Haňule z Kyjova

My next stop was Tainan, which is the oldest city in Taiwan with more than 200 years history. Tainan was initially established by Dutch, who were the first Europeans to settle in this area. There are still some dutch buildings in the town. You can visit Anping fort, which lies in the west coastal area. To these days only some walls remain and there is a small tower from which you can have a nice view (entrance fee about 50 NTD).

After visiting Anping I headed back to the city centre. Famous place is Confucius temple, built in 17th century. One thing that surprised me is that in Tainan many sights are not for free (like Anping fortress, or Fort Provincia), and also the entrance to the temples are payed. But then you go visit National Museum of Taiwan history and the entrance is free…

The National Museum is a nice place, very calm and there are some exhibitions about history, literature. In the time I visited there was also exhibition about William Shakespeare.

Tainan is famous for various snacks and many typical taiwanese dishes originated here. Unfortunately I cannot read and I am not familiar with the area so I just tasted some dried mangos and had wonderful glutinous rice dumpling (zhong zi, the kind steamed in bamboo leaves). Next time I really have to go there with someone native and taste everything.

I stayed at a friends house but she could not take me around as she was working on the weekend. However she took me on saturday night to a great event. It was a buddhist temple celebration. This kind of celebration is just one in 20 years. The main part of the celebrations begins at midnight but before that there are a lot of fireworks and people watch different shows, dancing, singing, taiwanese operas and puppet shows. On a field outside the town they prepared a huge place for people to gather and see all these shows. There were also long tables with donations to the gods. Food, drinks, meat, sweets, and different decorations put on the table. Moving dragons, statues from ice, dancing nearly naked girls… Every one wants to show off their wealth and how good buddhists they are.

At midnight we went back to the main temple. There were many processions coming to greet the God and pay him their respect. There is a kind of ritual dance that men performed in front of the god. After that the God himself walked outside of the temple to greet his guests. I cannot describe the feeling. There were so many people, so many small gods carried in their litters. Some people high on betel nuts or alcohol or whatever. Some really in a little religious trans. We got into the crowd and it took us one hour to get out of there as the people were just pressed together.

I am really grateful that I could experience this kind of celebrations. It was really special. We got back home at 3 am, but the people would continue till the morning and all next day. So if you go to Taiwan I recommend to check if there is by chance some similar celebration.