Oh My Goddess!

In the past two days, my sister and I have watched 20 episodes of How I Met Your Mother. For those of you who watch the show (GINGER!! :D), you know how awesome and addicting that show can be. We’ve been watching the show as a way to get over our jetlag (that’s why we spent 9-12PM watching it Friday evening), but seeing as I am up at 6AM Saturday morning, I’m thinking EPIC FAIL.

We went to Longshan Temple (or Lungshan Temple, 龍山寺) the afternoon we landed in Taipei.

Quick history lesson/geography lesson/Taiwanese facts about Longshan Temple!

Located in the district of Manka of Taipei, it was founded in 1738 and dedicated to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. It was rebuilt in 1919 and completed in 1924.

Longshan Temple always keeps it nature as a Buddhist temple, but also houses many deities of Taoism, showing the tolerant mentality of the Taiwanese people.

It is well known that the statue of Kuan-in (Goddess of Mercy) in the temple survived the bombing from the Allied aircrafts on June 8, 1945. The whole main hall and a part of the right annex were burned out during the air raid, but the statue of Kuan-in remained completely intact. Crazy, seeing as it’s made of wood and the whole temple was practically burnt to the ground.

One more thing, my dad’s grandfather helped work on the rebuilding of the temple and one of the pillars was actually carved by him.