After a 2 hour bus ride we arrived at the Tainan bus station. We have the Lonely Planet Guidebook to Taiwan, and they have a neat walking tour of Tainan in it. Fortunately the bus station is near the start of the walking tour so it was quite convenient. The first stop on the walking tour was the Taiwanese Literary Museum. The museum itself was very boring for me (I think it is designed more for children and teenagers), but the building is a wonderful example of Japanese colonial architecture so I took some photos of it.
We didn't stay at the museum long because I found it boring and since we had limited time to see the entire city I wanted to keep going and find more interesting sights.
Next we found the Confucius Temple. It seems every temple in Taiwan is named either the Confucius Temple or Longshan Temple. This temple was actually used for teaching children and I don't think any religious statues or artifacts were in the place. I believe it was built in the 1700's. There were a lot of steles with rules for the students, as well as lessons of instruction. And there were also a lot of banyon trees that Carolyn was absolutely fascinated with. She took a lot of pictures and I'm sure some will appear on her blog for you to check out.
The next sight I found much more interesting. We walked about a block and came across the Great South Gate of Tainan. It's a wonderfully preserved gate and wall built in the 1600's to keep out the Manchus and Europeans. There was almost nobody at this sight which made it feel even more authentic. This is the beauty of traveling on a Tuesday, everybody has to work but me and Carolyn. We sat here for awhile and just took in the atmosphere. Here is a picture of the gate and the surrounding wall.
Next we stopped at another temple (Wufei Temple) dedicated to the 5 concubines of Koxinga's son, the last leader of the Ming Dynasty. The story goes that when he surrendered to the Manchus his concubines were so loyal they hung themselves to join him in death. This temple is dedicated to their loyalty. It's a very small temple situated in a nice park as you can see from the photo. I didn't want to stay at this sight too long either because I am so incredibly bored of temples and up to this point this temple was the most average one I have come across. So we didn't stay more than 15 minutes before going to the next sight on the tour.
As it turns out, the next sight was yet another temple! Fahua temple to be exact, and now I had finally arrived at the most ho-hum temple imaginable. Needless to say we did not stay long. Instead we continued on to Koxinga's shrine. Koxinga was the Ming general who fled China in the 1600's when the Manchus took over mainland China. His plan, (similar to the KMT's plan to retake Mainland China from the communists) was to regroup in Taiwan and muster forces to retake the mainland from the foreign invaders. Instead (like the KMT), he never made it back to Mainland China and the Manchus held control over China for 300 years. The Manchus also invaded Taiwan and forced Koxinga's son to surrender. Koxinga did develop a lot of infrastructure in Taiwan, and a lot of the schools and temples were built in his time. This particular shrine dedicated to him was originally built long ago, but it was rebuilt by the KMT in the northern Chinese style of architecture and plastered with the KMT logo. It was interesting to see though because Koxinga is looked at with reverence by a lot of Taiwanese. Apparently the day we were visiting there was also a farmer's market taking place inside the shrine. Near the shrine is also a nice garden with a carp pond and dragon fountain, and a large statue of Koxinga himself.
Across the street from Koxinga's shrine is Lady Linshui's temple. At this point I remember begging, "please no more temples! I don't want to see anymore!" So we decided to skip the 4 other temples on the walking tour and head to the more interesting sights. Lady Linshui's temple is mainly for women. Women go there to pray for various womanly interests and when we visited there were actually a lot of women and girls there praying. One thing that interested me with the temple was the lantern display in the front. I have taken a picture of it for you to see.
So since we decided to skip the remaining temples we headed straight to Chihkan Towers, or Fort Proventia as it was called by the Dutch. I was very excited to see Chihkan towers because it was a Dutch fort built in the early 1600's to protect the Netherlands' colonial interests. When Koxinga came to the island and forced the Dutch to surrender, he tore part of the fort down and put up a temple called Hong Mao temple (which translates to the Temple of the Red-haired Barbarians, or something like that). Yes it was funny that I was present at the fort and the Taiwanese visiting it were also intrigued with my presence. At this point we were very hungry so we tried to get some food from the concession stand at the tower. One lone girl was staffing the stand and there were a lot of hungry Taiwanese demanding food from her. I ordered pizza and Carolyn got some waffles. We waited and waited for food, and Carolyn's waffles finally arrived. My pizza however did not come after maybe 20 minutes or so and finally the girl came over and said something like "No time, I give you money. No pizza." She handed me the money I had paid for the pizza and walked away. Apparently she was busy and had refused to serve me food! It happened so quickly I had no idea what was going on. I wonder if she would have refused to serve food to a Taiwanese person. Either way she didn't speak English so I couldn't argue with her, and I can't speak Chinese so we just walked around the fort instead and I went hungry.
The fort was very nice as you can see from the photos. The outer walls of the fort remain, as well as the foundations. The Chinese built a temple on the top of the foundations. They also included 8 stone tablets on top of turtles. And they also erected a statue of a Dutchman surrendering to Koxinga and two attendants. Overall this sight was quite nice, besides the very strange and rude concession girl.
From Chihkan Tower we took a taxi to the second Dutch fort in Tainan called Anping Fort, or Fort Zeelandia by the Dutch. This fort is right near the ocean and was meant to protect against invading ships. It was also built by the Dutch, but it was thoroughly destroyed by the Chinese and Japanese. The Japanese built a mansion inside the walls and the Taiwanese added an observation tower. The sight was still nice though and had some historical relics from the Dutch era. Although the sight was mostly rebuilt in the 1960's it still felt like I was in a real fort being used for protection against marauding ships.
By now we were very tired and so we found some food and rested a bit. Afterwards we just did some random exploring around the city and Carolyn got a sweet dessert from a street vendor. It was a fruit/vegetable kabob glazed in sugar. She really enjoyed it, and oddly enough her favorite part was the cherry tomato glazed in sugar.
To conclude we wandered around looking for the bus station again and finally found it after 40 minutes of walking. We were beat and ready to stop walking, so the two hour bus ride back was a nice respite.
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