Solo Trip - Taiwan (July 2023) - Tainan Confucius Temple Part 2

After exploring the free area, I used my coupon to enter the paid area. As you enter the door, you can see the inner courtyard inside as above. I was at the souvenir stamping station collecting my stamps and free souvenir bookmark, self made of course! I hardly every pay to buy any souvenirs, but I do like stamps and stuff to make scrap books. 

The center building has a stone dragon plate in front of it. It has some royal significant I guess. Perhaps a symbol of royalty granted by the Emperor in honour of Confucius' teaching and this school? Inside this building are tablets of previous scholars. Will show more of it in my next post.To the left and right of this structure, are two small museums showcasing ritual and tradition of temple worship. I was a bit confused here, I thought Confucius was a scholar and teacher? Not sure why there are worship involved. Perhaps they see him as so great that he was promoted to deity?

Anyway, the blue sky was kinda rare on that day, so when the cloud cleared, I took a photo of the wind chime bells hanging on the roof of the temple. Mainly, I just love the blue skies as always :)

As I was saying, the museums displayed some information of the ritual of the temple. And I was quite impress with the information here. For example, above is the dance ritual, drawing step by step of it! There was a clip nearby showing old dance ritual in real life too. I took the photo, maybe one day someone will look at it and try to dance it?

I also spend more time than I care to admit at this corner here on Chinese musical instruments used in the rituals. By waving your hand at the instrument, it plays a sound from it. Isn't that cool? I imagine I was conducting a Chinese orchestra by just waving my hands around. There was nobody at the museum, so I could just stand there and play, lol. It was rather fun, and the sounds of the instruments were really nice too! I'm sure all the kids would love this. 

Above is a photo of ritual sacrifice tools. Basically it's used to carry in the pig, the goat, and the cow? I do find sacrifice ritual a bit barbaric. Perhaps things changed a lot from China to Taiwan? Here, everything is Taoist. So I guess they pray to everyone and everything? Hence all the rituals and offerings?

And here is the inside of the main hall. It contains all the tablet of previous scholars here. 

This is the main tablet, for Confucius. And above it are the main treasure of the temple, the wordings gifted from all the emperor of China to the school. I will share more details on it in the next post!

Leaving you here with a photo of lotus found in the temple garden. Lotuses have been appearing a  lot in my life in 2023. I can't wait to show you the most beautiful lotus I saw in Nagoya! But that will have to wait.... Got to finish my Taiwan post, and I am still only half way through! Lol.