Beat the Dog

We visited the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung for several days.  Traveling Taiwan via high speed train is easy and comfortable, so we decided to drive.  Taiwanese, for reasons I can’t understand, refuse to drive the speed limit.  They will block all lanes driving 15 kilometers per hour below the already conservative limit.  It is much worse than driving in Iowa.  The weather was slightly wet, but nice.  High temperatures were 80°F or 27°C.  The southern part of Taiwan sits below the Tropic of Cancer, so the climate is considered tropical.

Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan, but at only 3 million inhabitants, it is much smaller than Taipei.  It was interesting to see how wide the streets were, with no crowds anywhere.  The rapid transit system of the city is great, though simple and very few riders.  The stations have wonderful artwork-see the glass art at one station.  Apparently I have become accustom to congested Taipei, when I think that a city of 3 million people is like a small suburb.

The city has a large port and small outer islands.  We took a ferry to one of the islands for a seafood lunch, which I believe made me sick.  At one time, a significant rail system moved the freight to and from the port.  The rail is gone and trucks do the work.  The remaining warehouses that once stored sugar cane and pineapple are now homes to art studios.  The alleys have edgy street art.  The former rails are now gardens.  I watched steel coils being loaded on a ship bound for some metal stamping house. Within an hour, over 70 trucks unloaded their steel.  The port has artwork-see the shipping container sculpture.

The Dutch established the city in the 1600s but were expelled by the Ming dynasty in 1662. The original Chinese name for the city was translatable to “Beat the Dog”.   After the Japanese took over Taiwan in 1895, they renamed the city “High Hero” or Takao.  When Taiwan was awarded to China following the Japanese defeat in 1945, they renamed it Kao-hsiung, based on the romanization language translation of Takao.  

There are numerous shrines and temples in the city and parks.  At one shrine, we watched people pay 10 NTD to an automatic fortune teller machine.  The little robot delivers a fortune, which is very popular.  I’ve said it before, the Chinese are very superstitious.  After reading his fortune, one man began walking backwards.  I hope his fortune comes true.   Another temple is guarded by two animal heads.  You make a wish and walk into the dragonhead entrance and exit the tiger’s mouth.  I made a wish and walked through the heads, but my bad diarrhea didn’t stop, so I’m not a big believer of this temple and won’t return.

We had a nice time in Kaohsiung.  I enjoyed walking around the accessible port and watching the activities.  The art was free for viewing and everywhere.  If I were writing the travel guide for the city, I recommend you skip the dragon/tiger temple, but definitely spend some money on the automated fortune teller, and enjoy the nice tropical city of Beat the Dog.