Tag Archives: ilha

April 14, 2011 · 9:27 am

Festival at Dajia Mazu Temple, Taichung

Part of the Mazu Pilgrimage, which I recently posted about, was an ongoing celebration at a Mazu temple in Taichung. This celebration was going on at the same time the pilgrimage made its way to Changhua just south of the city.

Mazu Festival: Dajia Mazu Temple, Taichung San Tai Zi 2

These gods represent Ne Zha San Tai Zi, or 莲花三太子. He is known as a trickster god, usually represented as a boy, and is seen as playful and mischievous. You’ll see him even on Taiwanese television, as he has sort of melded into a pop culture symbol.

Mazu Festival: Dajia Mazu Temple, Taichung

These mobile altars were common through the day, as certain gods “visited” Mazu. The man on the left was dressed in traditional clothing and I’m regretting every time that I missed taking his portrait.

Mazu Festival: Dajia Mazu Temple, Taichung

Mazu Festival: Dajia Mazu Temple, Taichung San Tai Zi 3

This man is pulling a San Tai Zi costume off the line, presumably to give the dancer a break. Later, I had a chance to get an image of the three costumes lined up as the dancers rested at the temple.

Mazu Festival: Dajia Mazu Temple, Taichung Gods Lined Up

Mazu Festival: Dajia Mazu Temple, Taichung Offerings

Offerings are given to the temple gods. Notice the pile of burning “ghost money” on the ground at their feet.

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Tagged as 2011, 35mm, activity, asia, changhua, chinese, county, culture, d5000, festival, formosa, god, ilha, mazu, nikkor, nikon, offering, photography, photos, pilgrimage, prime, religion, taichung, taiwan, taiwanese, temple, travel, worship

April 11, 2011 · 11:34 am

Goddess of the Sea

Before I begin, I should mention and thank GigGuide.tw, a primarily English music site in Taiwan which chronicles music on the island. They featured some of my photos in a Spring Scream guide – check them out here.

Instead of covering more bands, as I planned, I’ll switch back to Taoism after some incredible events last weekend.

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One of the largest pilgrimages in the world is underway. While many people think of the Muslim Hajj in Mecca or the various festivals in India which draw millions when it comes to these events, a festival currently underway in Taiwan is drawing huge crowds for Mazu, goddess of the sea.

Mazu is worshiped across East and Southeast Asia – especially by seagoing people as in Taiwan. Her blessing is seen as so powerful that people all over Taiwan and some outside of Taiwan will be sure to visit her as she makes her way through various cities.

Last weekend, I went with Yuling to witness such an event in Changhua, a city just south of Taichung.

This festival is indeed a pilgrimage – and a large one at that. It snakes around Taiwan, through various cities which are all excited at the presence of one of the most important gods in Taiwan. The parade processions include costumes, banners, fireworks, horns, and as said earlier, massive crowds. A perfect day for a camera. With the crowds and smoke, my 35mm f/1.8 never left the camera body.

Participants, like these seen above, wear simple clothing and are fed by people while making the trek throughout the island. I was offered food and drink multiple times by complete strangers, testament to the attitude of giving throughout the day. Many temples set out vegetarian food which was free in exchange for a small temple donation.

These scooters were caught up in the endless traffic. We actually left Changhua before it got even worse, with thousands filling the streets at night.

The people kneeling above are prostrating themselves so Mazu’s altar will pass over them. It is said to bring blessings if she visits you – even more if she passes directly overhead.

This man looked over his shoulder at me as the sparklers coming from the sky rained down – the parade had to stop multiple times for fireworks, sparklers, and other things which purposely try to keep the goddess in the town as long as possible so she will bless the residents.

These men were carrying banners and large spears ahead of Mazu as a sort of honor guard. It was great to spend time with the parade in the evening as we got some beautiful light from the setting sun.

Left: The crowds in the above photo are waiting for Mazu to arrive as fireworks are laid out before her altar moves through. Right: …and some fireworks to finish off this post. I’ll be back later with another post about this huge event, I’m sure.

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Tagged as 2011, 35mm, adherent, asia, believer, central, changhua, d5000, daoism, eastern, faith, festival, follower, formosa, goddess, ilha, lens, mazu, nikkor, nikon, Oulipo, photography, photos, prime, religion, religious, taichung, taiwan, taoism, travel, worship, 台灣, 台中, 媽祖, 彰化市

March 25, 2011 · 8:23 am

Ilha Formosa – Part II

Today’s post is another slideshow – the second part of two video slideshows that relate to general topics in Taiwan. Today’s theme is “Modernity,” though like the last one, I certainly mixed things up in the traditional/modern areas because Taiwan is often hard to pin down. Traditional culture is certainly alive and well in this modern nation. I recommend seeing this at 720 or 1080p, as usual.

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Tagged as d5000, formosa, ilha, modernity, nikkor, nikon, photography, photos, slideshow, taiwan, travel, video, youtube

September 19, 2010 · 11:22 pm

Watching the Sea

This weekend became a time of remembering Hurricane Ike, which came through my community in Texas about two years ago and devastated much of the surroundings – and in addition gave us all two weeks of unneeded “vacation” as students and teachers.

Oddly enough, I had another storm come in right about the same point that I was previously at in the school year. This time, a typhoon – called Fanapi, which is a Micronesian name for “sandy islands” was scheduled to hit in north-central Taiwan over the weekend.

It’s interesting to see how Taiwanese react to these storms. They’re a normal part of life, and if this one hadn’t been so strong, I doubt many people would’ve reacted seriously to it at all. Thankfully for my area, it mostly went south – we got very little rain but certainly did get some heavy winds.

Yuling, my girlfriend, had me join her family for a Moon Festival barbeque today. As a result of the storm, we were treated to some amazing skies – half blue and half a slightly spinning gray. One of the areas I checked out in her grandparents’ rural community of Sinwu was a statue and temple dedicated to Mazu, Chinese goddess of the sea. Photos follow.

The sheer size of this statue made it hard to capture. For this reason, I did not get a good HDR of the entire ~50ft. bronze behemoth. What you see is the goddess looking toward the sea (west – away from where the typhoon was coming) with two spirits near the bottom acting almost as assistants. You can see one of them pointing to his eyes and the other to his ears. They have these odd headdresses that look like horns…

The following is an HDR of the top part. I had to use the 70-300mm for this because of the size of this thing!

Above is the altar – which you can’t see in the first picture. It is situated at the base of the main statue and gives a place for people to offer prayers and incense to the sea goddess.

Above we have the main temple building in HDR. The temples in this rural area are very ornate – and numerous.

The temple interior had a lot of these lanterns hanging in an area that was naturally lit. You’d think I’d get sick of photographing these by now, but I was really impressed by the amount and played around a little bit with the depth of field. Check the Flickr by clicking on the photo to see the other shots of these I took.

Jhubei Night Market

While I have already made a post about the ShiDa Night Market, I was recently excited to visit a market here in Jhubei which is obviously easier to get to, still very large, and occurs weekly. As I said before, night markets are pretty common here in Taiwan, and you can expect some very good food to go along with your visit.

Above, we have some common scenes: crowds and food. Both of these are huge things to contend with… and when I mean “content with” food, I mean that you have to choose. One of the choices, below, is known as Chou Dofu, or “Stinky” Tofu (臭豆腐). 臭豆腐 is a form of tofu which is first fermented – so you can imagine it lives up to its name of being “stinky.” I had the chance to try this in Houston and hated it as mine smelled and TASTED like feet, and was quite apprehensive to try it again here in Taiwan. I certainly smelled it… Yuling wasn’t fooling me extremely well when she tried to feed it to me as I finished off my barbeque corn. I told myself, though, that I’d give it another go, grabbed it with my chopsticks… and…

…it wasn’t too bad, actually! I even like it more than the Taiwanese “kimchi” or cabbage, which goes pretty well with it… if you ever eat it, though, do yourself a favor and DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT read the Wikipedia article on how it’s made before you do. I thought about this while eating it, and it almost ended very, very poorly. I can at least add this to the pig intestine, duck blood, chicken feet, chicken gizzard, and beef tongue that I’ve had so far… and with the exception of that tofu, I apologize to any vegetarians out there. Just make sure you hang around the Buddhist monasteries for food if you come to Taiwan… everyone else is a definite carnivore here.

Anyway, on to some more photos…

Again, a reminder: sometimes photos are heavily cropped to make them more interesting – to see this photo, just click on it and you’ll see a larger size in Flickr.

So the above photo is representative of some of the carnival-style games they had. In the front of the rows, you’ll see some basic items… snacks, soda, whatever. If you can throw a ring around it, you’ve got it. Further back? Beer bottles. With beer. A little bit more? A full bottle of whiskey. Hmmm.