Taiwan Things to Do

The religions are very different in Taiwan. Tao is one of the most important religions. Every 3 years or even a decade of years this kind ceremony is held in some temple. The period depends on the draw, the god's hint to the followers. The Tao ceremony was set for praying that God lead people to steady life with rain and wind, with food and clothes. As you see in this picture, every different temples set similiar kind of tower for the ceremony. During the days with ceremony, local followers can't eat meat until the whole activity finishes.

There are different kinds of tea or cafe shops stands on every street. The business were competitive but atrract customers to get in more and more often. This picture was taken in Nai-Tou, beside the highway, an artist made this house by picking some touchwoods found during 921 earth quake. A very creative and nice place to meet and talk.

Tainan, on the southern west coast, is Taiwan's temple town. Designated the provincial capital for over 200 years until the 1880s, Tainan still has a firm grip on Taiwan's traditional culture. It's also one of the best places in the country to witness Buddhist parades and festivals. There are hundreds of temples in Tainan: some of the most interesting are East Mountain, a busy Taoist temple where people come to communicate with dead relatives or exorcise ghosts, Mito, with its magnificent statue of the 1000-armed goddess Kuanyin, Chuhsi, Tainan's largest and most beautiful temple, set in an athletic park, and Kaiyuan, a classical Buddhist temple with spacious grounds and plenty of pagodas.

To see temple building in action, visit the suburb of Luerhmen , where three temples are constantly trying to outdo one another for the title of 'biggest temple in Taiwan'. Choose your favourite and donate some cash to building expenses - your name will be engraved on a temple artefact in gratitude. If all this religious exertion becomes too much for you, get back to earthly things at the nearby Woozland waterslide park. Other non-temple sights include a museum and shrine to national hero Koxinga and the Great South Gate , the remains of Tainan's city walls. Tainan is also a great spot for night-life and Chinese food. You can get here by plane or train from Taipei, and by bus from just about anywhere.

Taipei is a boisterous and expensive city, and it lets you know it. About 6 million people live in and around Taiwan's capital, lured by the excitement of a bustling city on the move. And for the most part, they're not disappointed. Real estate is virtually unobtainable - Taipei residents have long dispensed with the dream of home-ownership - and the government is encouraging businesses to set up elsewhere in Taiwan. Despite this, the notion still prevails that to make it big in Taiwan, you have to set up in the heart of the capital - even if the air is perpetually toxic. Taiwan's capital is packed full of people, cars and smog - a real hotbed of renao, or liveliness. It's not a relaxing stopover, but the food is excellent, the people are friendly and there are some top-notch sights.

At first glance, Taipei is an intimidating confusion of sprawls, but given time and patience the logic at the heart of the city's layout will slowly begin to dawn. Even so, unless you read Chinese characters, the system of romanised Chinese characters used in Taiwan (called the Wade-Giles system) will leave even those with impeccable senses of direction floundering. There are frequent calls for the replacement of this perverse, unintelligable system with the reasonably successful 'Pinyin' system used in China. But this plan has met with staunch opposition: if it works on mainland China, the thinking goes, it must be bad.

If you go taiwan around May to July, you can go Kenting(south of Taiwan) for surfing.The beach is clean and a lots of water activities you could found there too..

This is the busiest night market in Taipei and it's quite big. Don't skip this market and remeber to buy some cheaps!!

This is a super pig. It was immolated for this ceremony.

you can buy any shapes of the laterns. I had hold one during "the Goat year", the animal sign that i belong to.