Bikes and Shoes

On Friday we went to Anping, a district of Tainan. We came to see a fort/castle, Fort Zeelandia, that was built by the Dutch. (Taiwan was a Dutch colony in the 17th century.) They built the fort to defend the island from the Japanese. Very little of the original structure remains. After establishing the Dutch East India Company, they set up in Taiwan to establish a base for trading with China. The Dutch were the first to introduce brick building to Taiwan. The mortar they used was made of sticky rice and ground oyster shells.

We also stopped and looked a Taoist temple. There are temples everywhere here. You could be in the middle of the busiest part of the city and turn around and see a temple. They are very beautiful and very ornate.

I wish I could read Chinese so that I could read everything and know what is going on. We saw a man praying and throwing moon-stones (crescent shaped rocks). However the stones land indicates the answer to their prayer. From what I understand, each temple has different gods to pray to.They also burn incense to help to send their prayers to heaven.

While visiting the fort, we saw a place that rented bikes and so decided a bike ride would be fun. It cost 50 NT for the whole day--less than 2 American dollars. We had a lot of fun riding around. Anping is close to the coast, so there is an inlet of water that goes through the town and a bike trail that goes around it. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, but there was a cool breeze coming in over the water.

While biking we came across a huge statue overlooking the water. She is the goddess that the fishermen pray to for safety. The story goes that she was once a real human. Her father was a fisherman and she would hold out a lantern each night so he could find his way home.

We turned our bikes in at what they call the tree-house. From what I could understand, the building used to be a storehouse but was abandoned sometime in WWII. Since then, a banyan tree has completely overtaken the house. There are roots coming up through the floor, branches going through the walls--the house has almost become part of the tree.

A former door-way

After that we decided to go to the market. Anping's market is fairly large and well-known. We had fun walking up and down the streets looking in the shops and trying new kinds of food. I was most excited about coming across a little shoe shop. I ended up getting some custom made shoes for only $14 US. They had different wooden bases you could choose from and different hand-stitched fabric tops. The shop-keeper then would fit the fabric to your foot and nail it to the shoe. It was pretty fun.

After all that bike riding and walking around we were all pretty exhausted and slept pretty well that night.