Taichung's Elevated (Uplifting?) Vision

The mall under the new Feng-yuan train station due to open March 2016.

        Since there was no more Major League Baseball to occupy my mornings after the Mets lost the World Series, I got back on the bike to take a ride, but this time, I headed south along the Han River towards Taichung Park instead of north towards Feng-Yuan. I decided to visit the "First Elevated Railway Exhibition:Visions of a Future Life" building at 381 Dong-Guang Road on my way to the Taichung Confucian Temple at 30 Shuang-Shih Road, Section 2. I had passed by the temple many times and though their gardens would be a great shady place to relax and read a book.                          
     What could bring Taichung out of the doldrums of the 1990's? It was obvious that Taichung could not go on as it was. It was a city that had been teetering between the run-down downtown  business district, Taichung Train Station and Park. Something had to give.  The modern world had left Taichung stale and moldy; without a soul, and with an antiquated rail system. In 2006, The Executive Yuan approved the Taichung Metropolitan Area Elevation Railway Project. The project would also jump-start urban renewal near the Taichung and Feng-Yuan stations.  The exhibition hall opened in November 2012. For three years, I had been wondering what it looked like inside the long one-story building that resembled a train car. I parked the bicycle and headed inside.

I was the only visitor in the exhibition hall that morning. Two guides greeted me. They told me it was free to enter and they handed me a brochure in English; all the exhibits had placards in Chinese. Through a maze of 6,000 square feet, I circled the hall observing the scale model displays of the ten new railway stations, engineering technology, and audio-visuals of construction projects. It was pretty dry stuff but, for the price of admission, I couldn't complain. Occasionally I could hear the rumble of a train passing behind the exhibition hall. Overhead were the elevated concrete pylons for the new Taichung rail-line. Three years ago, before a station was built, the exhibition would have meant more, but watching the new line under construction in real time was far more fun than seeing the models.                      
      Taichung has needed something uplifting; more than just the face-lift that Mayor Hu gave to the Westside replacing  cemeteries and rice paddies with high rise condos and a new business district. It only made Taichung worse; not only was the old town still dilapidated but the quaint country feeling of the greenery was turned into soulless steel and glass. 

Besides reconnecting the parts of Taichung that had been dividing the city for over a hundred years, raising the rails above street level will have another very important objective: to save lives.  There have been numerous accidents involving vehicles and pedestrians on the grade level tracks through busy Taichung streets. Some accidents are deliberate, some because of malfunctions such as the one at the crossing just next to the exhibition hall at the end of Xing-Lin Road. 
     Go up Xing-Lin Road a few blocks to Shuang-Shi, Section 2. When you see the white church with the tall spire atop of which is a golden Mary holding baby Jesus, turn left. At that shady intersection, you can not only get pie in the sky but a blue plate special at the old Taiwan Railroad car converted into a restaurant; that's the kind of conversion I like! Soon, on your left, you will see the golden-tiled roof of the Confucius Temple. 

     Pray tell, there are no monks or nuns at the Confucian Temple. It is a memorial more than a place of contemplation. To me, the temple complex is an eerie place with more closed doors and gates than ones that are open. The property was a middle school for a while after an immense Japanese shrine was desecrated with the coming of the KMT. Beyond its far side lies a private garden and shrine to KMT soldiers who had fought in the war. The Temple complex, completed in 1976, is a replica of Song Dynasty architecture and is about as real as Cesar's Palace in Las Vegas, the difference being concrete vs. prefab gypsum board. Just pray your children pass their tests and get into a good college, I guess. 

   The temple was void of visitors on the morning I went; only a few middle-aged women playing ocarinas with a Karaoke. A large paper display board listed a number of events the temple was hosting, but all of them had passed.  

     As I strolled around the grounds and looked into the cold shrines, I became weary, and retired to the garden to read my copy of The Phantom of the Opera. It was there in the garden, under the banyan trees, I saw the plaque: "There are no shortcuts to attaining Confucian virtue," the plaque read. Ah; now I understood. It was like the gate in Monty Python's Holy Grail where no man (or woman, Confucius forbid) 
shall pass.                                        I sat on an uncomfortable cold stone bench in the courtyard not far from a tiny pond surrounded by a pointy wrought iron fence. The arched cement bridge across the pond was overkill. After only a few pages of The Phantom, I felt an itching at my legs; the mosquitoes guarding the temple grounds knew I was unworthy of sitting there and soon drove me away. I got back on the bike and rode further south on Shuang-Shi, Section 2 until I reached Taichung Park; my respite. On a rock by the turtle pond, with white pigeons flying around me, I found my peace.

      “Taichung’s Elevated (Uplifting?) Vision” is the double-entendre title of this article about the bike ride I took to the train exhibition and Confucius Temple. The point is that one was more uplifting than the other. 

      The lofty goals of Confucian philosophy are higher than Taichung’s new elevated train section but, since some people are fools that don’t stop, look, and listen for danger, and the crossing guard sometimes malfunctions, it is better to raise the stakes than risk a miscue at the pearly gates that would hold up the masses from getting to where they are bound. 

A replica of the Willow Wash near the old Taiwan rail line