P-day at Zouying and Lotus Lake

Dad and I took a day trip to Zouying to see where he served his mission 42 years ago. He didn't find much that was the same. However, Lotus Lake was still there with it's pagodas. 

The Lake was quite pretty, especially in a sea of city high rise buildings. It was like a breath of fresh air. It was nice to see many people just enjoying nature here at the lake.

This is the Tiger pagoda - one of the twin pagodas. They sit out in the Lake and you walk a zigzag pathway over the water to get to them. Dad says the path used to be more simple.

Here are the twin pagodas; tiger on the right and dragon on the left. You enter and exit through the mouths of the dragon and tiger. That is totally for tourist sake and have been added on.

Incense offering inside the pagoda.

Interesting view of the seven level pagoda - this is the dragon side.

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I like the hanging lanterns. I would like to see them lit at night.

So, the paintings tell the Taoist story of their "plan of salvation". I don't think too many are "saved" however. It seemed everyone had something awful in store for them in eternity. I like our plan better. 

Across the street from the pathway to the pagodas was this functioning Buddhist temple. The inside, above, was totally ornate with red and gold everywhere. We saw two little girls baibai-ing their ancesters, and then their fathers did likewise. I thought it would be inappropriate to take their photos but the little girls were adorable.  Below is the front of the Buddhist temple taken from out at the pagodas - you can see the zigzag pathway rails. 

This is written above the temple entrance. Dad figured out the writing. It says "defend life great god". The words above this, which you can't see here, say "loving beneficial temple". That must be the name of the temple. It was an interesting place.

This is the old city gate to Zouying. It is much older than the Chinese culture on Taiwan and dates from the old native culture. The architecture is very ancient (there was no date given). Of course it was attached to a wall that ran around the old city but all that is left is this gate. David remembers this from 40 years ago but also remembers that part of the wall was still visible then. Now it sits in the middle of a busy hi-way round-a-bout.

This might have been the best part of the day: Manguo Bing (mango ice).

It is really very good and consists of a shaved frozen sweetened ice milk concoction- similar but not the same as ice cream, with mangoes and sweetened condensed milk on top.  Very good!