Various impressions

As this is not a real blog but only the place for posting the 'material' I do not want to repeat in emails, I feel it lacks comments. Pictorial and textual. So, let's fix it a bit, that it would not look only as "Tu san pisa, tu kaka, tu san prve Drave pofuma" ("Here I made shit, here I pissed, here I smoked my first cigarettes" from "Chi non pissa in compania" by Istrian band "Gori usi Winnetou").

Taiwan IS meeting of old and new. In the street and in heads. You can see buildings like "101 tower" - but architecture of it is said to refer to the oldfashioned sword. Especially at night it may seem so, in a daylight pic it is not so obvious. Here I finally managed to catch it in its whole majesty:

But in the same time, you may meet -as I had chance here in Hsinchu - traditional street theater! Fascinating sight, really - it reminds a bit to the brazilian soap operas of the class of 'Isaura' :-)

Theater took place in front of temple, some "guards" from the temple look as if they could go on the scene themselves

But guards are to guard, so they do not look friendly

But, also they seem to be quite 'modern', we could call this one "Mick" (of Rolling Stones), no? Well, I agree, it is not 'fashion' any more ;-)

It all finishes with one small light in a dark room - these lights are to symbolise somebody ceased, I think... family pays for the light in the temple, this is a kind of 'candle' for the soul or so... 5000 yrs of Chinese culture, as my dear Meiyunn would say; do not expect me to understand it all in only few months!

They pray the same way as in any church/mosque/synagogue/temple I know, not a bit 'exotic' (although this seems to be Confucianistic temple, this pic is from Lugang Matsu temple or so):

I am only an alien in these streets, see how alien I look:

Streets here can be hot, HOT, even these dogs at my campus think it is too hot to walk around :-)

I forgot to comment on students at the end of the year here - in fact these were not students in the sense of Europe, rather pupils, I hope. They were playing like in kindergarten for whole days, really amazing, in the West at that age we'd spend most of the time ... well, sex, drugs and Rock&Roll, not to say more ;-)