The next morning, after a good breakfast, we got a drop to the Wenwu (civil / military) temple, thinking that Friday would be a good day to go since this was one of the most popular spots and would be sure to be thronged on a weekend, even in this time of coronavirus. For me, FOMO won out over wanted to be alone, so I went along. The temple was indeed quite empty, and climbing up we found the famous views over its rust-coloured roofs to the blue lake, all very beautiful. Along the hillside behind the temple were relatively newly built grey stairs, heavily carved, leading up to monumental grey friezes and what can only be described as Chinese totem poles – I am sure there is a term for all of this, but my knowledge of architecture, leave alone Chinese architecture, is pitiful at best.
In one of the halls, one of the civil halls and dedicated to doing well at exams, there were machines dispensing advice from the analects. The GF was slightly miffed to receive one advising him to work harder. I tried out an older, rather raggedy looking one, was delighted to find it was a little clockwork mechanism: the figurine of a woman bowed, turned around and went towards a temple behind her. The temple doors entered, she went in, they shut and reopened, and she re-emerged, with a tiny yellow scroll in her outstretched hands. This she let fall into a little bowl from which I collected it and used the provided pin to poke out the advice. Unfortunately it was fairly uninteresting, about filial piety.
Our walk along the lake was rather mixed. It was hot, and rather too much of the walk was along the road, with no pavement. Some of it was on a wooden walkway which occasionally dipped away from the road and was shaded by trees, but one never really felt away from concrete, as I have complained before. My favourite part of the walk was when a walkway veered off and took us down, nearly to the level of the water, but the water was low so it was mostly grey mud, with immense concrete drainpipes sticking up like a scene from Mario world.
A while later we arrived at the nine frog stack, one of the sights of Sun Moon Lake. This was, as the name suggests, a stack of nine frogs, progressively smaller and one with a leg flailed out, which was used to measure the water level in years past. Today all nine frogs were visible, though it was set in a sort of yoni which made me wonder if it’s ever covered up these days. From here the walk was all along walkways and far from the road, past immense bamboo outcrops, so it was very pleasant, but one of our companions decided to put on tinny music on a phone, which enraged me so much I practically ran most of the way.
We arrived in I-Thao, the aboriginal town, and it was something of a wasteland. Set up as a tourist trap, but completely empty except for the touts waving desultorily at us to sell boatrides. The story of Sun Moon Lake is that the Thao tribe followed a white deer to reach its shores, so that branding – can’t call it anything else – was everywhere, as was ‘aboriginal’ branding, with dance shows, etc. Not very appealing, and sad.
Here, after lunch, we decided to return so called a cab and came back for tea and coffee and another mediocre dinner.