To Market To Market Jiggity Jig

M is for Market

Night Market.

Oooooohhhhh...sounds scary!

Don't let that word tourist on the sign fool you. It doesn't mean what you think it means and the night market at Hwahsi is teeming with locals. The only thing scary here though, is some of the unidentifiable food items for sale and the fact that this market is also known as Snake Alley.

No, its not crawling with snakes.

If only.

Instead, snakes are jauntily perched atop restaurant counters, their blood and meat waiting to be served up on a plate or in a glass. Shudder. Its not so much the snake entree that makes me shudder but the row upon row of rodents in glass cages lined up on the wall beside the menu. I could not get my head around these two things side by side.

Mice.

Menu.

Whyyyyy?

Because every entree needs an entree people. There's that whole crazy circle of life thing that happens in the animal kingdom, remember? They asked that you not take pictures in the snake stalls but I noticed online there are a few rule breakers out there. I'm not one of them so you'll have to trust me when I say live rodents in cages beside a menu acts as one terrific appetite suppressant.

There are six night markets in Taipei and Hwashi Night Market (Snake Alley) is one of the oldest. It sits in the former 'red light district', but that's been cleaned up and even the number of 'snake stalls' are much fewer than in days gone by.

As we traveled I made a few notes so I'd remember what I was seeing and how I felt. This particular night market was a place where my senses were in overdrive and my brain was racing to catch up with what my eyes were seeing. How do you look everywhere all at once? How do you sort out the pretty and the tasty...

from the things that make your stomach lurch?

Organs and kidneys and whatnot, oh my!

And what is that smell?

In all likelihood what you're smelling is almost always fish.

Keep in mind we're on an island.

An island that grows some ginormous carrots.

The produce here was amazing.

I think I need a cookie.

Cookies make everything better, don't they?

This is what we ate-

Helpful aren't I?

Regardless, this guy had some serious skilz.

The cookies were scrumptious and similar in taste and texture to a Madeleine.

Hey, maybe that's what the sign says?

It was hard to take pictures in the market because of the lights and the people and the everything. We were there just trying to take it all in...it's a fascinating place.

Before getting back on the subway we decided to try and find beautiful Lungshan Temple. We were standing just outside the market unsure of which way to go when an older Taiwanese gentleman noticed our confusion and attempted to point us in the right direction.

Evidently we still looked confused because suddenly he was waving for us to follow him and he led us all the way there, several blocks away. Would I do the same if I saw a confused tourist here?

I will now...

Kindness makes night in a foreign city feel less dark.

Incense and Innocence

If you're looking for the questions to this week's Hodgepodge you'll find them here.

Back to Asia and yes, it is day 10 of the A-Z challenge (day 8 in letters) and I'm still talking about Shanghai. We'll move on to another country shortly, but I did a lot in this amazing city and I gotta put my words and pictures somewhere.

I is for Incense

The kind that sort of knocks you down as you walk thru a Buddhist temple or ten while on a trip to Asia.

Growing up I'm sure I imagined everybody had a family much like mine. Life as seen thru the rose colored glasses of my childhood meant mostly everyone had similar traditions, habits and beliefs. I suppose in my whitebread suburban neighborhood just a hop, skip, and jump from the City of Brotherly Love that assumption was somewhat true. Of course people had problems and were searching for answers to life's biggest and most important questions, but it was the 1970's. The doors to our homes and heads had not yet been thrown wide open for complete strangers to dissect, discuss, and judge like they are in the age of the internet. We didn't really know so much about what went on behind closed doors in 1971 but I do know for a fact that none of my friends were Buddhist. My friends were Catholic and Jewish, Baptist and Methodist. Some were no religion at all, but I can say for certain I didn't know any Buddhists.

Back in 1971 Buddhism was a 'religion' for people who lived a world away. A world I would never see or know up close and personal. A world full of people who were nothing like me and whose paths would never cross mine and who for sure would not be sitting next to me in PTA meetings in a country called England. Not people I would learn to call friend...people with whom I would share the joys and trials of parenting teenagers in a foreign country. Not people who, while very different from me in terms of spiritual beliefs, were not so different in other ways.

Dear young naive self-

Just you wait for the future. Oh the things you don't know that you don't know.

Signed-

Older wiser self

Flash forward to 2012 and a life that's been lived more globally amongst people who practice everything from Atheism to Hinduism and I find myself wanting to understand it all just a little bit better. Not to practice, but to know and understand where my friends are coming from in matters of the heart.

I have to say that it felt a little bit strange to take pictures in this setting. Not so strange that I didn't do it but strange nonetheless. I compare it to how I'd feel sitting in church while tourists file by in a steady stream mid-prayer to photograph the altar and stained glass. Everyone was taking pictures though, including the people who were actually there to practice their religion, so when in Rome...

I visited two temples in Shanghai, The Jade Buddha Temple and the Jing'an Temple. I also saw Buddhist temples in Taipei and Hong Kong, no two the same but each one beautiful and detailed and, I have to add-bustling. Are our churches this crowded? Am I so determined to worship that I spend my lunch break in church? That I bring an offering? Methinks not.

Don't misunderstand...I am not a Buddhist and in fact, I only felt more confused after seeing all the many different Buddhas. I'm secure in my own belief in one God and his son Jesus who was born of the Virgin Mary and whose death and Resurrection give meaning and hope to a broken world. But there are many all around the globe and in my own backyard who don't share my beliefs. I saw a statistic that said low estimates of the number of practicing Buddhists in the world stands somewhere between 300-500 million people. That's not a small number.

The temples themselves all kind of made my jaw drop. Huge and gorgeous and smoky. The smell of all that incense made me a little loopy and also just a little bit nauseous. Mostly nauseous. I've never particularly liked the smell of incense and each temple had ginormous burners that were putting out smoke like there was no tomorrow.

Also, even monks have laundry.

Just sayin'.

I'm not sure you can really understand someone without knowing something about their belief system too. Where did we come from? What moral code will we live by? What are the customs and rituals that have meaning in our lives? And most importantly, what happens when this life on earth is done?

I walked thru these temples and read what was written and watched people practicing their religion (actually I'm not sure they call Buddhism a religion), and while I can't say I completely understand it I don't feel like I'm living in a vacuum either.

"The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are." ~ Samuel Johnson