Some photos from Lion's Head Mountain

A few weeks ago we did the fairly quick and easy hike up Lion's head Mountain, which straddles Hsinchu and Miaoli counties.  

We got there by HSR, taking the bus (1 hour) from the HSR station that leaves, if not frequently, at least not that rarely - about twice an hour on weekends. Why HSR? Because we're lazy and didn't want to get up early, and I'm used to doing it for work. I sort of forget that when I'm traveling for fun that I won't get reimbursed the NT580 that the trip costs.

I wouldn't call it the best hike I've done in Taiwan, but it was certainly good, and certainly had a great temple at the end (some photos above).  You can start out from either side: Hsinchu or Miaoli. On the Hsinchu side the hike up is longer but is all road, few if any stairs. The Miaoli side hike is steeper, shorter, and all stairs. I prefer road to stairs and don't mind a longer hike if it means avoiding stairs, so I'm happy we went up from Hsinchu (a bus runs between the two).

On the either end you can pick up snacks, eat something and buy bottled drinks - on the Hsinchu side I recommend the street stall with the turnip cake (蘿蔔糕), the best I've had in Taiwan, very fresh. Locals kept coming by to buy huge chunks of it.

The trail is dotted with temples - none are spectacular in their own right except the last one as you descend, but all make nice rest stops and taken together they're lovely dots to connect on a not-too-difficult hiking day trip. Having been extremely busy lately, and generally in a bad mood (punctuated by good moods: it's not all gloom and doom), the adjective "easy" was important to me when choosing a hike that would get me out of Taipei.

Unfortunately, we left sunny Taipei thinking Hsinchu would be equally nice - it wasn't. Pure fog. No view whatsoever until we hit Miaoli.

Many of the temples along the way were actually monasteries - we encountered one full of monks and another full of nuns. At both, we were given tea and snacks and we sat down to chat with the monks, nuns and other visitors. I would call it the highlight of the trip.

At the first we got Pu'erh tea, and the second featured osmanthus tea.  The scent of osmanthus (a delicious flower, not the one below) wafts across Lion's Head Mountain at this time of year: the area is a major producer of the flower which is used in sauces, teas and desserts.  The shops aimed at sightseers all sell Oriental Beauty (東方美人) but if you really want something from this area, try and track down something made with osmanthus (good luck with that, though - what we encountered was fresh and served to us, not preserved and sold).

not osmanthus, just a nice photo

Recent rains, however, left the landscape lush, and turned spiderwebs into crystalline sculptures.

This cave temple in Japanese colonial baroque style was my favorite facade (I just love the style - the turn of the century through the 30s and 40s was a fine time for architecture in Taiwan), although inside wasn't that spectacular. 

Most of the painted murals on the inside did not photograph well in low light.

Brendan and Joseph on the Miaoli/Hsinchu county border.

Later on the view improved only slightly, but the temple at the end makes the whole hike worth it (as mentioned above, you can start from here, but I was happier to start from the other side and end up here). Watch out - the stone steps beyond this temple get mighty slippery.

Besides the extremely ornate multiple roofs, I liked that the roof decorations - the usual dragons, phoenixes, people, pagodas, tigers etc. - were of varying ages. Some were new, some were clearly very old. The temple seems to be undergoing piecemeal long-term renovation and upkeep, but still retains its older unique character.

This is one of the older parts, which I happen to like quite a bit.

If you leave early enough, which we did not, you can  even have lunch or dinner and take a walk around Beipu: the bus passes through in both directions whether you're going to Hsinchu or back to Zhubei, as we were.

Great hike if you want out of Taipei but don't want to go full-on up a mountain!

Day Trip To Xizhi II

End of a rally for Tsai Ying-wen ("English Tsai"!) in Xizhi on Sunday

Building on this post about "climbing" Da Jian Mountain in Xizhi (汐止), this is about our return to Xizhi this past Sunday.

I know, Xizhi. I told my students that I went there on Sunday and they returned with..."Why?"

"I don't know," I replied honestly, with a smile.

There are things, however, to do in Xizhi. I know. I know. But there are. When we arrived, we grabbed a taxi to a waterfall right by the road up Dajian Mountain. We'd been to the other well-known falls down a path near the temple up there (the one with gorgeous rocks with water flowing over them like a sculpture in a fancy office building) - but this one was to the left of the main road, down another road that no bus goes down, and is quite literally right by the road, up a few easy stairs.

One of the waterfalls on the slopes of Da Jian Mountain in Xizhi

We took a taxi because I have a problem with my right foot (inflamed tendon) and can't walk for long distance, and it is about a 1km walk down the road off the main road, which is fronted by a gate with a pubescent security guard. I forget the name of the waterfall but will try to find out and come back and post it, or the friend who came with us could comment here!

The falls are quite pretty and worth a quick visit - one pool looks swimmable though we didn't try, and there are several tables for lovely picnics, and it's easy to get to. There are several layers of falls, meaning there's a lot to see, and there is theoretically a path up to the very top but thanks to the recent rains it was all mud and unwalkable (I didn't even try with my foot in the condition it's in, but our friend and my husband did).

We then took the taxi down to 慈航紀念堂 (not sure about those characters - it's "Ci Hang Ji Nian Tang"), a temple and monastery on the lower slopes of the mountain. We started at a small temple with a huge Buddha and a very peaceful altar room, which had these little statues outside that I seem to see whenever there is a preserved monk body around.

This complex has the gold-covered body of a preserved monk (金身 - literally "gold body") - the actual corpse of a monk who died in meditation as a result of a fast and who is then worshipped as a deity and idol. This is the second preserved monk we've seen, the first being at Peaceful Country Temple (安國寺 or "An Guo Si") on the slopes of, I think, Datun Mountain near Xinbeitou.

I have no good photos of that because, honestly, it felt weird to take photos of the body itself. I did snap one from a distance but it just didn't feel proper or right so I won't post it.

"Oh, Buddha, teach me more!"

The lower level temple, which is white and looks old from the outside, has an exhibition room on the preserved monk's life and material possessions, including this lovely display of his washing apparatus - I love that they kept his ancient tube of toothpaste. Total class. They had lots of fascinating old pictures from the a Buddhist society that the monk (called "大師" which is not very helpful, it just means "great teacher") was involved in, his old identification papers, and lots of personal items. The big Buddha upstairs is also worth a look.

Then we left that and climbed to the huge formidable monastery above it - easy to find because it's really huge - which had fine views down over Xizhi and even over to Taipei City. That's where the actual monk body is located, in the pagoda at the very top. You have to enter, go up the flight of stairs to a large building at the right, then keep going up until you come to the uppermost structure.

"Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to fast and meditate until death I go!"

Around the pagoda, the monastery landscape architects clearly thought that some pearlized plaster gnomes were just the thing that it needed for a solemn, meditative atmosphere. From the top you can see Taipei...

...as well as a fine view down the monastery rooftops to Xizhi and surrounding hills.

The monastery itself is a new complex, but it's very well done. Someone put a lot of thought into designing something that had a timeless, antique-but-modern look that mimics traditional buildings quite well. From here it could almost pass for a real historic site.

A snail crawled across the grass near the pagoda.

"Look what I plucked!"

"Look what I plucked!"

After coming back down from the preserved monk, we ate a late lunch in the dark little lanes of downtown Xizhi, passing this lovely scene along the way.

Then we checked out "Xizhi Old Street" which honestly, was kind of not worth it. Apparently there used to be some great buildings there, but they've all been recently torn down and now only a few shophouses and one genuine old residence remain. I love the painting of the boy and his tiny pet elephant on the patio side wall of the one old residence:

That street does turn into an interesting looking market which is worth a look-see if it's going on, and if you follow the lanes behind it you'll get to a lovely bike path with a wall on one side, blocking the river view, and skeletons of old brick buildings fronted by in-use urban gardens on the other, growing all sorts of vegetables and herbs. We also found this awesome old shop selling records, cassettes, CDs and vintage phonographs. Dude. So cool. Not sure what the demand for antique phonographs is in Xizhi, but still. Cooooool.

We stopped to rest for awhile, thanks to my foot, by a temple behind the old street somewhere which was a bit boring from the front but very interesting from behind:

While resting there a man with two buckets of brown goo on either end of a shoulder-stick walked by, and from the stench we could tell it was poopy fertilizer for the urban gardens out back along the bike trail.

"I'm comin' ter git you!"

Oh, and we saw another snail.

All in all it was a pleasant afternoon - not something tourists would want to rush out and see but definitely fun for an overcast Sunday, seeing stuff most people wouldn't think to go find. I do recommend a trip just for Dajian Mountain and the preserved monk, however. Totally worth it.

Next (and probably final) Xizhi trip will be Hsinshan (新山 －New Mountain) and Dream Lake, outlined in Taipei Day Trips.

Those pesky gods!

First off, please don't think from these two links in a row that I actually read the China Post regularly. I am and remain a staunch Taipei Timeser (despite their disorganized articles and occasional typo-ridden headlines) - why? I agree with their political bias. Just like with the Washington Post, I know which way they lean and I'm cool with that, because I agree.

As long as one keeps in mind that the bias does exist and is willing to read news from other sources with other biases to get a better sense of the truth, that's fine.

But all that aside, this was interesting:

Lawsuit thrown out - Gods won't show as witnesses

So Chang Li-tang (former mayor of Tainan) had been active in this monastery. That's pretty normal here; I'm fairly sure my own company donates large chunks of its profits to a Buddhist monastery somewhere on the island. He posted some scriptures online and the monastery board decided that this act angered and insulted the gods. They summarily fired him, but Chang filed a suit for wrongful dismissal.

The suit was thrown out. Why? Because the court decided that they needed the gods to testify as to whether they were offended or not.

Since the gods are not likely to show up, they dismissed the case.