Guandu Temple

2010/02/27

I have to admit, I had different plans for today. However my girlfriend had a sore shoulder and moving with it was very painful so she had to stay at home. That changed my plans. When Andrej had told me he plans to take bike and ride somewhere, I made up my mind and joined him. According to the map in our room we decided to go to the north coast and visit some seaside there.

We left in 11 am and joined a bikeway near our campus, just several blocks beside. We took the north direction and rushed to the beach. We didn't know that the weather south from Japan is horrible and a danger of tsunami is in Okinawa and surrounded islands. Due to this the weather was getting worse and worse as we were approaching the north part of Taipei.

We didn't stop except two times, when we wanted to take some pictures. However the visibility was horrible. For this reason, please excuse my poor photo quality today.

We crossed the Keelung river by highway (there is a bikeway on the bridge) and turned left to the direction of Danshui. Soon we passed around a bike service station in the middle of nothing. New tires, breaks, seats etc.. There was also a map of the bikeway and a mark of Guandu Temple near by. That could be interesting!

After 30 minutes we saw the temple on our own eyes. The temple was beautiful, it's a pity the visibility was so poor. This opinion will maybe change during our visits of other temples as this one, because there is obviously a lot of them.

When we got closer, we found out that there is some sort of a ceremony inside. That was a perfect possibility for us to see something new, from other culture! The people took several wooden wands and let them smoke putting into the fire. When they did so, they returned to the temple and bowed in front of the altar. George later informed me it's called "Worship ceremony".

We passed around to another building and back to the main square, where we found a furnace in which people threw some sort of papers. Again according to George's note, this should be "burning hell money to ghost or relative who is dead". It's a custom here in Taiwan.
We tried to proceed in our way, nevertheless the weather was so awful and wind so strong we decided the visit of the seaside is nonsense now and turned back. Because we didn't want to go home the same way, we turned left after the highway bridge (viz. previous paragraphs) and took a bikeway around the Keelung river.

We planned to go around the river since we will pass the Taipei national airport and then turn to the right to Taipei 101 and home. However this day was a day of changes and we lost the bikeway just in front of the airport. For that reason we changed our direction to south and to home.

Before long we found another - wooden temple on the left. The temple was closed, but it was possible to look inside, so we took several pictures. Prayers were held in that time in a building beside. We explored the surroundings, got lost several times in the labyrinth of stairs, hallways and halls in monks' living quarters and went out.

The next stop was a long time later, after we passed the Taipei Main Station, Peace Park and turned to the right. We attended the Botanical Garden I already mentioned in 2010/02/21. This time we were there soon (in 16:30) so we were allowed to enter the paths. Even so there is a winter in Taiwan the garden was nice and interesting. We took several pictures of places not far from our expectation of jungle or groups of cactuses of different shapes and sizes :)
We returned to our dorm in 19 pm after 8 hours. Even so I had Filip's bike, which was not able to change the front changing wheel and the back wheel was just from 1 to 8 (instead of 9) and even so the chain fell down 2 times we rode about 60 km this day. Nice start!


2010/02/27 - Guandu Temple [28 pictures]

Joss paper (Ghost money)
Ancestor worship

Guandu Temple Phorum [0 posts]
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