Saturday we decided to relax from our rockstar lifestyle (not really) and spend the weekend in the apartment. I took the day to finish reading my book and to prepare for a few obligations I'll have when I return to the States in the fall.
The plan for Sunday (today) was to wake up at 5:30am go watch elderly Chinese do Taiji in the park and then travel around Taipei and see as many sights as possible....no way. 5:30 rolls around and I am not, in the slightest way, keen to wake up and walk around the city. We sleep in and leave the house around noon and our first stop is Longshan Temple, but not before we get some food. Johnny and I stop by the food court of the Longshan Temple Station where we run into 李幕儒 Li Mu Ru, a retired Taiwanese man of about 65 years of age who served in the military in West German as well as San Francisco before returning to Taiwan. From the looks of him you wouldn't be able to tell he was a hardened soldier. His glasses, scrawny and short stature, and friendliness were devoid of any type of military training.
It seems he had an obsession with anything Western. When we arrived at Longshan Temple he saw more Westerners and immediately asked where they came from and when they response included Germany he was more than ecstatic to spark up a conversation.
As Johnny and I walked through the food court we pass by 李先生 Mr. Li who quickly asked us where we came from. After a short introduction he invited us to sit down and we immediately began talking about the usual stuff, why we were here, how old we were, and what our reason for the visit today was. He pointed to his plum tea and told us he would buy us a couple and so he walks to the adjacent fruit stall and buys us a couple drinks. This is that Chinese phenomenon about face. Along with the overall generosity and hospitality of Chinese people they are always concerned with face, combining hospitality, generosity, and how they are viewed by other people. Now that is definitely an oversimplification of face, but it will do for now. I knew I should have argued the bill, but I figured it was pointless and with only 600NT to my name left for the week I figured why not? When we went and got food he graciously paid for our 130NT meals as well. This kind of thing would only fly in an Asian country. An elderly man pays for your drinks and lunch and tours you around a few sights without a hidden agenda. I love Asian hospitality. Apparently his parents worked for the Secret Police for Chiang Kai Shek and he lived in quite a few countries before coming back and retiring in Taiwan. After we spoke with him for quite some time he toured us around Longshan Temple.
"Inside here you a Chinese people, not American and English," he told us. A Buddhist gave us the prayer candles and we proceeded into the temple praying before each incense burner for the various people in our lives and the desires we hoped to achieve. Apparently it is the oldest temple still standing (with quite a few renovations) in Taiwan. After we left the temple 李先生 took us to a bird shop where about twelve various types of parrots were kept outside.
Li had brought a bag of almonds and invited us to feed the parrots, who gently took the almonds from our fingers and hungrily nibbled away.
A few of the parrots were even nice enough to let us pet their feathers, others...not so much. When we had enough of seeing parrots and overfeeding them we told Li we planned to go to Chiang Kai Shek memorial, which if his mother was around I'm sure she would have wholeheartedly approved. Li kindly showed us off to the MRT subway station. He told us he was moving to China at the end of this month and he wished us the best of luck with out studies and travels and with a 我很高興認識你 It's been a pleasure meeting you, we were off.
We arrived at the immense memorial and walked around for a few minutes. The longest part of the Chiang Kai Shek memorial was the time it took to walk through the 自由廣場 Freedom Square.
From there we proceeded to the 二二八和平公園 228 Peace Park, dedicated to Feb. 28th, 1947 during the massacre of hundreds of Kuomintang supporters by the Communist party.
The geometric monument inside the park was like something out of a Sci Fi movie. Three boxes, points facing down, connected to a spire that thrusted up into the sky surrounded by water and a bridge leading into the middle of the three boxes. At the end of the bridge was a circular structure with four imprinted hand prints equidistant from each other as water poured into the middle that contained a pillar with straight and jagged line designs. Too bad we didn't have two more people with us our we may have been transported to a galaxy far, far away....
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