Day 29 - Sightseeing Around The City Of Tainan, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
Day 29 - Sightseeing Around The City Of Tainan, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
Tainan is an interesting city, combining modern and old architecture, charming old streets where vendors sell traditional snacks and cool cafes and five star hotels.
It is both a characterful and a laidback place, awash in tradition.
Between the mid-17th century and the late 19th century, Tainan was Taiwan’s political capital, commercial centre, and the first large settlement in Taiwan.
The city has many Buddhist and Taoist places of worship, so many that locals like to say, “Tainan has a small shrine every three steps, and a major temple every five steps”.
A few thousand Han Chinese were living alongside the region’s indigenous Austronesians when the Dutch East India Company established a trading colony here in 1624.
Over the next 38 years, the Dutch Company oversaw tremendous increases in rice and sugar production, both of which they exported to Japan and to Mainland China.
To achieve this, the Dutch introduced the use of water buffalo, shipped in farm tools, and encouraged landless peasants in China’s Fujian province to migrate across the Taiwan Strait.
The Dutch were evicted in 1662 by Koxinga, a supporter of the old Ming Dynasty who’d retreated to Taiwan after the collapse of his campaign against the new Qing Dynasty in China.
Modern Tainan is a place for people like us, who enjoy slow travel and immersion in the local culture.
There are hundreds of lanes and narrow alleyways where the past seems to live and breathe.
We walked slowly through the streets and entered many small temples.
We arrived at the old Dutch Colony neighborhood known as Anping.
Anping was originally an island off the western coast, but over time it was incorporated into the city.
There are now some ruins of the original fort being excavated, a museum that explains how the area functioned and became prosperous, and artifacts from the period, including some pretty ceramic shards.
There were quite a few tourists around, and many school kids walking around the central market street, and touring the fort and the museum.
The remnants of Fort Zealandia, the older of Tainan’s two Dutch fortresses, stand in the heart of old Anping.
The adjacent streets and alleys were also interesting to walk through.
We walked through old streets lined with vendors selling foods and drinks.
We tried a snack we had never had before.
It was a cup of fruit jellies topped with a fresh lemony orange juice
It was a refreshing snack-drink.
Some of the old buildings used to be hostels for workers, and each group of workers had their own temples and shrines, reminding them of their hometowns.
There are sword-lions on the entrance of buildings and courtyards.
These fearsome motifs were placed above doorways, in order to keep evil at bay.
There are rough-hewn rectangles of stone used as benches.
These stones reached Taiwan aboard the trading boats.
The boats arrived empty and the stones were used to balance the weight of the boats during their journey to Taiwan.
The trading boats used to leave the stones behind, and returned to their home ports laden with rice, sugar or other commodities.
Huge banyan trees grow in the streets of Anping, providing needed shade from the sun.
After walking around Anping, we returned to our hotel and collected our backpacks.
We will be staying at another hotel in Tainan, while we meet with our friend Wendy, who came to walk with us for a few days.
The new hotel is more centrally located and after checking in, we showered and went to do our laundry.
In a surreal addition to the scene today, there were Chinese fighter jets buzzing above us all day long.
China is making threats to forcefully annex Taiwan, and it sent 125 Chinese military aircraft and 34 ships to encircle the island of Taiwan.
We felt uncomfortable hearing the fighter jets swooshing through the sky all day, and felt sad for the people who are living here, who have to live with this threat of losing their freedom and democracy.
Today we washed our backpacks in the laundromat, because we have been carrying them on our backs and sweating all day, so it was time to wash them and refresh them.
After the laundry was done, we went back to eat dinner in the same vegetarian restaurant we ate in last night.
We really love their food.
Before bedtime, I thought about this pilgrimage.
I noticed that the thing we complained most about was the heat.
My friend Wendy told me not to come at this season.
She said it is still too hot in Taiwan to walk long distances every day.
Now I wished that we had taken her advice.
But we have managed to do it anyway.
We have walked every day in the heat, and neither of us fainted or was in any kind of danger.
We have learned to walk in the intense heat, which is something we have never done before.
We saw temple festivals and visited many beautiful temples.
We realized how much religion is part of life here.
It is interwoven into the daily practices and lives of the farmers, the workers hoping to succeed, sick people seeking healing, young people wishing to fall in love and get married, and students who come to pray for good grades.
There is nothing superstitious about worshiping the gods.
Galileo Galilei, who lived during the 1500’s said that science and religion are not contradictory, but actually quite complimentary.
Religion teaches us how to get to Heaven, while science is teaching us how the Heavens work…
With love,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
Steps - 20,652
Daily Distance - 14 km.
Total Distance To Date - 455 km
