I couldn't let Lukang beat me, so I booked another night at the Changhua hotel to give me the next full day to explore Lukang. This time I stayed on the bus until we had crossed town and the small lanes became open roads. It finally stopped at the Lukang Main Bus Terminal.
Yes, the building (I use the term loosely) that looks like an abandoned garage is the main bus terminal. Even if I had come across it the night before, I probably would have walked right by.Living Treasures
Several shop owners have received "Living Heritage" awards for their skill and dedication in preserving old crafts. There are 36 such people in all of Taiwan, and 6 of them were in the small town of Lukang so I searched for their shops. Obviously receiving a "Living Heritage" award doesn't make you rich and famous.
The shop in the photo sells handmade fans, and only encompasses the area of wall between the taxi and the orange crates. They were beautiful, but not as spectacular as I'd been expecting. I also visited the craftsman who made paper lanterns and the one who specialized in tin. Again, not as exciting as I was hoping, probably because I'd already seen the fascinating works of art at the Palace Museum in Taipei a few days before.Food?
People were lining up at road stalls like this one. The shrimp were alive and crawling over each other. The smell of these kinds of food areas reminded me of rancid gutters and I tried to walk past quickly.
If you can believe it, cars were squeezing through these same roads, too.
I don't know what this green fruit is but I was hungry and everything else looked gross. The lady didn't look like the cleanest person in the world, and I worried about ingesting some kind of intestinal parasite or coming down with a severe case of diarrhea, but it turned out just fine. She sprinkled brown salt on it which tasted good on the mildly sweet fruit. The skin was wrinkly and the white part was the texture of something between an apple and a pear.
If you can bring your eyes to focus on the dangling things on the right, you're staring at a bunch of pig faces hanging from a hook. Just walking through this area made my stomach turn.
The holiday called "Tomb Sweep"
It was an interesting cultural experience being in Taiwan on April 4th/5th. People buy stacks of yellow paper called "ghost money" and burn them, because you not only need money in this life, but in the afterlife as well. People were carrying home crates full of these large yellow bundles of paper to burn for their ancestors.
You can buy them from ladies like this, or from shops with stacks of them wrapped in bales that were piled to the ceiling. A bale of "ghost money" apparently costs 500 Taiwanese dollars, or roughly $17 American (1700yen). Kind of expensive paper to burn if you ask me.
Most people burned them in metal drums like this. Every home had a fire going in front of their house, and when the smoke died down they piled on more paper. At first I enjoyed the cultural smell, then after a few hours of being bathed in smoke wherever I went my lungs were in need of fresh air.
Temples also had special structures to burn "ghost money" in, for people who didn't want to burn them in front of their homes all day. I wonder if this tradition is why all the buildings in the town were covered in black soot.
Matsu Temple
Temples for this god were in every city I went to (there are supposedly more than 500 temples dedicated to her on the island). She was a real person named Lin Mo that guided ships to shore in the 10th century, and after she ascended to heaven she continued to appear to sailors to guide them to safety. You're supposed to pray for her when you travel.
This particular one is known for having a Matsu statue whose face has turned completely black from the incense smoke that worshippers carry. I watched carefully what people were doing. You hold three long sticks of incense and shake them toward the statue, as well as behind you, then move to each part of the temple and do the same thing. It was pretty dangerous with everyone carrying long sticks of lighted incense, but I escaped safely without burning an eye out.
Again, impressed by stone carvings. It must be pretty tough making these 3-dimensional figures without accidentally lopping a head or arm off and having to start all over again.
The back halls were full of these kinds of pillars. From far away they looked like some kind of golden decoration, but...
A close-up reveals that each one is a golden image with someone's name on it, probably someone whose family paid the temple to care for their soul.
There were also halls packed from floor to ceiling with these container-like ones, probably for people who passed on recently?
I turned around and was startled by two demons. Was it sacrilegious to be taking photos around there? Just to be safe I waited until there was no one around to snap photos of stuff, probably making me look even more sketchy for standing around not doing anything in there.
Red brick homes
This town had a large number of brick homes, the entrances of which opened into small alleys like this one.
Most of them had simple doors to prevent people from looking inside, but I looked in any that were open to see how homes were laid out. There was usually a large living room as soon as you enter the home, and an altar for their ancestors taking up almost the whole wall.
I like the look of brick. Even if the house was crumbling and in a filthy neighborhood, there was a traditional feel that made it not so bad.
Lots of homes didn't have a doorway leading to the road, but into a small alley that only pedestrians could use.
Longshan Temple
I found myself at the same temple that I wasted valuable time at the day before.
It had a totally different feel to it in the daytime with children playing in the courtyard and running along the hallways of the temple. This kid had one of those big double-side tops that they swing around in Chinese acrobatic shows. He wasn't so good and kept flinging it across the courtyard.
A tired old man even took some time to rest his feet from all the walking.
Folk Arts Museum
It took over an hour of retracing my steps through twisted alleys and going around in circles to find this darn place. The signs were terrible, and often pointed into the wrong direction. One sign actually pointed into the small space between two buildings that was full of weeds. And it wasn't just me that was lost. I kept bumping into the same Taiwanese people wandering the alleys; we were all looking for the same place. I finally spotted the large building over a wall, and circled around to find the entrance.
It used to be the home of one of the 4 richest men in Taiwan, and is now full of old musical instruments, clothes, cooking utensils (I had no interest in any of those things) and several rooms set up with furniture so you could imagine how people lived back then (much more interesting).The Symbol of Lukang
I got lost (yet again) and followed a really wide road thinking it would lead me somewhere (it didn't and I had to retrace my steps back to the cramped part of town). Lukang used to be a port full of deer, and along the big road I found a park. I found myself face-to-face with this butt-ugly creature. It was right there to greet everyone at the front entrance (or scare them away).
This time, I made it back to the bus station on my own without having kind ladies drive me there on their motorbikes. And before dark, too.
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