a trip me made through the mountains to sell rain boots. I'm not sure how to appreciate Chinese poetry so I can't tell you if it was good or not but I was impressed that he wrote a poem. Then he and another volunteer tried to tell me the story of this temple.

This temple is not exactly what I expected. Instead of worshipping specific Daoist/Buddhist gods, it's dedicated to preserving the ashes of people who died in two specific periods of massacres in Taiwan. Once when the Spanish came over and fought with the Taiwanese (I had never heard of this incident!), and once when mainland Chinese immigrants fought with the indigenous peoples. Basically they were both incidents of colonization. Their ashes are all kept inside the door which I referred to earlier as the "gate of hell." One of the volunteers kindly pointed it out to me, and I wouldn't have found it if he hadn't told me:

Ta da! It's to the left of the big brown tablet in the middle with the name of the temple. This is the door that's opened during Ghost Month. There is supposedly a big ceremony when this happens and also when it closes. It would be nice to visit again to see that.

After the storm let up I walked back to the nightmarket here. I did way too much walking but that was because I'm stingy about riding taxis. 

 

This nightmarket is actually called Miao Kou Night Market, because it's right next to another temple. I wasn't particularly excited about going inside it because I had spent so much time in the last temple and I was pretty hungry. I ended up watching a local couple and decided to try this stand's dishes. They only sell crab soup and rice. That's my poor translation:

This was actually a slightly embarrassing language moment for me because I didn't know how to pronounce one of the characters in the soup and I was a little nervous- so when I ordered I ended up sounding like my Chinese was worse than it is. The lady also only talked to me in Taiwanese so I had very little idea what she was saying- I could only guess. But the point is I still had a successful interaction because I got food! I've been feeling pretty grateful lately that I can actually speak to locals in Chinese and basically survive on my own without help. It's a big confidence booster! It's also nice to be able to bond with some strangers- usually they're elderly people who hang around temples.