Wan Hua（萬華）

Wan Hua used to be the most prosperous district of Northern Taiwan, and for that, quite a few historical buildings are still around today. Some of them (especially temples) are rated top historical sites and have been renovated in the past couple of decades. The one in the photo is right next to the fruit market.

Zu Shi Temple (or Ching Shui Temple, 3rd rank),

Ching Shan Temple (3rd rank), and

the most famous Long Shan Temple (2nd rank) were on my dad’s Father-Daughter Temple Tour. Except Ching Shan Temple, both Zu Shi Temple and Long Shan Temple provided the space and tables for people to celebrate Chung Yuan Festival. Long Shan Temple has 3 spacious courtyards, but most festival related activities were in the front 2.

Lots of stores are located around Long Shan Temple. In front of it, 2 roomy Taipei Metro station entrances sandwich a modern park. Around it, one can easily find temple related merchandizes, Chinese medicines, traditional shops, restaurants, and markets (including the well-known & for-tourists -only Snake Alley).

My dad even took me to a little dessert restaurant he grew up with, and sure enough, its tofu dessert tasted traditional, just the way I wanted. What was funny about it was that it was not a shop at all, but an alley. Unless you paid attention to its ceiling and funny steel “columns”, you wouldn’t know it.

Chung Yuan Festival (or Ghost Festival)

Today was also Taiwanese Father’s Day (“8″ is pronounced “Ba” in Mandarin), but it was overshadowed by Chung Yuan Festival, or Chost Festival. My mom prepared some simple banquet for the gate god and ghosts and placed it on the table prepared by the condo association. I was surprised that several packages of instant noodles were part of it; were the god and ghosts able to boil some ghost world water and cook those noodles?

Afterwards, we burned some ghost money and clothes for the god and ghosts, even though the condo association already warned people not to. It provided a truck to carry everyone’s ghost money and clothes to Mu Zha and burn it there. Well, you could only change people’s old habit so much.

P.S. As I was working on this blog, the power went out at 8:34pm and came back at 9:12pm. We heard 3 big explosions and saw the smoke coming out from the manhold. Mom and Dad got bored and went to bed early (they got up and continued watching TV as soon as the power came back); I was able to continue working on my blog due to Panasonic CF-W4’s long battery life (What else could I do?). I wonder if it’s typhoons related, since it had been raining pretty hard tonight. I hope that they won’t affect my flight…