Day 23: Zhishan and Chiang Kai-shek Former Residence and Garden

My aunt and I climbed a mini-mountain today called Zhishan (shan means 'mountain') as well as visited a huge garden in the middle of Taipei where Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Madame Chiang used to live.

The staircase up the mountain was gorgeous and made of carved stone, and the whole way up was lined with intricately carved pictures. The staircase was funded by the temple at the top of the mountain, which I thought was strange because it must have cost an enormous amount of money to have that staircase built. Apparently temples have a lot of wealth in Taiwan, just like people donate a lot of money to churches in the US. Here is a picture of my aunt on the staircase pointing at the Guanyin along the way to the temple.

This gate was at the top of the staircase. Behind the gate on the left is the temple, and the right is an open courtyard.
I really like this tree in front of the temple. It is so flat and orderly; anyone would be freaked out to see a tree like that growing in nature. The view from the edge of the courtyard was also pretty nice, although my aunt considered it really ugly. I guess she is used to seeing Taipei's huge expanse of buildings, and if you look at it as a bunch of old grubby buildings it really does look ugly. But it is also cool to see the enormity of Taipei. I don't think this photograph even covers half of it! Maybe 1/6. The mountain is covered in green foliage and trees, but a wooden walkway leads visitors to different sites around the mountain. One site had rocks with fossils in them, although you could tell people had chipped away at some of the fossils. There was also a 300-year-old tree and an old lookout where cannons used to be placed, although nothing of the lookout or the cannons was actually there. I took a picture of some Chinese graffiti carved into some stone which I thought worthy because it must have taken some skill and patience to carve difficult Chinese letters into stone. At one point we came to a place that said there was an elephant-shaped rock and a deep hole in a rock made by water, but we couldn't find it so we thought we were supposed to go off the path into the woods. The mountain was really steep, and suddenly I realized I was covered in mosquitos!! I was so disgusted, I freaked out and killed some while they were still sucking my blood. My aunt had seemed surprised that I was wearing shorts when we left the apartment, but I didn't think anything of it because I had rubbed on a little ointment that I thought had a strong smell. I didn't realize mountains in Taiwan had so many mosquitos!! I have definitely learned my lesson.

Next we headed to Chiang Kai-shek's former residence. Although his house is under construction until November so we couldn't go in, the gardens are huge and magnificent. I couldn't believe this enormous garden was in the middle of Taipei, the land must be worth a ton of money! Plus he and his wife had this huge garden all to themselves and they probably didn't have time to walk around it anyway because they had to lead a nation. Chiang Kai-shek is credited for modernizing Taiwan and making it prosper, so in my opinion it is ridiculous that he needed this huge garden for time he didn't have.


It was very nice though. The face in the garden below looks Asian, no?

Also, I know this picture turned out bad and just looks like green stuff, but all of the black dots on the plants are beautiful butterflies! There were so many, my aunt and I were completely amazed to see that many. Plus we were in the middle of Taipei City, which makes butterflies an even rarer sight. The flowers must have been specifically attractive to butterflies.

I found this row of yellow flowers (called shrimp flower in Chinese) very beautiful, especially against the red of the Chinese gazebo in the Chinese garden.
Also in the Chinese garden was a lotus pond with some blooming flowers. See the green thing in the center? That is called lotus root and Chinese people slice it and eat it up eagerly. It has holes like Swiss cheese from the circles which you can see in the picture which may be seeds.
On the way back we saw this HUGE bird!! It is about a foot tall not including its legs and has pretty blue rings around its eyes. As my aunt and I slowly crept forward to take a better look at it, it would slowly move toward the bushes and gingerly place each step. The way it moved was so cute!

Eventually when it felt it was safe, it scampered off into the bushes.

Lastly before we left, my aunt and I climbed a very tall, steep set of stairs. The picture is actually the view going down.

It wasn't that hot outside today, but it was still very steep. When we got to the top, we saw a white open structure with more stairs that led to...Nothing! There was a sign that stated all of the things you could see from this high vantage point, but unfortunately the trees must have grown up around the structure. It was still fun to climb the steps though.