Toucheng

Thanks to the overnight we gained in Keelung, today we opted to explore this city instead of going back to Taipei. A better plan on a short port day.

With rain in the forecast, we grabbed our umbrellas and went down to the gangway at 7:15a to join up with Younga and David, who had a plan similar to what we wanted to do … hike up to the Big Buddha Temple, which sits high atop a hill overlooking the port.

But first we made a detour … inspired by one of Chef Farid's Facebook postings. What had caught my attention was a beautiful marble lotus floor. When I asked him which temple it was, he replied … “near the ship.” Hmmmm! There were several temples near the ship. We got the full answer to the question from a guard at the port gate. It was the Fo Guang Shan Ji Le Temple. Plugging the name into Google Maps, off we went.

Fo Guang Shan is an international Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist organization and monastic order based in Taiwan. We visited the Buddha Museum at the monastery in Kaohsiung on RTW2017 … an amazing place. The followers practice Humanistic Buddhism, and are known for their efforts to modernize Chinese Buddhism. They are also one of the largest charitable organizations in Taiwan, offering services in particular to the needy in remote villages.

That we had the temple to ourselves doubled our pleasure in the place. The marble inlay floor was amazing … the murals decorating the walls eye-catching. One of the monks came out to give us her prayer card and one of the volunteers handed each of us a happy Buddha charm. Such nice, thoughtful gestures. Nothing was expected in return, but we put some Taiwanese money in the donation box on our way out.

We were just walking away when a local man approached us with a small box. Intended as an offering for the temple’s Buddha, he instead gave the box to us with a smile and said in English that he wanted us to have it. Another lovely gesture. We, in turn, left it as an offering at the Big Buddha Temple later when we finally managed to get up there.

Next up was the planned hike to ZhongZheng Park to see Keelung’s Guanyin statue … aka the Big Buddha. Like so many places in Taiwan, the park is named after Chiang Kai-shek … ZhongZheng being the name he chose for himself sometime around 1917-1918.

Unfortunately, we hit a couple of stumbling blocks in our quest to reach the temple … and I don’t mean the many, many, many steep steps we had to climb in our quest. Rather, due to restoration work being done on the Zhupu Altar, which was also on our list of places to see, we had to detour via the main road instead of through a park-like setting. At least we were rewarded — stinging mosquitoes notwithstanding — for those initial stairs we ended up climbing by finding the Martyr’s Shrine … though it was closed.

The shrine was originally known simply as the Keelung Shrine. It was converted from a Japanese Shinto shrine to honor the martyrs of WWII after the war. In 1969, the original structure was demolished and a new one in the style of a northern Chinese palace was built. The big torii [Shinto shrine archway] was also rebuilt and named the Chung Cheng Park Monument.

The interesting thing we noted before we took the detour further up the hill was that the initial steps we climbed took us to the Xiner Bomb Shelter Square. These places are a necessity in Taiwan because of China’s aggressive stance. In fact, we read this morning that yesterday Taiwan had to scramble fighter jets when 10 Chinese warplanes flew across what is deemed the sensitive median line.

Our next stop, after walking through an area that was probably off-limits due to the restoration work, was the Zhupu Altar. I had noticed the temple as Insignia was coming into port yesterday and found it very photogenic. Apparently it is associated with the month-long Ghost Festival, which is held during the seventh month of the lunar calendar … usually in August/September.

By the time we arrived at ZhongZheng Park, having climbed up through a woodland area where mosquitoes were swarming, the on-and-off drizzle was starting to pick-up. What we didn’t realize at the time was that we had entered the park through the rear instead of the main temple entrance. That explained why our first glimpse of the Guanyin statue was from the back.

A short segue here to explain about Buddha vs Guanyin. Which begs the need to describe what a bodhisattva is. As I understand it, this word comes from Sanskrit and refers to someone who, in Buddhism, seeks awakening [bodhi] … thus is an individual on the path to becoming a buddha. Guanyin, a figure in Chinese Buddhism is the bodhisattva of “infinite compassion and mercy” … and is referred to as the most widely beloved Buddhist Divinity, with miraculous powers to assist all those who pray to her.

The first thing we noticed at the park was that it was possible to climb up inside the Guanyin statue … for a small donation, of course. We paid up and decided to check it out. In my case, I was thinking that there would be some kind of an observation terrace at the top. There wasn’t. But we didn’t figure that out until we had climbed several very steep, narrow stairs with small platforms in between. On each floor, the walls were decorated with scenes depicting the life story of Buddha. We went as high as we could to find that the last section — where the stairs became ladders — was off-limits. Those ladders probably led up into the head of the statue.

At this top-most level, we found a small altar to Guanyin and left the little box of goodies that we were gifted earlier as an offering to the Goddess of Mercy. Then it was time to negotiate the steep stairs back down to the ground floor.

By the time we stepped out from the statue, the rain was coming down … light but steady. Opening our umbrellas, we strolled around to the front of the Guanyin statue, which is guarded by two golden lions. After a wet but fun photo-op, we wandered the grounds, checking out a gazebo in which a lotus-shaped wishing well is topped by four statues. Then, following a cloister-like passage lined with red columns, we walked over to the giant drum and took the time to ring it … not as easy as one might think (as you will see in the video).

A quick stop into the temple itself and we were ready to leave. That’s when we found the main gate through which we would have entered had we not detoured into the forest on our way up. We opted to return by way of the road, thus avoiding the mosquitoes.

Our day wasn’t quite complete yet, but having reached the max number of photos I can attach to a footprint, the rest of the story will have to wait until the next post.Read more