Tainan is, well, not a pleasant smelling city, at least on its larger roads. The stink is varied too: drains, rotting vegetables, mould, vermin, stale food and oil, other forms of filth. I felt a bit ill last night as we went for a post-dinner stroll, our first real exploration of the town. We went first to the Matsu temple, which glittered under the waning moon and the electrical lights. The goddess herself, stocky, massive and with uptilted eyes, stood in the centre of a court of maidens, demons and deities. It’s an old place by Taiwanese standards, along 400 years, and is one of the few places in the country that I’ve visited that also felt old.
We were hurried out at 9 on the dot as the temple closed, but we had half an hour for the Chihkan tower so we hurried over there. The tower itself is barely there, just excavated bricks, and it has been replaced by four pavilions of which two remain. Once these pavilions looked onto the setting sun; now, with the city around them, it’s unimaginable. The back entrances of one were shaped like vases and on the lintels was a bas relief of a rabbit on a banana leaf, with the same pose and expression it might have if it were on a flying carpet that was not quite in its control.
The other, upstairs, had a shrine to the lord of pencils and one could throw two poes, moon-shaped wooden blocks flat on one side and curved on the other. If both landed curved side up, the answer was no; if both landed flat side up, the answer was divine laughter. If one was up and one was down (yin and yang), the answer was yes and one could take a holy pencil. I got three divine laughs in a row before the fourth unlucky throw got me a pencil (the notice on the wall said one was allowed to keep trying until one got a yes).
On the way back we walked through alleys as much as possible, and they did not smell so badly. In fact, in opened into a small playground flooded with the hectic night fragrance of pink jasmine.
We returned to have our mango jelly from the bakery next door. It was excellent.