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.
The first temple that we visited today. The night market is surrounding the temple, so we went back to it again at the end of the day.
These paintings on the temple walls were amazing.
I really love the roofs of these temples.
It is hard to see, but the mountain side has huge letters spelling out Keelung on it, kind of like the Hollywood sign.
Eating some yummy nectarines at the start of the day.
Some of the giant statues at the Buddhist temple.
The stairs!
At the pagodas.
A small section of the city right up next to the harbor.
Trying to wait out the rain.
At the zhongzheng park.
Inside the large statue.
Inside the museum.
At the night market.
