Formosa - Beautiful Island

One of the main reasons I went to Taiwan (the week before school) was to see Milly, a pen-pal I first got connected to in my high school freshman Chinese class.  We've Skyped, sent emails, we chats, letters, and a couple packages over the past 6 years, but this was the first time meeting in person.  She was such a gracious host and had created an itinerary for us to see all her favorite sites in Taiwan.  It was really fun spending time with her and having her help me understand the culture better.

The National Palace Museum; fascinating because of the political importance of the imperial art collection originally taken to Taiwan when Chiang Kai-shek fled the Communists.  Beijing still believes it's rightfully theirs.  The owner has more of a claim as being the real China with this heritage from the imperial times.

My favorite day in Taiwan was when one of Milly's friends, Tracy, took me to 佛光山, which is a Buddhist mountain sanctuary in Kaohsiung (高雄).  The centerpiece was an enormous bronze Buddha and a tooth from the original enlightened Buddha.  It was incredibly peaceful, and there were tons of monks willing to show me around.  I learned a lot more about Buddhist theology and history.

"Think good thoughts, say good words, do good deeds"

Protests concerning cross-strait relations

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial in a huge plaza with other beautiful buildings

I climbed Elephant Mountain by myself and without a phone so here's a photo from the Internet;
the view was indeed very legit

Longshan Temple

Something totally unexpected about Taiwan is how religious it is (since I was used China).  It's religious in a very different sense than the West is though--with the exception of the evangelical churches set up by American missionaries.  As one of my friends told me, there are no official followers of the religions; everyone is welcome to come to any of the temples to pray.  The temples are a conglomeration of different spiritual traditions in Chinese history, from Buddhism and Daosim to Confucianism and ancestor worship.  Even at the Buddhist mountain sanctuary in Kaohsiung, besides the big Buddha there were also statues of Confucius, the Chinese goddess of kindness, and the god of war.  I loved having various Taiwanese friends show me around their temples and how to pray.  We would always start by picking up a package of incense, paper money, and snacks from beside the entrance.  We would leave the paper money and snacks on the altar to be blessed, and then we would walk around the whole temple with the incense praying to each of the various gods.  As the auntie of the house where I was staying told her nephew, "Tell the gods your name, where you go to school, your address, what's coming up in your life, and thank you for blessing you this past year."  They took me to the roof with another shrine which I would've never know existed otherwise.  In the temples, there's various different ways provided to communicate with the gods, like tossing tokens to see how they land or picking numbered sticks.  When we passed the shrine to Confucius, the mom turned to me and said, "Since you have the MCATs soon, you might want to have a little chat with him now."  Later we burned the paper money in a kiln outside.  Then we got to eat the food!!!! This was so unexpected.  In the house where I was staying there was fruit and cookies laid out on the little shrine in the corner of the family room, and when they told me I could take any of it to eat whenever, I was like like no way I'm stealing from the gods' offering, but they said the gods had just blessed it for us to eat.  I left the temple with my fingers dyed deep pink and my hair smelling of incense.

View directly across the street