The round house at 39 NanHai Road, Taipei. You’ll need to read Chinese or have a translator with you to know what the dishes are. We arrived early to get video of the food before others arrived. The work in preparing everything would be huge. Could never be possible in Australia. Feast your eyes on this ‘slightly a bit-long’ video. The location is half a dozen blocks south from North Gate to where NanHai Road should be then turn right. Will return there next visit.
(Also within the same unique-styled building are several art shops downstairs).
This 1956 Cadillac is one of two Chiang vehicles within the huge memorial hall at Taipei.
A still photo on the wall partially shows WH Donald (behind CKS and wearing glasses) the Australian journalist who was a huge help to CKS and credited with saving the life of his wife Madame Soong.
With connection to newspapers and magazines in USA, WH Donald was able to promote CKS to the world. Time and LIFE magazines survive today with his articles on the Chiang (Republic of China) and Mao’s Chinese communists joint war effort against Japan.
TRIVIA: WH Donald would not eat Chinese food – which must have been interesting. Upon his death Chiang gave him a state funeral – how much of his grave would be left today after the Cultural Revolution? Donald is therefore almost forgotten yet in his era was known as “Donald of China”. (See Wikipedia link below which contains his some of interesting story).
Meanwhile in Taiwan the numerous statues of the former dictator are regularly vandalized by students with many already removed and in storage. The name of CKS Memorial Hall may be changed before long, the big question is what will become of the huge bronze statue of Chiang inside the upper hall where there is a changing of the guard every one hour watched by hundreds of tourists?
Years ago I could not help comparing CKS Memorial Hall with Gracelands in Memphis USA where there should also be a couple of Cadillacs from the same era.
“On Saturday, March 11, 2017, I had the occasion to take an Australian visitor, JH Harding, on a tourist excursion, and chose to go to Chihnan Temple, the famous and historic temple of Lu Dong-ping, one of the Eight Immortals, in the hills on the southeast edge of the Taipei basin. At an elevation of about 360 meters, it is also a popular tourist destination because of the 20-minute cable car that soars over the forests of the Taipei Zoo area; and in spring the azaleas are blooming profusely. In the past ten years I have on many occasions taken foreign visitors to see the temple “seer”, Mr. Guo, who believes that his powers and knowledge are transmitted from the Immortal Lu, a deity particularly adept in medical practice; and though past incidents it could be presented that Mr. Guo may have at least telepathic capacities”.
“Having heard from my elder sister that mother was steadily but slowly sinking due to advancing dementia, on March 11 I asked Mr. Guo to pray that Nellie (mother) would pass away quickly and painlessly. Mr. Guo said that he would transmit that request and that Jesus would come to receive mother into the next world because Jesus is the deity in charge in the Christian part of the world.
As it happened, within less than 48 hours Nellie evidenced an episode portending impending death”.
(Linda concludes – with details of her return visit to the temple 10 days later just after her mother’s death).
Mr Guo applied stamps to Linda’s documents concerning her mother.
“I gave Mr. Guo several pages of printout of Nellie’s (Linda’s mother) obituary and photos, which included her date and place of birth, standard information for communication with the spirits. Mr. Guo said that because Nellie had done good deeds all her life and accumulated abundant good karma, she would not be subjected to rebirth. He drew an elaborate diagram of the layers of the heavens and said that she had ascended to the realm of “Tai Ji” (great extreme), not yet to the height of “wu Ji” (boundless), and that in that realm there were five sectors: north, south, east, and west, as well as center. She was in the Western sector that was governed both by Jesus and by Buddha and she would slowly rotate between the two for thirty years, while showering blessings on her descendants, before moving on to the higher realm. I expressed to Mr. Guo the hope that her grandson Roger would inherit Nellie’s generosity and sweet disposition, and he said that was likely to happen. He concentrated on the papers I brought with a hand gesture of blessing, and then proceeded to place a large charm printed on yellow paper next to it and to stamp the paper with a large seal he took out of his desk, wetting the seal with the usual red wax ink in a box. Here I took pictures. Mr. Guo said he would keep the papers on the altar of the Immortal Lu for a while; the usual practice is to burn the papers to transmit the message up to heaven. We bowed and left”.
Mr. Guo’s stamp impressions.
“PS. Was it more than a coincidence that Nellie began to slip from a life less than two days after the March 11 request to Mr. Guo? We can neither confirm nor disprove supernatural forces of the universe. We do have an apparent precedent. About five years ago I brought a German woman named Ulrika to see Mr. Guo; she requested that he help her 87-year-old mother overcome her constant and intense anxiety and fear of death. Mr. Guo prayed, and Ulrika herself felt better. When she returned to Germany a few days later, she found her mother calm. Or if belief in the spirits is merely human self-consolation, then so be it”.
The round house at 39 NanHai Road, Taipei. You’ll need to read Chinese or have a translator with you to know what the dishes are. We arrived early to get video of the food before others arrived. The work in preparing everything would be huge. Could never be possible in Australia. Feast your eyes on this ‘slightly a bit-long’ video. The location is half a dozen blocks south from North Gate to where NanHai Road should be then turn right. Will return there next visit.
Howdy 