The flying time was about 4 hours.
Most commonly known with the name Taiwan, the country is officially called The Republic of China.
Taiwan was inhabited by Dutch and Spanish settlements in the 17th century. It was also during this time the Han Chinese started to move to the island. The Chinese took over the island and later there was a period of Japanese rule as well as a civil war on the island and on the mainland of China. When the nationalists of China lost the war against Mao Zedong's communists they were banished to the island of Taiwan in the year 1949.
Since that the Republic of China has been independent but it's independence is not widely recognized. Just 23 countries have diplomatic relationship with Taiwan to this day, Vatican being the only European country with diplomatic relationship with Taiwan. And that's not even a real country!
Taiwan is not really part of international organizations like UN. Altough it has been trying to get in to UN since they had to give the seat to People's Republic of China (China) in 1972.
Taipei City is the capital of Taiwan with a population of about 9 million people. Taipei City is the political, economic and cultural center of Taiwan and offers links to the rest of the world via international airports and to Taiwan with railways, high speed railways, highways and bus lines.
We arrived Taiwan into Taipei City and we departed Taiwan 10 days later from Taipei City.
The first few days we stayed in a hotel in the Manka or WanHua district which is the oldest district of Taipei. The district used to be a trading center and we wanted to live here in this part of town because this is the place to be when you want to see bustling down town life and old Chinese temples.
We saw many beautiful Chinese temples, while being in Taiwan.
When we arrived to Taipei and found our hotel. This was the view. Basically on the rooftop of the oldest temple in Taiwan. :)
The temple we could see was Lungshan Temple, which is a Buddhist temple founded in 1738 and dedicated to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy.
We visited the temple more than once. But the temple was always full of people. From early morning to late evening. Local Chinese people who are worshiping their religion and an endless stream of tourists.
Today many deities of Taoism are included in the temple and we were both stunned over the tolerant mentality of the Chinese people in their religious life.
The temple is a masterpiece of traditional Chinese architecture, a center of peoples religious life and a heritage of local culture. The government therefore recognized the value of the place, and it will be preserved for future generations as a second degree historical site.
This is a picture of the streets on a very early Sunday morning.
The whole neighborhood is like a big maze of traditional streets with traditional shops, street markets, Chinese medicine shops and shops selling religious and antic artifacts.
In the evening many men gathered and played a board game, that from a look on all the very interested men must have been quite important to them. :)
In Taiwan we visited some nightmarkets.
Here you could buy everything. Good cheap food to electrical items and
even dildos
or a little turtle.
In Taipei we went to see the Boa Ann Temple which construction began in year 1755 and completed in 1760, 25 years after the starting date.
The meaning of "Boa Ann" is "protecting of Tong an folks"
We went to see it because it together with the Lungshan temple is one of the major temples in Taipei.
The presiding deity of Boa An Temple is Baosheng Dadi or "the emperor", who was used to be a well known doctor. People, especially those who are infected with chronic diseases come to worship his power of healing and draw lots of medicine to pray for recovery.
Here is another old temple.
The pagoda you see on the top of all the temples always has 7 levels. It brings luck, protection and advancement of career.
The cool thing about many of the temples in the old part of Taipei is, that they are situated in the middle of the other houses and often you do not see them until you stand in front of them.
Another example of the temple built among the other buildings.
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