Tainan : Parks, temples and street dancing

Spent yesterday wondering around city center Tainan to get a feeling of Tainan’s history with some of the ancient 16-18th century temples and architecture.

5 minutes from NCKU, just across the railway, I came across the lovely Tainan park, with a lot of elderly folks playing Chinese chess, people doing some relaxed fishing and kids jumping around the playground to the awful sounds of Taiwanese soft-techno.

I was planning to follow the Taiwan Lonely Planet temple suggestion but I soon found that the temples are everywhere, and that sometimes those that are not in the book are as lovely and special as those mentioned, especially when it comes to local ceremonies.

After my first temple, I stopped for a moment to look at the map and a group of 4 highschool kids approached me, looking all shy and embarrassed, and asked me to fill out what seemed like a tourism high-school English class questionnaire with questions like “Do you like Tainan?”, “Would you come back to Tainan?” and “What do you like best about Tainan?”. After filling it up and giving them the photo they needed as evidence that they really talked to a foreigner I asked them to kindly point me to my next destination, but they insisted on taking me there personally.

Arriving at the Chikan towers, a few other groups - from the same highschool, I imagine - asked me to do the same thing, and after they realized I already filled this before they just insisted on the photo (I think they were discussing filling it up themselves).

Across the street were the two lovely Matsu and Official God of War temples, which hosted some really cool puppet shows with scenes of Gods doing Kung-Fu fights (right?! :$) :

From there on the Tainan tourism office had a very nice suggested temples walking tour that took me all around the small alleys and into gorgeous historic temples and sites.

Wrapping the day up in the FE21 I came across something neat I haven’t seen before - people, university students as well as adults, dancing together in sync to the sound of high-speed techno-dance music. I asked one of the dancing leaders what this was about and he told me it was a movement originally started in Japan and imported to Taiwan, where everybody’s invited to come join their simple moves and show love for all. If you want to join, they’ll be waiting for you every Saturday at 19:00 just outside the FE21 on Matsu rd. Here’s a short sample, and trust me when I say it goes on and on and on :