Tainan

This quarter’s examinations, for reasons unknown to me, fell on a Wednesday. The reason this decision did not quite make sense to me is that the 28^th of February (the following Friday) is a bank holiday in Taiwan. Essentially, the program expected us students to sit a day of class right after our finals until consenting to release us from our misery.

I don’t think I ever skipped class in college, but the dull regimen (and sometimes the unreasonableness) of ICLP have broken my resistance to cutting corners every now and then. At some point towards the beginning of the week, I made up my mind not to go to school on Thursday, and, after checking the weather forecast, started planning my long-desired trip to the south of Taiwan.

I left Taipei a little later in the morning than I would have liked to, as I was unable to find tickets at a reasonable time like six or six thirty. I arrived in Tainan a little after ten, and the (free!) shuttle bus from the Tainan High Speed Railway Station brought my arrival time in the city proper closer to ten thirty or eleven. While sitting on the bus, I read my book so intently that I forgot what the terminal station was, which made me afraid to follow through with my original plan to simply disboard when it drew to a stop. Instead, I hopped off as soon as we arrived at the first monument I recognised – the Koxinga Museum.

The Koxinga Museum, which stands right next to the city’s Koxinga Shrine, houses a couple – if not too many – quite interesting and valuable artefacts, among them the only remaining exemplar of Koxinga’s own calligraphy. The second floor of the museum exhibits the boards that used to be put above the entrance to the local Confucius temples. Both the Museum and the Shrine seemed practically deserted, except for a young woman apparently doing the part of the wedding photoshoot where you ditch your fiancé and take glamour shots alone. Interestingly, the shrine memorialises not just Koxinga, but also his mother, his grandson, and the Prince of Ningjing.

The entrance to the Koxinga Shrine

A portrait of Koxinga

The last of Koxinga's handwriting

The second floor exhibition

An example of a sign put above the entrance of a Confucian temple

The inner courtyard of the Koxinga Shrine

Another view of the courtyard

The interior of the central shrine

A very lifelike idol modelled after the likeness of Koxinga

The memorial tablet of Koxinga's mother

Another view of the memorial tablet

The garden behind the Koxinga Shrine

From the shrine, I crossed the street to the Lady Linshui Temple, apparently a temple very popular with women, as its patron deities specialise in fertility and protect both unborn children and pregnant mothers. From there, it was only a short walk south to another three important sights: the Great South Gate, the ruins of the former city wall, and the Five Concubines Temple. The Great South Gate, at least in its present form, dates back to 1736, and is one of the few remnants of the city’s original defences. The Five Concubines Temple claims an even older origin, having begun in 1683 to memorialise five of the Prince of Ninjing’s concubines, who committed suicide rather than submit to the Qing invaders.

The interior of The Lady Linshui Temple

The Great South Gate

The Great South Gate behind the first fortification

The Great South Gate through the arch of the first wall

The old fortifications of Tainan

The Five Concubines Temple

Idols of the Five Concubines

Since the Five Concubines Temple is at the southernmost end of the historically interesting zone of Tainan, and I did not intend to return to the city centre past the sights I had already seen, I hailed a cab and rode to the western part of the city, known for hundreds of years as Anping. From a Western point of view, Anping is perhaps the most interesting part of Tainan, and that for several reasons. Firstly, when the Dutch arrived in Formosa in 1624, it was in Anping that they built their first fort, named Fort Zeelandia after one of the ships that had carried them there. Secondly, when Tainan was declared a treaty port under the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858, it was in Anping that western trading companies built their houses (the other treaty port established in Taiwan was Tamsui. Keelung and Takao (Kaohsiung/Gaoxiong) were later opened up as well to ease the strain on the former two).

How strange to ride through streets built over the forests, fields, and marshes where the Dutch once fought and converted Taiwan’s indigenous population, and the Chinese waged war against the Dutch. Picturing in the city’s stead Taiwan’s once untamed wilderness, through which the missionary Candidius trekked from Zeelandia to the local village of Sinkan, seemed as difficult to me as imagining a primeval scene with creatures transported through time from the Triassic.

I found the Fort of Zeelandia in a remarkably well-kempt state. After falling to Koxinga, it was renovated several times by the Chinese, making it a little difficult sometimes to distinguish one layer of red brick from the next. I was pleasantly surprised by the museum, which featured not only a painting on the famous motif of Antonius Hambroek leaving Fort Zeelandia, but also a weathered copy of Frederick Coyett’s Verwaerloosde Formosa (Neglected Formosa). Finding the latter made me let out an audible gasp.

Fort Zeelandia

One of the many, many statues of Koxinga, this time at Fort Zeelandia

Qing Cannons at Fort Zeelandia

Another view of the same cannons

The trees were in bloom during my visit

Another bloom

The iconic scene of Hambroek taking leave of his grieving family

The ruins of the original Dutch fortifications

Topiary arts

Wild vegetation sprouting from the remains of the original Dutch fortifications

A view of the fort from the museum building

The same view but landscape

A copy of Verwaerloosde Formosa

Besides visiting Fort Zeelandia, I also stopped by the Julius Mannich and the Tait & Company old merchant houses. The latter happened to be open, with a relatively interesting exhibition. Walking back past the fort, I made a stop by the Kaitai Tianhou Temple, established in 1668 and boasting a Mazu deity brought over from the mainland by Koxinga himself. Unfortunately, I was not able to tell which of the many, many wooden statues it was.

The Old Julius Mannich House

The statues of two women who both suffered a Madam Butterfly-esque fate

The balcony of the Old Tait and Company House

The Kaitai Tianhou Temple

A closer view of the Kaitai Tianhou Temple

An idol at the Kaitai Tianhou Temple

Another idol

More idols at the Kaitai Tianhou Temple

The same idols behind their offerings

Once that was done, I let myself be lured into a car by a taxi driver and made my way back to the centre of the city. I had thought about getting lunch, but my hunger left me at some point during the car ride, which freed me up considerably. I weaved my way through the Five Canals Cultural Zone with its multitude of temples, taking in the religious atmosphere of old Tainan. I was slowly but surely becoming a little Temple-tired, so happening upon Chihkan Tower provided me with a welcome respite. The tower actually stands on top of the second fort the Dutch built in Tainan, named Fort Provintia. In the renowned work Formosa under the Dutch, William Campbell notes how part of the fort was knocked down during his very own lifetime, in order to make space for a Mazu temple, which is why little but the foundations remains of the original structure. I don’t think the Dutch would have considered this a particularly grieving loss, since Fort Provintia fell to Koxinga after only a few days, unlike Zeelandia which held out for nine months.

A dragon-like creature on the roof of the Water Fairy Temple

A gate leading to the Five Canals Cultural Zone

Temple roof decorations

A wonderfully preserved old model

An idol at one of the countless temples

A dragon pillar

Another pillar at the Kaiji Tianhou Temple

The altar at the Kaiji Tianhou Temple

Mazu deity at the Kaiji Tianhou Temple

Another idol

The goddess Mazu at the Kaiji Tianhou Temple

Another view of Mazu

Yet another view - I could not decide which picture is the best

By then, it was late enough in the afternoon for me to check in at my hotel, which was conveniently close to both the centre of the city and the train station. After jettisoning essentially everything but my camera, wallet, and passport (and eating all of the cookies in my room), I set off again, since there were still a few sights towards the centre and east of the city which I had not yet seen. These included the old Tainan weather station, as well as Maxwell Memorial Church, built in honour of the first Presbyterian missionary to Taiwan. Of course, several more temples in the vicinity were a must-see, especially the oldest Confucius Temple in Taiwan, whose inner court was unfortunately undergoing reconstruction. Nevertheless, one of the side rooms was open, and I found, to my astonishment and self-satisfaction, that I recognised the writing on the wall from my Classical Chinese class – it was an excerpt from “The Great Learning.”

Maxwell Memorial Church

An alleyway behind the Zhengs' ancestral shrine

The interior of the Zhengs' ancestral shrine

Yet another statue of Koxinga

The Old Tainan Martial Arts Academy

The Tainan Confucius Temple

The front of the Confucius Temple

Another view of the Confucius Temple

A monument in the garden of the Confucius Temple

A room at the Confucius Temple

A tower in the garden of the Confucius Temple

The Tainan City Art Museum

An embossment at the entrance to the City God Temple

A sign at the City God Temple

A painted door at the City God Temple

The interior of the City God Temple

The last few items on my itinerary comprised Christian historical sights. As a treaty city and the former capital of Taiwan, Tainan naturally has many of these. Besides the Maxwell Memorial Church, they also include the Taiwan Church Press (the first printing office in Taiwan and publisher of Church News, the island’s oldest newspaper), Barclay Memorial Church (dedicated to, incidentally, the founder of the said newspaper), and the Catholic Cathedral ‘Our Lady Queen of China’ – the first cathedral I have seen to be built in Chinese architectural style. After eating dinner, I strolled back to my hotel, taking in the atmosphere of Tainan’s sights in an evening glow.