Knowledge Trips for Away from Home

 Knowledge Trip

By Florence Huang

Staying in the classroom for one full day is boring and tiring. Some students want to learn new things, but not in a tedious way. A good way to do this is to take a walk or arrange an outing. There are some worthy places near Shih Hsin University to visit for the purpose of extracurricular learning. Some of them are really near and some will take you some time to get to. These are places for gain of knowledge and for learning in an easy way. They are exactly temples, a theater and a museum.  

Folk beliefs are important in Taiwan. In Jingmei night market, there is the Jiying Temple (集應廟). Although it is a small temple standing secretly in the market, it looks clean and colorful. It also gives people a hospitable feeling. In addition, there are some really nice stoneworks at the entrance. Jiying temple is a temple that gathers history, culture, and artistic value. The temple has a long history, and it is also a level-three historic site. Due to the history, it is an important folk belief center to the Jingmei residents. All of these make the Jiying Temple worth a visit.

Not only this, there is yet another temple which is really famous in the Wenshan District (文山區), but quite distance from Shih Hsin University. It is the Chih Nan Temple (指南宮). The Chih Nan Temple shrines and worships Taoist, Confucianist and Buddhist traditions within its four main halls and five

smaller halls. The temple’s main deity is Patriarch Lu

(呂洞賓). There are lots of legends about this deity, and most of them are very interesting. On the other hand, there are also a lot of appealing legends about the temple, such as couples should not go there or else they will break up. The legends make the temple popular and everyone wants to take a visit and to get a peep of the statue of this interesting deity and the legendary temple. 

Visitors should be prepared for a serious hike up the mountains to the temple, as it is known for its 1,000 staircases up the way, though in fact there are even more. Alternately, you can ride the Maokong Gondola (貓空纜車), the MRT Sky Tram,

from the Taipei Zoo and get off at the Chih Nan Temple Station. No matter what transportation you use, you will definitely enjoy your trip there to the Chih Nan Temple.

Close to the Jiying temple, there is a theater—the Wenshan Theater (文山劇場). It is the only theater in

Taipei that houses professional a theater, public art, a children’s library, a professional rehearsal hall, and more. At first, the theater put their focus on children’s education, so most of the dramas or exhibitions were for children. Later on, the Wenshan Theater wants to promote theatrical performances and draw the public’s attention to the dramatic art. Therefore, it now becomes a theater that not only presents dramas for young viewers but also dramas for adults, including dance performances and concerts. All the shows and schedules can be looked up on the Internet, and their tickets are available through the booking system on line. It is a place that is really interesting and educational.

Still one to place to go for a knowledge trip, again some distance away from Shih Hsin University, it is the National Human Rights Museum (國家人權博物館). It has academic collections and audio-visual services of the White Terror that had happened in Taiwan. The museum also organizes human-right-based speeches among other recordings. There is a White-Terror Memorial Park next to the museum. During the White-Terror period, the park is the place where political prisoners were detained,

imprisoned, and prosecuted. The exhibition in the barracks allows visitors a glimpse of what life was like during the White-terror Period. It can be a depressing place, but it is also a place that offers us a trip back to Taiwan’s history. All in all, the place is worth a visit. 

Temples, theaters, and museums are places where can learn something and gain knowledge. Some of them are very actively informative. Some of them are passively documentary archives for us to retrieve what we need. Still some, with horrifying ambience and haunting memories, take us back to a time when

cruelty befell. Whatever kind of knowledge trip you’re planning to go on, get up from you couch and stop living like a potato. Go out and learn!