The Pilgrimage of Mazu
Wednesday, April 04, 2012Chenlin Mazu Temple |
And then I forgot this story ... until this weekend. After a conversation between two of my aunts in rapid Taiwanese, I found myself being "kidnapped," not allowed to return home for the weekend with no change of clothing, no charger for my phone, no contacts case or solution, no toothbrush ... and no real idea of where I was going. Except I was going with a bunch of elderly people on a bus somewhere to see some Taiwanese cultural event. Yippee.
So I've heard about these bus trips that old Chinese people take, and there are different variations in the U.S. ... there's the Cantonese kind and there's probably the mainland Chinese kind ... and then there's the Taiwanese kind that I took this weekend. Taiwanese people are very ... passionate, and these elderly people passionately talked and yelled the entire way down to Taichung (where I later learned we were going), even over the non-stop karaoking. Yes, these tour bus are equipped with karaoke machines and those screens turn into mediums through which bad, bad things happen. Ugh.
Anyway, they dropped us off two hours later at a temple in Taichung (know not what it is called), where believers rushed to "bai bai," or pray ... and then there was the food. For some reason or another, this pilgrimage brings endless amounts of free food to anyone traveling along its path. So in the basement of this temple, there were free cold noodles, a free yellow j-ello-like flavorless gelatin ... all dumped on tables in large bowls with communal chopsticks to scoop 'em up. The idea of free food all day had, at first, sounded fantastic to me, but in practice, it just seemed unsanitary. Gelatin was practically force-fed down my throat and I hoped I would not die of hepatitis, and onwards we moved.
Along the parade route |
Don't quite understand the girls dressed like Spice Girls, but whatever floats Mazu's boat ...
Inside the temple |
Like a Greyhound bus, this tour bus made a pit stop midway for people to use the toilet ... even though the ride itself was only 2 hours. I learned that the elderly work on a very different bathroom break schedule, and become very demanding when you express that you don't actually need to use the bathroom. Some of the more vocal complained to the tour leader that they hadn't eaten enough (really!!!) and that they wanted to be dropped off at a restaurant.
If you look closely, you'll be able to see some masked characters on stilts towards the center
Dragon
This is where things got interesting for me ... they have (for lack of a better term) fast food Chinese sit-down restaurants roadside here!!! The one we stopped in was a giant, giant room of round tables covered in plastic tablecloth. The utensils were all plastic, and a pot of rice was brought out to each table, along with five or so "prix fixe" dishes. And then back on the road we were ... back to the life I had been so abruptly plucked from.
All in all, not worth it. I didn't know anything about Mazu, didn't know what was going on even during the trip because most of the elderly speak exclusively in Taiwanese and not Mandarin. I didn't know any characters from Chinese folklore, and I definitely did not want to eat any of the free food. Everything I learned, I learned from the internet upon my return. One thing I did learn, though ... say no to anything that particular aunt might suggest in the future. :)
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