Taipei

I spent the second half of this week in Taipei, where I gave a second lecture and toured several museums. 

An opening lunch for the second half of the week.

It didn't rain in the south while I was there during the first half of the week, but rain is about all it did in Taipei the second half of the week. I was glad the student who picked me up from the train station was kind enough to bring me an umbrella.

The first museum, right after the first lunch.

This prehistoric pictograph reminded me of southern Utah.

I've been thinking about this acupuncture map of the human body and how it's a reminder that the conventional borders (this is an arm, this is a forehead, this is a hand) are culturally contingent and the lines may reasonably be redrawn so that body parts might be imagined as long strips spanning the length of the arm and going onto the chest, etc.

I liked the phrase "five thunders"

I kept thinking about this redrawn map of the body

I thought W would like this statue

This seemed like a new refinement in swordsmanship that I had never considered before (I haven't considered swordsmanship to any significant extent, admittedly).

This phrase seemed poetic to me

I thought of the bas-relief mural in our home

The student who was with me pointed out the various levels of hell in one of the paintings

After we went to the museum, the professor I was with said that she knew the perfect place for us to go.

It turned out she wanted to take me to the LDS temple/church complex in Taipei. She was intent on having a tour, and we met some nice people there, and the professor was very interested in bringing her American literature students to have a tour, to learn about American religious diversity.

Photo session after the lecture

Temple visit after the lecture.

The professor I was with, who is Taiwanese, explained some of these decorations at the temple as similar to the cartoonish Christmastime decorations we see at malls in the US. These are in celebration of Chinese New Year.

I found myself taking pictures fast but in a way that wasn't capturing what I was trying to capture, which was a sense of the busyness of the temple, combined with incense burning, combined with the music, combined with the actions of people praying, combined with other things.

Learning about some tools of divination

At a certain point, I started hearing some music that sounded like cartoon music. We were soon approaching some fake animals (like the fish and goats that appear earlier in the photos of the temple), and I realized the music was coming from the animals. Sure that the music must be more significant than cartoon music, I asked the professor what the music meant. She replied that it didn't mean anything and was just there to make things fun. She said it was like "cartoon music."

This was an offering left by a woman who had prayed to become pregnant, and had.

A bottle of oil was left on each of several tables

After the temple, we walked along a street with an herb market

And a stall selling bronze

I bought W a bronze tiger and S a creature that looked similar to this one.

Then we walked along a street that was either a preservation or a recreation of an old Taipei street

There was a TV show being filmed on the street, and I accidentally took flash photography (usually my flash isn't on, so I was surprised). People didn't like the flash. Someone said in English, "No flash!" I was glad they knew English so they could understand my apology.

Then we went to the Palace Museum

I was curious about how the lion became such a big part of Chinese iconography, and the student I was with didn't know, but eventually our guide told us that the Chinese learned about lions through trade with other parts of the world.

No photography was allowed in the museum, so you won't be able to see a pic of the carved olive pits that I found so intriguing, among many other items.

Then we had lunch in the museum

And then went to another museum, this one on indigenous peoples. Photos weren't allowed there either, but I took a few before I learned that.

I was exhausted and fell asleep in the taksi on the way to the next place. The taxi stopped and I kept sleeping, and the PhD student I guess didn't think she should wake me up. I woke up a minute or two after we arrived, as the student told me.

This museum/park was made on the grounds of a former prison for political prisoners who opposed (or had different thoughts than) the CKS regime during its 38 years of martial law from the 1940s through the 1980s.

A prison on Green Island

A pic of a pic of Green Island.

Crafts and carvings made by the prisoners

A statue symbolizing justice, designed by one of the prisoners during his sentence I think. This creature is supposed to be able to listen to two people in dispute and know who is right and wrong.

Where the prisoners talked with visitors. Ten minutes, in Mandarin, while their first language was usually Taiwanese

A recreation of gifts that might have been given to the prisoners by visitors. Superman drew my attention.

After that, the professor (who had joined us) and the student and I walked around National Taiwan University

And then, right before I left for the airport, we got together for dinner with another professor who works on similar topics to my own, on islands, except from the field of geography.