Lukang Cultural Site

Daoist Temple Interior
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We are going to be spending the early part of the week taking day trips from Chang Hua with my brother Nathan.  We started with what Nathan and Evan called a "mom" day--that means visiting cultural sites.  Our first stop was a visit to Lukang, a restored village about an hour away.   The former 16th century village is now a city, with an area of restored ancient-looking buildings in an historic district.  It was very interesting to see how they had renovated the older buildings, keeping a traditional appearance, similar to what we might do in an historic district.  Except that the "older" buildings here are from the 16th century.

Daoist Temple
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We continue to be very dependant on my brother Nathan.  Anything printed--signs, store signs, products are all in Chinese (except for signs on the freeway), so it is hard to get oriented.  So although Lukang is a tourist area, it is for Taiwanese tourists and not much was in English so I couldn't read any of the interpretive signs. Nathan asked around and found a shop owner who had an English map of Lukang stuck behind their counter so that I could read about what we were seeing.  So that was interesting, but more fun was having six year old Gwen with us to translate.  In addition to being very smart and cute, she is also assertive and a well-received translator.  She will patiently translate "how much" and "what is this" for me.  Learning even the basics of Mandarin has been much harder than I thought it would be.  Evan and I can barely say thank you and hello, but we do try.

The former 16th century village is now a city, with an area of restored ancient-looking buildings in an historic district.

Interior of Daoist Temple
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At Lukang, we stopped at the "half sided well" in the historic district.  A kind Taiwanese woman described for me in English that this was a well in a private home in which the owners left a public half of the well for visitors--and it remains a representative of, as she said, the kindness of the people of Lukang.

We also went to Taichung, a major city about the size of Seattle.  There we visited the National  Museum of Natural Science and had fun looking at the exhibits, but most were in Mandarin and Nathan's language skills just couldn't bridge the gap.  We stumbled upon headsets for one exhibit on ancient Chinese history and so we could hear recordings in English of the exhibits.  It was really insightful to hear about the roots of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.  I also learned a new architectural term, "bracket cluster" which describes the section of support for the roof of a temple.

Nathan & Evan Watching the World Population Numbers Change at a Museum Exhibit
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Enough culture!  We ended the day at the incredibly crowded night market near the university, where we saw thousands of tiny shops and market stands, sampled duck and stinky tofu, and Evan bought some tshirts that said nonsensical English stuff like "Friends or Monster."  It is ironic that we're looking for tshirts with Chinese characters and we don't care what they actually say...but all we can find are tshirts with English words and obviously the Taiwanese don't care what they actually say, they just want the English words!

Outside the Science Museum in Taichung
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Meanwhile, my sister in law Jessie has been at home teaching her classes and helping eight year old Joey with hours of homework.  Both girls are very studious and very concerned about their grades, which seems to be the national pasttime and makes our students look somewhat lazy.  Joey has 2nd grade finals this week in Chinese, Math and English, so she has spent a lot of time doing homework.  We're looking forward to the end of the week when she will be finished with her finals and we'll go with her to her 2nd grade graduation where we'll  see their class sing songs in English, Taiwanese and Chinese.