Chung Tai Chan Monastery

Chung Tai Chan Monastery (中台禅寺) is a Buddhist monastery located in the township of Puli in Nantou County. It took 10 years to build and from 2001, when it was first open to the public, it has the tallest Buddhist temple in the world.

On our way to the temple, we could see it from the highway. Allie also informed us that it was designed by the same architect who designed the Taipei 101.

Situated in a mountainous site, the temple grounds were also surrounded by beautiful mountain landscape. Street parking was ample and after Allie parked the car, we walked towards the welcome arch, which to me was quite a grand one.

I noticed a map and it struck me that the place was huge! No wonder Allie said that it would not be possible to cover the whole monastery in a day.

My first impression was: Wow, so grand... so huge... so erm... actually, it looked like a 6-star hotel or a shopping complex more than a temple (no offence meant here).

As we climbed up the stairs to reach the main hall, it felt even less like a temple or a place of worship. This was made worse by the huge numbers of tourists.

The high ceilings, marble and granite finishings, despite showing how generous their followers are, also baffled me slightly. In my own experience and knowledge, Buddhism teaches pragmatism and moderation. Many a times, I hear the phrase "the middle path" whenever attending Buddhist talks. I felt rather overwhelmed here instead of the serene and calm feeling I was expecting.

However, my consolation was visiting the Chung Tai Museum (中台山博物馆), where we were shown around by a very professional and knowledgeable volunteer. I learnt much during this guided audio tour, which included exhibitions and collections of different types of Buddhist statues made of different materials such as bronze, stone and wood, as well as in different forms, such as Buddha, Bodhisattva and Arahat. There were also Buddhist scriptures and calligraphy that were written during different eras differentiated by the different styles and brush strokes. The piece I was most transfixed on was a big piece of calligraphy of the Heart Sutra (心经).

Should you be one who is interested in the different branches (or brands) of Buddhism in Taiwan, this monastery is definitely a place for you to visit. Now, I have covered two of the four (I have been to Fo Guang Shan [佛光山] in Kaohsiung). Another two to go. ;)

Hotel Se7en Taichung Fuxin

We opted to stay in a hotel instead of a B&B for the 2nd night of our holiday. There were too many choices for Taichung on TripAdvisor but in the end, we decided to go with Hotel Se7en Taichung Fuxin.

For travellers without a fixed itinerary like us, one of the biggest advantages of staying at a hotel is that we need not worry about checking-in late. Check-in was breezy and within minutes, we were up on Level 4, where our rooms were located. I was quite amused by the use of creative lighting, like how they shine the number of the rooms onto the carpet space right in front of the room door.

Dad liked how spacious the room and the bathroom were...

I opened every drawer/cupboard I could find and found that they had their own "brand" of Se7en list of things for use, and for sale, too.

After dinner at nearby Fengjia Night Market, we checked out an area called the Giant's Pantry that was accessible to all hotel guests. It was a rooftop pantry with free coffee, tea, soft drinks and ice-cream. There were also a pool table and board games.

Complimentary breakfast was served at their in-house cafe, Buddy Butty. I found their interior intriguing, especially the bed frames hanging upside-down from the ceiling.

Unfortunately, there was only one choice for breakfast. It most likely made things convenient for the kitchen but for us, we would have appreciated perhaps more than one choice to choose from. But at least, our second breakfast in Taiwan was another really healthy one, complete with all colours of traffic light healthy.

A little trivia: This hotel was where some office scenes of the currently airing Taiwanese idol drama Aquarius 爱情有没友 星座爱情水瓶女 were filmed. This idol drama stars Malaysian singer-actor Nicholas Teo 张栋梁, Taiwanese actress-talk show host Kimi 夏于喬, Taiwanese singer-actress Amily 楼心潼 and American-Taiwanese actor-singer Johnny Lu 路斯明.

Taiwan Glass Temple & Glass Gallery

From ancient historical temples, our visit made a turn towards more modern ones. One such modern temple that we visited was the Glass Temple (玻璃庙), which was also a Mazu temple. Situated in an industrial area, we got a little lost as a temple in this area seemed out of place amidst factories and such.

Reported as the only temple to be made of glass in the world, the temple had its roof, walls and altars made from glass. This is different to the glass temple found in the southern state of Johor in Malaysia called the Arulmigu Sri Rajakaliamman Glass Temple, a Hindu temple which, instead of being "made" of glass, is entirely embellished with glass fittings and impressive glasswork.

There were two things that impressed me most - one being the glass panel with a mountain at the main alter (above photo) and the long hand-painted glass wall painting (below). 

There was a small pond in the middle of the temple and a common ritual is to throw coins towards the middle to make a wish. Allie gave me coins to throw and I had to disappoint him, as none of the coins I threw managed to reach the middle!

Remember how I mentioned that the temple was located within the vicinity of an industrial area? Well, the temple was actually built by the Taiwan Mirror Glass Enterprise Limited (台湾玻璃馆). As such, the temple also shared an industrial lot with the Taiwan Glass Gallery.

Free to the general public, the glass gallery was on the first floor of the building and displayed various kinds of glass artworks, household glassware and glass for industrial use. In summary, it displayed the kinds of glass and mirrors that the company manufactures.

So many things were reproduced using glass, paintings and even landscape, like this koi pond and glass bridge Mum and Dad are standing on.

Apparently, from time to time, glass craftsmen conduct performances and workshops in glass painting and glass bead colouring for adults and children alike. Mum spent a long time browsing their shop on the lower level of the building and bought some souvenirs - not too big ones, as we wanted to save space in our luggage and also to prevent anything from breaking.

Travellogue Taiwan: Taichung

Breakfast service was getting worse by the day. Or at least it felt so to me. Or maybe I was just grumpy from the lack of sleep.

On this day, we headed towards Freeway 1, then onwards to Freeway 3 and then Freeway 6, which was officially opened 2 days before. From the bus, I noticed that most of their rivers were stone rivers. I guess it is natural as they have many marble cliffs in the region. Paddy fields lined the freeways as the green boxes stretch from one side to the other of the freeway.

Interspersing the paddy would be other crops such as yam. I rubbed my eyes when I saw a patch of oil palm trees! It was easy to tell that the locals livelihood came from their fields and orchards - there was an abundance of sugarcane, maize, starfruit, dragonfruit, mango and penang, as well as the occasional grape.

Weaving through tall penang trees brought us to Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village.

We arrived just in the nick of time to catch a cultural performance whereby the performers danced, sang and used bamboo as percussion instruments.

Instead of riding the cable car up to the top of the hill, we took the train. We were glad we chose not to walk up as we realised how steep it was while walking down.

In my opinion, I thought they did a pretty good job with educating the public about the traditional lifestyle of the aborigines of Taiwan. They had houses with real people doing real stuff in them, not just fake puppets.

As there was an amusement park situated within Formosan, Alicia and I decided to have a go at the rides. Uncle and Aunty Ding were great sports as well, as we managed to persuade them to join us on the roller-coaster. We thought Aunty Ding would scream loudly but who knew it was us who were screaming at the top of our lungs! When we've had enough of thrills, we walked back out towards the front. Aunty Ding was telling us that we should visit the garden across the road. I was not really attracted but walked in there with Alicia anyway and lo and behold, it was the place where Romantic Princess (Taiwanese idol drama starring Angela Zhang and Wu Chun) was filmed! Imagine how ecstatic I was...

From a hill, we moved on to a lake. Sun Moon Lake, to me, was nothing special. Perhaps I did not feel it's natural beauty due to my perception that it was being overdeveloped. Or maybe it was because I was feeling nauseous from the windy ride. Even after climbing up to the highest part of Wenwu Temple, I was thinking: Hm, ok la.

I did, however, take plenty of snapshots of the temple...

We made a short stopover at a peacock park. Apparently, the peacocks we saw came from just a pair of peacocks that were presented to the Taiwanese government by our Malaysian government. I'd have to say that they totally put our peacocks to shame! Just look at them!

Lunch was had at a small restaurant nearby, after which we were brought to Mao Wang Yeh's house. I had no idea that this 'house' was where Royal Jelly was sold. I was not paying much attention as the giddiness was really kicking in at that moment. Nicholas and Shirley was so kind - they offered me motion-sickness pills, which had me sleeping on the bus all the way to Kaohsiung.

As we arrived Kaohsiung ahead of schedule, we visited the Spring and Autumn Pavilions.

According to superstition, you are to walk into the dragon's mouth before exiting from the tiger's.

We then headed to Dream for dinner.

If you ask me, Dream looked like the shopping complex where Why Why Love was filmed. Regret not taking more photos of the place. But I did go to the top to ride on the ferris wheel...

On this night, I checked into room 3018 of Citizen Hotel with yet another full stomach.