When the rest of TUSA when to Kaohsiung over a weekend that the AC was powered off in our building, Tammy went to Taitung, on the eastern border of Taiwan, and I went to Taichung with my host family.  I wasn’t so sad about missing Kaohsiung because that’s where my host family lives, and a lot of the places that TUSA was planning to go, I had already been to with my host family.  Except for one.  Buddha Memorial Center.  I saw if from the highway on the way to Kenting and I really, really wanted to go.  So Tammy made it  happen.  Though we initially got on a train going the wrong way, it was an adventure.  We approached the massive Golden Buddha towering over us.  It was evening time, with overcast skies.  There was hardly anyone there and it was so quiet.

   

We walked down the single aisle laid out in front of the mediating Buddha, like a red carpet.  Except instead of crazed fans waving at you from each side, there were tall pagoda-looking towers standing stoic, silent.  The whole experience was very surreal, with such tall and impressive buildings surrounding us, and no one else there.  I felt small.  We went inside the building that the Buddha sits on top of and browsed the rooms dedicated to him.  There was a golden shrine, where people were paying their respect.  And a jade shrine, which was unfortunately closed when we got there.  In one room there was big, golden Buddha with a moving face projected onto him, and an audio recording of his voice in several languages!  It looked so real.  We walked through several rooms which depicted the history of Buddhism, which was much like a museum.  Each key point in the story had a 3D display illustrating what it looked like.  The tour was very advanced, technologically speaking, with light displays and even a star tunnel at one point.  Though I thought the whole place was a little bit too grand, it was incredible to see what the Buddhists had built for their god.

At the entrance:

One of our tour guides from earlier in the trip would always point out the Banyan trees, saying that no one wanted to plant them because they just keep growing… “It will take over your house.”  Well, apparently that’s no myth.  In Anping, a nearby beach district, there is a famous tree house that is literally a tree infused with a house.  The roots of the Banyan tree climbed into the windows and took over the roof.  But what’s left is an incredible piece of architecture that looks natural.  Now there are stairs built in for tourists to walk through, but really, what a cool place.  The pictures don’t do it justice.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

And next door, there was a small museum with some really interesting information about how Taiwan was colonized.   It also had a lot of historical information, including info on the port of Anping and old ships from the area.  You weren’t supposed to take pictures in the museum, but I managed to sneak one.  I thought this caption was so interesting that I had to share it:

Salt Store

 

Also in Anping, there’s a salt store.  I’ve never seen so many different colors of salt!  They had a new shade for every day of the year, so often people will give salt as a birthday gift— the shade of their birthday.  Outside the salt store was a tree with several wooden tags attached to it, a similar concept to the fences with “love padlocks” on them.  Essentially, couples will write their name on the wooden tags and hang them on the tree for eternal love.

Pier 2

In Kaohsiung, before going to the Buddha Memorial Center, we stopped by an art district called Pier 2.  There were some really eccentric statues all over the area, and there were several barns with rotating exhibits inside.

We went in one that had photographs of traditional weddings.  The bride and groom get married on a stage covered with show lights, and often they’ll have “dancers” (if you know what I mean) at the weddings to entertain the guests.  So much different than ours!  Tammy said that in eastern tradition, brides will wear red, but the trend is to go western and wear white.  We went inside the main building and there were all kinds of modern art exhibits.  The one that stood out to me the most though was a steam box, where the artist channeled steam droplets in different directions to make them look like people, and animals.  It was incredibly detailed for such a fluid medium.  I tried to capture the work on camera, but it was difficult to take pictures of water residue on the side of a glass box.  I can only imagine the difficulty of actually creating them!