Oh, Hualien has many temples, you'll see.
Yeah right. Not even one, if you don't count the Tzu Chi Hall of still thoughts, which is not really a temple.
So now I'm obsessed with them. On our first day in Taipei, we were luckly staying at a couch surfing host Eva knew from before. He is not only an arhitect, but also writes tour guides :D
So yes, I now know many new things about temples.
You are supposed to enter the temple or any tradicional chinese house at the right door from your standing point, there are usually three. The middle door id for important people, the left is called the mouth of the tiger and the right the mouth of the dragon.
So basically, you enter at the mouth of the dragon. People usually come to pray and they have to pray to all the gods at the temple. They light insence sticks. Due to the enviromental concern in Taiwan, they try only to take one stick for each god and they don't burn fake money in incenerators any more, at tleast not in Taipei. Than they pray by bowing. I like that thay can tell the gods whatever they want in their own words.
Flowers as a gift to the gods.
The tables with food and the pot for the insence sticks.
You have to put them in with your left hand...
The woman facing us is praying to the sky and the others to the god inside.
First they turn away from the gods, towards the enterance and pray to the god in the sky. Then they go around to see all the gods. They usually bring one of the gods some food or flowers. You can easily see which is the god of studies, because he has a lot of food on the table in front of him and many students are praying very intensely :D
The god of love is also very popular - on the picture above, especially among the japonese turists, female of course :)
My favourite temple is Longshan temple, the oldest one in Taipei. It has a very nice atmosphere, so I keep going there just to sit and observe and smel the insence burning :) More on the other famous temples soon :)
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