Being a Tourist in Taipei

As you probably noticed by now, I got to Taipei every Saturday and this week was no different. I tutored for four hours in the morning and headed down to the city. Pictures are posted on Zooomr.

My first stop was the Chiang Kai-Shek (CKS) Memorial Hall. CKS was once Taiwan's dictator and there are 89 steps leading to the top of the structure which represents his age when he died. There are two guards in the hall at all times who remain perfectly motionless until the "changing of the guards" every hour.

After that, I went to the Taipei Botanical Garden to look around. It was not too different than anything you would find in North America other than a few buildings here and there. Right next to the gardens, however, is the National Museum of History. I decided to go take a look and apparently they just started a new exhibit on Friday but it was dedicated to what kind of flower arrangement each room in the house used to have back in the old days. There were a few neat things like pottery and swords and I may have to go back if a new exhibit rolls into town. There's only one picture taken from the inside of the museum because you are not allowed to take pictures. After I took that one picture, I got yelled at and had to put my camera away. Sorry security person, but I can't read Chinese.

Next I went to Longshan Temple. The temple was built in 1738 and is probably the most noted temple in Taipei. The temple consists of three structures: on outer, middle, and inner (main) structure where the statues are. There's a giant ball that people were lining up for and what you're supposed to do is stand under it and make a prayer. The line was very long or else I would have tried it. Inside, you can see pictures of people praying in front of the statues and they're holding sticks. I'm not sure what these sticks represent (sorry Mom and Dad) but they smell like incense. You bow to the statue with them in your hand and you place a stick into the big incense burner. I was one of the only people taking pictures in the temple while everyone else was praying and I could tell they were annoyed. However, I was told by one of the workers that it was alright but that it would not be the best idea to take pictures of the statues so I didn't. I still felt a bit bad so on my way out, I got a few sticks, asked for forgiveness from the Asian statues, apologized to God for worshiping an idol, and stuck my sticks in different incense burners around the temple.

There is a night market that is right around the corner from the temple. Westerners refer to this market as "Snake Alley" but in Taipei it's called the "Taipei Hwahsi Tourist Night Market." It's called Snake Alley because they have some stores which have live snakes and sell snake meat. I also watched a demonstration (sorry, wasn't allowed to take pictures) where they had a live snake, tied it's head to the ceiling with a string, a cut it open while it was hanging in the air. The guy then pulled something out of the snake's body and cut it in half and lifted the bottom half of the snake upside down so all the blood would pour out into a cup of water. He then pulled something else out of the snake, cut it open, and green stuff came out into a separate cup of water. While he was doing all of this, he was talking into a microphone and I guess he was selling it because people actually started BUYING these drinks and drank them! I would have thought about trying it but I have no idea what he was saying and green stuff coming out of snake doesn't sound too good. I went to a little eatery while I was in Snake Alley and saw something that they were cooking that I thought looked interesting and I wanted to try it. So I pointed at their menu, which was very small, and since I didn't see any other food laying around I thought I'd get whatever they were cooking. Wrong. I got something totally different which wasn't very good so I just ate a bit and left. Moral of the story is to never point to something at a restaurant in a language you don't know and say "dzhe gu" (that one).