 |
 Changhua
 Buddha
Changhua was a small town that I didn't find too terribly striking,
save for the giant Buddha overlooking the city. It was an impressive
complex -- it wasn't just Buddha, it was an entire parkland, devoted
for lazy strolling and quiet contemplation. The Buddha was large enough
to enter, and inside there were several displays of pivotal points in
his life. My favorite one was "The Buddha avoids the temptations
of the coquettish witches." The Buddha was designed in such a way
that you could look out every one of his orifices, including his third
eye! However, they had blocked off the entrance to his head. It made
me wonder what the point was of going inside in the first place! At
least the Buddha in Hong Kong had a piece of the real Siddhartha.
The complex that contained the Buddha was impressive, and it was perfect
for lazy walks or quiet contemplation. A lot of work had been put into
a phony stream running down the hillside, and the occasional chatter
of jungle animals would pipe in over loudspeakers to make your journey
back to nature complete. Despite it tackiness, I really liked the place.
It was one of the more peaceful refuges in Taiwan. We didn't spend all
that long in Changhua -- just enough to explore the Buddha complex.
|
Fun with signs
I want to gripe about street signs, seeing as how I have a little
space. There have always been several different competing systems
to romanize the pronunciation of Chinese characters, and it seems
that the official Chinese government's system, pinyin, has won
the day in most institutions. But the Wade-Giles system is alive
and well in Taiwan, albeit in a very bastardized form. See, in
linguistics, there are unvoiced stops such as p, t, and k. When
you voice the stops, they become b, d, and g. When the system
was invented, you wrote sounds in the following fashion:
|
Phonetic Sound
|
Wade-Giles notation
|
|
p
|
p'
|
|
b
|
p
|
|
t
|
t'
|
|
d
|
t
|
|
k
|
k'
|
|
g
|
k
|
Now, I won't pass judgement on whether or not this is a screwy,
counter-intuitive, clumsy system -- that's for you to judge. The
fact remains that as long as it is used consistently, it's an
accurate method for expressing the phonemes of the language. However,
the apostrophe is an annoying and often informationally unnecessary
embellishment to communicate meaning, and is probably quite a
bit more mysterious to the Chinese than to English speakers. Hence,
the Taiwanese typically abandon the usage of it; thus Taipei is
actually Taibei, Kenting is Kending, etc. To make
things worse, the popularity of pinyin and general carelessness
makes romanization even more unpredictable: at one time I spotted
a sign for Jenai Street, and half a mile later on the same
road, there was a sign for Ren Ai Street. This is all the more
reason to start learning how to recognize Chinese characters when
you're in Taiwan: at least they remain the same!
|
|
 |
Taichung
|
|
