The Swift Family Blog : June 22

We were all really excited for our first day in Jilong. Out our window we can see some huge statues up on one of the hillsides, and our plan was to go check them out. First though we made our way around a few morning markets with lots of fruit, vegetables, and fish. We had a fun time looking at the different foods that they were selling, and all of the vendors had a fun time looking at us as we walked through.

We also stopped by a pretty cool temple that is right in the center of the Jilong night market. This temple had some pretty cool paintings on the walls and we took turns making up stories about each one. The friendly people there gave us some savory crackers to munch on as we walked around.

Next was a Buddhist temple. This one had several huge statues of Buddha and other gods in it. It seemed like this one was perhaps the headquarters for a certain sect of Buddhism and there were several workers who wanted to help us while we were there. They ended up giving us a large box of these small crackers with different flavors of frosting on the inside and two packages of plum vinegar drink. The crackers were a huge hit, but the plum drink was pretty awful. I found that it was mainly the aftertaste, so I chugged it all down as quick as possible and then had one bad taste in my mouth at the end rather than a bad taste after every sip. We ended up giving the second package to a homeless guy on the street.

After the Buddhist temple we started our trek to Zhongzheng Park. I remembered this park from when my parents came. What I remembered were the huge statues, visiting it at night, and lots of stairs. Well the stairs were just as huge this time visiting. We did have to carry our stroller with us going up them though. The first things we saw were three huge pagadoas called Zhupu altar. I am not sure if these pagodas have any religious purpose or if they are more of a cultural thing. In the middle one at the bottom they had a museum that talked all about the ghost festival, which is the major celebration in Jilong. We learned that the Jilong ghost festival is the largest in Taiwan and the festival started as a way to bring the people from the city together. In the 1600s when people started coming to Jilong from China, there were fractions in the people based on what city they were immigrating from. There ended up being a larger violent clash between them with many deaths. So the city officials decided that to fix this all of the people who died in the clash would be buried together instead of with their own separate clans. Also, the people would be grouped by surnames for different governmental activities rather than by the location where they came from. The surname groups would then compete with each other through different folklore performances during the ghost festival. That way individuals from the different clans would now be working together in order to win these friendly competitions.

Right as we finished exploring the pagodas it started to rain. It was just a sprinkle at first, but then it started to downpour. We found a small Chinese gazebo to rest under to see if we could wait it out. It kept going for a while though, so we made our way to the rest of the statues in the park. One of the biggest was a goddess that we could go inside. We walked up five flights of stairs in her and there were small windows we could look out at each level. When we got back outside we saw that the windows only went about 2/3 of the way up, which means the statue was about 8 stories tall. It had a couple giant lion statues standing guard by it. We didn’t stay too long though because the rain was coming down pretty heavily.

So, we made our way in the rain to a museum that had focused on the history of Jilong. It was a pretty small museum with very little English. So although it was nice to get out of the rain, there wasn’t much in it to occupy us for long.

The rest of the day we spent walking through the shopping area of town a bit and then drying out at our apartment. After about an hour at our apartment the rain had stopped, and so we went out to the Jilong night market. The Jilong night market is supposed to be one of the best in Taiwan, with a focus on fresh fish. It was fun to walk around and it had many interesting vendors. We did see some live giant frogs in one dish. They were so huge and there were 10 or so packed into one small tank, so we thought that they were fake. But after staring at them more we saw that they were real. I want to try frog again on this trip, so I asked for a menu, but the frog dish seemed pretty expensive. Maybe another day at another shop though. Rebecca ended up getting a crab soup and I got more tian bu la and shaved ice. The kids ate some of our dishes as well as some onion pancakes and then potstickers back at the apartment.

This morning market was held under the freeway. This market has a lot of fruits and vegetable stands, but also a ton of fresh fish and meat.