Timeless Tainan

Okay, about the title of this post, maybe Tainan isn’t timeless. Time still has meaning there as far as I can tell. But timeless Tainan is alliterative, and that’s good enough for me.

Plus, Tainan is Taiwan’s oldest city. The Dutch built an operational base there for the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century. Because that’s what Western European colonizers used to do. They colonized. It’s inherent in the word “colonizers.”

The Dutch only held it until 1683, when it was conquered by China and then held by the Qing Dynasty. They made Tainan the capital of Taiwan, and it remained so until 1887.

You may be wondering why I told you all this. Then again, you’re likely not wondering. You might have guessed. I brought up the subject of Tainan because that’s where I am as I write these words.

This morning, I took a high-speed train from Taipei to Tainan, a journey that took about an hour and three-quarters.

In truth, before I began planning this trip, I’d never heard of Tainan. The information in the first four paragraphs of this entry came from my research for, or subsequent to, that planning.

As for the journey to Tainan, the train spent considerable time in tunnels. Outside of the tunnels, it passed some small areas of green space, including a few small forested hills, but I saw little land that wasn’t built up to at least some extent. I saw only a relatively small amount of space that looked like it was put to agricultural use.

Often, the built-up areas consisted of low-rise residential, industrial, or office buildings, but there were frequently densely packed tracts of them. A couple of cities had dozens of high-rises and skyscrapers. In one case, Hsinchu, there were several dozen of them.

Tainan’s main local line train station and the Tainan High-Speed Rail station are separate. According to Google Maps, the former is a three-minute walk from my hotel. But the latter, where I arrived, is a 27-minute cab ride or 30 minutes by a local train that runs between the two stations.

My train, which was on time, was inconveniently scheduled to arrive a few minutes after a train was scheduled to leave from the nearby local-line station to Tainan’s main local-line train station. Google Maps said there’s a four-minute walk between the high-speed and local stations. Plus, I would have had to figure out how to buy a ticket on the local train. So even if the local train was a little late, I wouldn’t catch it.

The next local train into the city wasn’t scheduled for an hour after that. I took a cab.

I arrived at my hotel a little after 1:00 in the afternoon, settled in, had some lunch, and headed out. I managed to visit two temples and a street this afternoon.

Before getting into that, a first impression: Apart from the sights listed in my guidebook, I knew little about Tainan. I had no idea what it was like in general. I was expecting a smaller city than it is. Tainan sprawls and has several high-rises. They don’t seem to all be in one or a few downtown clusters, but rather fairly spread out.

Sidewalks are interesting here. They are designated motorcycle parking lots. Make no mistake. There’s no “wink, wink; nudge, nudge; say no more; say no more” intended in my use of the word “designated.” Sidewalks generally have lines painted or tiled along them, beyond which motorcycles aren’t supposed to protrude.

Motorcycles park perpendicular to the street to maximize the number of motorcycles that can fit on the sidewalk and minimize the amount of space for pedestrians. I’m moderately confident that the former is intentional and the latter is a side effect. The spaces allotted for motorcycles that I saw today were all parked up.

The orientation of the motorcycles was not a problem on most of the sidewalks I was on. The sidewalks were generally wide enough that there was still some room for pedestrians to walk along a path between the motorcycles and the storefronts.

But not always. Sometimes the motorcycles took up the whole sidewalk. And there was one stretch of busy street I was on with no sidewalk. In those cases, there was usually a line painted on the road a bit into the road from its edge. I think the intent was to create a path for pedestrians. I didn’t see any signs that I could read or icons stencilled on the road that suggested that was the intended purpose, but I saw a few people confidently using the space that way, so I did too.

Official God of War Temple (Maybe)

Trying to find this sight is how I learned about the problem with the English sight names provided by my guidebook not always being searchable in either Google or Apple Maps. Fortunately, my guidebook did provide a link to the coordinates in Google Maps. But when I clicked on it, it didn’t show anything called “Official God of War Temple,” with or without the word “Official,” near the coordinates.

(What’s with the “Official,” anyway? Are there unofficial God of War Temples out there trying to trick people into thinking that they’re the official ones? Do they, unlike the official one, charge an entry fee to rip off unsuspecting tourists? Enquiring minds want to know.)

The only nearby temple shown on Google Maps close to the coordinates was listed as “Tainan Sacrificial Rites Martial Temple.” It was across the street from where the guidebook’s coordinates sent me on Google Maps.

When I got there, I saw two temples across the street from each other. One small one was where the coordinates directed me, but without anything labelled on the map there. The other was larger and what was listed as “Tainan Sacrificial Rites Martial Temple” on Google Maps.

My guidebook (Lonely Planet) told me that the Official God of War Temple is “dedicated to Guandi (Guan Gong), a Han-dynasty general deified as the God of War.”

Both of the temples had some Chinese-language signs out front. I tried using Google Translate on them, but I couldn’t find anything suggesting the name of the temple. But inside the bigger temple, there were a couple of sections under renovation, and there was a large plastic banner on the fencing around the construction areas. Most of the words on the banner were in Chinese, but there were two words in English: Guan Gong.

Aha! I’d found the temple dedicated to Guan Gong!

Then, when I went across the street I found the words “Guan Gong” on a sign. (I forget if it was in English or Google Translate that told me.) So I don’t know if the two sites are part of the same temple and if so, what its real name is.

When I just now looked at my photos in Apple Photos, it automatically labelled a photo I took of the larger temple from the outside and two photos I took in its front shrine as “Sacrificial Rites Martial Temple.” But for the shots I took farther into that temple, it was only able to label them with the geographic location within Tainan, “West Central District – Chiqian Village.”

It also labelled the picture I took of the front of the smaller temple as “Sacrificial Rites Martial Temple.” But in fairness, I was standing across the street beside the larger temple when I took the shot. I imagine it uses only GPS coordinates to label the sights, not AI image recognition.

The larger temple was composed of several shrines, including one with a wide-open front. The “hallways” between the shrines were outdoors. (Can you call them hallways if they’re part of a single complex, but outdoors? They felt like hallways except for the lack of a roof.)

The different shrines had different levels of busyness on the altars and different levels of colour range and brilliance.

The front of the larger temple had bright decorations, but it looked kind of cheap, chintzy, and as if it had been plastered on as an afterthought. (See the photo at the top of this post.)

The smaller temple was, well, smaller. It had only one room, which I didn’t find very interesting, so I didn’t take a picture of the inside. The upper level of the temple is attractive from the outside, with some decorations on its peak. But you can’t see the upper level when you’re standing on the same side of the street as it, which is why I took the picture from the other side of the street.

I didn’t see any stairs in the smaller temple. So the upper level may be a Potemkin tier.

This is one spot where my walking tour app’s “what’s near me” feature would have come in handy. I didn’t notice on Google Maps at the time that another of my guidebook’s recommended sites was close to these temples. The two listings are separated by a few pages in the guidebook. Usually, sights are grouped in the book by area, so close sights are typically listed close together in the book. I don’t know why these two weren’t. I only spotted it when looking at the location on the map that Apple Photos showed me when I checked that out when preparing this post. Grrr.

Taiwan Fu City God Temple

The City God Temple temple provided a QR code to a web page with information about the temple, and that page has an English-language version. The English version of the website gives the temple a name that’s the same as the one my guidebook uses, except it adds “Taiwan Fu” to the front of what my guidebook provides, “City God Temple.”

I was at a City God Temple in Taipei, the Xiahai City God Temple. There, I assumed that each city has its own god, but my guidebook says that there is a city god (Chenghuang) that protects towns. Towns, plural, not a specific town.

Chenghuang is a multi-tasking god. After our deaths, he also tallies up the good and bad deeds we’ve done in this life. So be good for goodness’ sake. (Sorry, it’s only a couple of weeks until Christmas. And, yes, the stores, malls, and hotel elevators play Christmas music here despite Christianity not being the dominant religion. According to Wikipedia, only 3.9% of the Taiwanese people are Christian. Damn. I thought I could count on escaping Christmas music here.)

There are two giant abacuses in the temple that are allegedly used to tally up the good and bad deeds. I’m skeptical.

The City God Temple has a front shrine, a back shrine, and a backyard with a Chinese-roofed gazebo. There are also two rooms on either side of the shrine, running the full length of the front and back shrines combined.

In the front shrine, there were a couple of figures that looked to me sort of like voodoo dolls. I don’t know what their significance was.

In one of the side rooms, there was a long table with chairs. People were sitting at the table eating oranges.

There is signage, in English, at the Temple that mentions a museum with artifacts. A door into the long room on the other side of the shrine has a free-standing sign in front of it that says it’s the museum entrance. Temple relics were mentioned elsewhere as being in the museum. I tried the door, and it was solidly locked. There was no indication of opening hours, and I couldn’t find anyone to ask about it. How the heck do all these places learn that I’m there and lock up?

Shennong Street

I said in the introduction that I went to visit a street this afternoon. That was a ridiculous thing to say. I walked along a lot of streets this afternoon. I say a lot of ridiculous things. That was just one example.

What I meant was I went to see a specific street my guidebook recommended, Shennong Street.

Shennong Street is in an area known as the Five Canals district because, well, you can guess. There used to be five canals there. Did you guess right? It doesn’t matter because the canals were filled in long ago.

Shennong Street is more of a lane than a street. It’s only for pedestrians, and it’s lined with cafes, shops, and at least one storefront temple. (There might have been more that I missed.) A somewhat larger temple sits just across the cross-street at the end of the lane.

Chinese paper lanterns hang across the lane at some points. And many of the shops have hung the same sort of lanterns in front of their stores.

According to my guidebook, there’s a “Water Fairy Temple,” not on Shennong Street, but in a nearby “sleepy market.” I found the market. Most of the stalls were empty, and the interior of the market was quite dim. Only some stalls on the periphery of the market were occupied. It may be a night market (it was late afternoon when I was there), or maybe it’s dying. I don’t know.

I used the link in my guidebook to try to find the Water Fairy Temple because who wouldn’t want to see a Water Fairy Temple? I walked to where Google Maps told me the GPS coordinates were. I didn’t see anything that looked like a temple. I walked around that area of the market and found nothing that fit the bill, so I eventually gave up and walked back to my hotel.

Aside

My Hotel

I mentioned earlier that Tainan has several high-rises. My hotel is one of them.

I’m on the 29th floor, and my windows provide me with an expansive view of one side of Tainan.

Nevertheless, I don’t think I made a good choice in terms of location. The only restaurants immediately around the hotel are the ones in the hotel and some in a large department store immediately beside it. I’ve already booked at the two different restaurants in the hotel for two different nights.

Hey, I know most people think that the nearness of sights is more important, but, come on, people. I’ve got to eat.

There was nothing available in the hotel restaurants for tonight, and the concierge recommended a restaurant in the department store. (There are a few there, including a McDonald’s.) I’m in Tainan for four nights. I’m not sure what I’ll do for dinner on the one night not yet accounted for.

Leaving the topic of food, as difficult as it is to leave that topic, on the night table beside my bed in the hotel, there’s a small card with instructions, in English and Chinese, and pictures, on what to do in case of an earthquake. Before coming here, I had read that Tainan experienced a major earthquake in 2016. Gulp.