Since there was no more Major
League Baseball to occupy my mornings after the Mets lost the World Series, I
got back on the bike to take a ride, but this time, I headed south along the
Han River towards Taichung Park instead of north towards Feng-Yuan. I decided
to visit the "First Elevated Railway Exhibition:Visions of a Future
Life" building at 381 Dong-Guang Road on my way to the Taichung Confucian
Temple at 30 Shuang-Shih Road, Section 2. I had passed by the temple many
times and though their gardens would be a great shady place to relax and read a
book.
What could bring
Taichung out of the doldrums of the 1990's? It was obvious that Taichung could
not go on as it was. It was a city that had been teetering between the run-down
downtown business district, Taichung Train Station and
Park. Something had to give. The modern world had left Taichung
stale and moldy; without a soul, and with an antiquated rail system. In 2006,
The Executive Yuan approved the Taichung Metropolitan Area Elevation
Railway Project. The project would also jump-start urban renewal near the
Taichung and Feng-Yuan stations. The exhibition hall opened in November 2012.
For three years, I had been wondering what it looked like inside the long
one-story building that resembled a train car. I parked the bicycle
and headed inside.
I was the only visitor in the exhibition hall that morning. Two
guides greeted me. They told me it was free to enter and they handed me a
brochure in English; all the exhibits had placards in Chinese. Through a maze
of 6,000 square feet, I circled the hall observing the scale model displays of
the ten new railway stations, engineering technology, and audio-visuals of
construction projects. It was pretty dry stuff but, for the price
of admission, I couldn't complain. Occasionally I could hear the rumble of
a train passing behind the exhibition hall. Overhead were the elevated concrete
pylons for the new Taichung rail-line. Three years ago, before a station was
built, the exhibition would have meant more, but watching the new line under
construction in real time was far more fun than seeing the models.
Taichung has
needed something uplifting; more than just the face-lift that Mayor Hu
gave to the Westside replacing cemeteries and rice paddies with high rise
condos and a new business district. It only made Taichung worse; not only was
the old town still dilapidated but the quaint country feeling of the
greenery was turned into soulless steel and glass.
Besides reconnecting the parts of
Taichung that had been dividing the city for over a hundred years, raising the
rails above street level will have another very important objective: to save
lives. There have been numerous accidents involving vehicles and
pedestrians on the grade level tracks through busy Taichung streets. Some
accidents are deliberate, some because of malfunctions such as the one at the
crossing just next to the exhibition hall at the end of Xing-Lin Road.
Go up Xing-Lin Road
a few blocks to Shuang-Shi, Section 2. When you see the white church with the
tall spire atop of which is a golden Mary holding baby Jesus, turn left. At
that shady intersection, you can not only get pie in the sky but a blue
plate special at the old Taiwan Railroad car converted into a restaurant;
that's the kind of conversion I like! Soon, on your left, you will see the
golden-tiled roof of the Confucius Temple.
Pray tell, there are
no monks or nuns at the Confucian Temple. It is a memorial more than a place of
contemplation. To me, the temple complex is an eerie place with more closed
doors and gates than ones that are open. The property was a middle school for a
while after an immense Japanese shrine was desecrated with the coming of the
KMT. Beyond its far side lies a private garden and shrine to KMT soldiers who
had fought in the war. The Temple complex, completed in 1976, is a replica of
Song Dynasty architecture and is about as real as Cesar's Palace in Las Vegas,
the difference being concrete vs. prefab gypsum board. Just pray your children
pass their tests and get into a good college, I guess.
The temple was void of
visitors on the morning I went; only a few middle-aged women playing ocarinas
with a Karaoke. A large paper display board listed a number of events the
temple was hosting, but all of them had passed.
As I strolled around
the grounds and looked into the cold shrines, I became weary, and retired to
the garden to read my copy of The Phantom of the Opera. It was there in
the garden, under the banyan trees, I saw the plaque: "There are no
shortcuts to attaining Confucian virtue," the plaque read. Ah; now I
understood. It was like the gate in Monty Python's Holy Grail where
no man (or woman, Confucius forbid) shall pass.
I sat on an
uncomfortable cold stone bench in the courtyard not far from a tiny pond
surrounded by a pointy wrought iron fence. The arched cement bridge across the
pond was overkill. After only a few pages of The Phantom, I felt an
itching at my legs; the mosquitoes guarding the temple grounds knew I was
unworthy of sitting there and soon drove me away. I got back on the bike and
rode further south on Shuang-Shi, Section 2 until I reached Taichung Park;
my respite. On a rock by the turtle pond, with white pigeons flying around me,
I found my peace.
“Taichung’s
Elevated (Uplifting?) Vision” is the double-entendre title of this article
about the bike ride I took to the train exhibition and Confucius Temple. The
point is that one was more uplifting than the other.
The lofty goals of
Confucian philosophy are higher than Taichung’s new elevated train section but,
since some people are fools that don’t stop, look, and listen for danger, and
the crossing guard sometimes malfunctions, it is better to raise the stakes
than risk a miscue at the pearly gates that would hold up the masses from
getting to where they are bound.
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