Zhinan and Quandu Temples

This afternoon was a long one, but I didn’t see much because I spent most of the time travelling between two temples, Zhinan Temple and Quandu Temple, and then getting back to my hotel.

That’s a problem that I find arises occasionally near the end of a stay in a city. I do my best each day to see sights as closely clustered as possible, which isn’t necessarily always terribly closely together. But by the end of my stay in a city, I sometimes find that I’m left with sights I want to see that are scattered widely.

That’s what happened today. To an extreme.

After lunch in Maokong, I took the 25-minute walk back to the Maokong gondola station and rode to the next stop on the return trip to the city, the Zhinan Temple station, to see that temple. After I left Zhinan Temple, I took the gondola down to the end station, walked for five or six minutes to the brown line of the Taipei Metro, rode that for a few stops to a connection station with the red line, rode that for 20 stops, and then walked for 15 minutes to get to Quandu Temple.

Those 20 stops on the red line took me 15 stops past the station where I would normally get on or off the red line when coming from or going to my hotel. So you have an idea of how long it took me to get back to my hotel after I left Quandu Temple.

Zhinan Temple

I found Zhinan Temple confusing. I would have found it even more confusing if I hadn’t read about it in my guidebook. But I still found it confusing.

My guidebook told me that it’s a temple complex made up of three temples and 11 shrines. It also said that Zhinan is sometimes spelled “Chih Nan.” Okay. Fair enough. It’s an English transliteration of a Chinese name. I’m cool with there not being a universally accepted standard for that. The guidebook did not mention separate names for each of the three temples that make up the complex. I figured they just all operated under a single name. I’ve been in plenty of temples on this trip that were complexes with multiple buildings under one name. I figured this was one of them.

The Zhinan Temple station on the Maokong gondola is spelled that way. “Zhinan,” not “Chih Nan.” When I left the station I saw a sign that pointed to three temples, each of them named, and none of those names being Zhinan or Chih Nan. Um, okay.

I saw some signs scattered around with either the Zhinan or Chih Nan names. I may be cool with different sources having different transliterations of a name that’s in a language that’s as radically different from English as Chinese is, but consistency within one location would have been nice.

When I got to the biggest and closest of the temples, which is a little walk downhill from the station, I saw a lot of signs inside and in front of the temple, but only one with any English on it. It was a big, backlit sign inside the temple that, along with the Chinese on it, said, “CHIH NAN TEMPLE.” Alright, so is this temple specifically named Chih Nan Temple, or is that the name of the complex and it bears one of the other names on the directional sign I saw? I don’t know.

On the outside, it’s a big, beautiful, predominantly red temple with dragon and other decorations, along with multi-coloured patterned decorations along some of the walls.

In front of the temple, there’s a big patio. Because the temple is high up on a mountain, there are great views from the patio. There’s also a well-decorated ceremonial gate near the edge of the patio.

The temple is multi-tiered, with the public being able to access two of the tiers. There are multiple altars on both levels and bright decorations and figures on those altars.

In one of the pictures I took inside the temple, you’ll see the backs of three women dressed in red robes. When I was there, they were chanting rhythmically from books in front of them. The woman on the left of the picture was tapping a small percussion instrument that sounded exactly like a metronome. And she was doing so in what sounded to my ears like a perfectly even frequency. I enjoyed it.

After I left the big temple, I walked downhill a piece to another of the three temples. It also had a decorated roof, although more subtle. I didn’t find the interior and its altar particularly impressive, so I didn’t take a picture.

I knew I didn’t take a picture inside, but I could have sworn I took a picture of the outside of that temple, but when I went to include it here, I found that I hadn’t. But that temple had a small mythical, lion-like stone statue similar to ones I’ve seen at other Taipei temples guarding the entrance. I had taken a picture of that. And I took a picture of the valley and city beyond as seen from in front of that temple.

From the front of that temple, I think I saw the corner of the roof of the third temple sticking out beyond some trees. I only saw a small corner of the roof, and I’m not even sure it was the temple, but it looked smaller than the one I was at, which was much smaller than the first one I visited. And it was farther yet downhill. Walking down there to what may or may not have been another temple would have meant having to walk back up afterward.

I didn’t. Instead, I walked back to the Zhinan Station of the Maokong line to begin the long journey to Quandu Temple.

Quandu Temple

If Antoni Gaudí had ever seen the Quandu Temple, he would have been embarrassed about how subtle he was in his use of colour in his buildings.

The Quandu Temple is another multi-tiered temple. This one is decorated to the extreme.

A multitude of dragons and other wild figures adorn the roof and a couple of small towers beside it. Quandu had the same sort of mythical lion-like stone creatures as the ones at Zhinan Temple guarding the front. But here, most of them wore big red, many-looped bows attached by red ribbons wrapped around their necks.

Inside, the public was able to visit three of the temple’s above-ground floors. Each of the floors had multiple altars, most having brightly coloured decorations, including some statue figures. (There was at least one more level, but the stairs to it were roped off.)

On the highest publicly accessible level, there was a balcony that offered a great view of the city. And it allowed me to see just how far I’d travelled from the centre of the city to get there. There was a lot of green space in between.

That balcony also allowed me to see one of the non-dragon decorations on the outside of the building close up. At least one reader will be pleased to know it was fish.

The Quandu Temple is built right up against a mountain. Beside the temple, there’s a pedestrian tunnel that travels about 100 metres through the mountain to the other side, with decorations at close, regular intervals along both walls of the tunnel. At the end, there’s a small altar and a view out across a large parking lot, with the river behind the lot, and another mountain beyond the river. If the parking lot didn’t spoil the view enough, there were large high-voltage power lines that extended from overhead close to the viewing platform, over the river and mountain, and carrying on beyond that.

However, that’s not to detract from the temple, which is a profusion of gaudiness. I mean that in a good way.

Programming Note

I’m leaving Taipei tomorrow morning to go to another destination for a few days. Leaving a city usually leads me to write a summary of my time in that city. But that’s not going to be the case here.

It’s not that I’m shirking that duty. After I’m finished with my next destination, the day before I return home, I’ll be coming back to Taipei. I have a ticket on a nonstop flight from Taipei to Toronto, my hometown.

I’m scheduled to return to Taipei early in the afternoon, so I expect I’ll have something to write about from Taipei then. And my flight the next day doesn’t leave until 7:20 in the evening. It took me about 45 minutes or maybe a little more to get from the airport to my hotel when I arrived in Taipei. The traffic then heading toward the airport was a lot heavier than the traffic going to my hotel from the airport. And I don’t know when rush hour is here. So, I’ll probably leave for the airport not all that late in the afternoon, but it will probably leave me time to do something in the morning, and I’ll write an entry about that.

Unless I can finish and post that last entry for this trip at the airport, I might not hit the “publish” button on it until I get home. But whenever it gets published, it will include my Taipei and Taiwan summaries. Stay tuned.