1. Overview

I am a young technology enthusiast in Vietnam. I write blogs about myself, my hobby and my specialization. I have my own blog at https://pexea12.github.io/, which I intended to post some technical articles about things that I found interesting. However, I didn't manage to complete my intention. As you can see, I haven't written anything yet :( (I will surely do it this year).

By the way, I hope to use this Steemit blog as my personal blog. I will write about anything I like. This is my first article on Steemit so I will write about my trip to Taiwan last summer. This will be a 2-article serie. My second article will be posted tomorrow.

2. Introduction

I started my Taiwan trip on June 2017. This was a 5-day 4-night tour. I will summarize and briefly talk about my impressions about Taiwan. The pictures were not taken by me. Actually, I didn't take a single picture during my trip because I had to use Google Translate all the time to translate Chinese (I was lazy to switch to the camera mode).

The first one to be mentioned is visa permission. Because the tourism company took care of everything, we didn't have to worry much about this problem. I used to travel to Korea so it seemed to be easier to ask for a Taiwanese visa permission this time. After that, I figured out that I didn't need to have a Taiwanese visa to travel to Taiwan this time. The Korean visa was so powerful. The Taiwanese government would allow you to travel to Taiwan if you had a Korean visa in about 10 years. When I entered Taiwan from the airport, the police also checked my Korean visa carefully, using a specialized glass.

During my trip, I travelled from the North to the South by car. The first place is Taipei. After that, I visited Taichung. The last one is Tainan and Kaohsiung. The total distance was 500 kilometers.

3. Culture

My first impression about the culture was Taiwanese music. Teresa Teng (Đặng Lệ Quân), Wakin Chau (Châu Hoa Kiện) and Jay Chou (Châu Kiệt Luân) were very popular. Teresa Teng's songs were heared from any where. Some of them were well known in Asia such as Sweet on You (Ngọt ngào), The Moon Represents My Heart (Ánh trăng nói hộ lòng tôi) and I only Care about You (Em chỉ quan tâm anh). Wakin Chou had a legendary song Friends (Bằng Hữu) which was so popular. In the final day, the car driver who helped us travel during our trip sang that song to our group. That sounded touching. The tour guide said that in Taiwan, every time they sang that song, people often cried.

Beside some shopping malls that we had to visit (the obvious things that happen to every tour, which I really dislike), I had a chance to visit many temples of some great people which I admired and knew them from history. Guan Yunchang (Quan Vân Trường) was the one who appeared mostly at any temple. It was comprehensible since his loyalty, uprightness and heroism had become a legend that people from now and then learn from.

In Taipei, I also visited Shifen - a place where people often release a Chinese lantern into the sky to pray for good things to happen. If you watch You are the apple of my eyes (a famous Taiwanese movie about ardent youth), you may remember the scene that Ko Ching-teng (Kha Cảnh Đằng) and Shen Chia-yi (Thẩm Giai Nghi) walked side by side on the railway and released the lantern in Shifen. My family also released a lantern. 4 sides of the lantern had 4 wishes from 4 members of my family.

In Taichung, I visited Chiang Kai-shek (Tưởng Giới Thạch) monument. Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong (Mao Trạch Đông) are the ones that I really respect and admire. They were the founders of 2 countries (China and Taiwan). I used to dislike Chiang Kai-shek because of the influence of Vietnam and China (In 1946, Chiang Kai-shek attacked Vietnam by the way). However, after some careful investigations and researches, I had a different perspective about him. Although he was a militarist, his ideas are preserved and improved by the descendants nowadays.

I also visited Sun Moon Lake in Nantou. This was a beautiful lake which made me think about Ba Bể Lake in Bac Kan (Vietnam). I visited Xuanzang (Đường Tăng) temple and got to know more about his 17-year journey to the west (without Sun Wukong (Tôn Ngộ Không) and Zhu Bajie (Trư Bát Giới) in fact).

Wenwu (Văn Võ) Temple was an archaic place. The Wu temple (Miếu Võ) worshiped 2 national Chinese heroes: Guan Yunchang (yes, it's him again) and Yue Fei (Nhạc Phi). The Wen temple (Miếu Văn) worshiped Confucius (Khổng Tử), Mencius (Mạnh Tử) and a person who I didn't know about. I drew lots (a traditional way of Chinese people to anticipate the future) in both temples. The gods in Wen temple supported me a lot :), however unfortunately, the gods in Wu temple didn't give me the answer.

In Tainan, I visited Fo Guang Shan Buddha Temple (Phật Quang Sơn), a place which was considered as the Buddhism center of Taiwan. I was told that this is the place to keep one of three teeth of Buddha. I didn't know much about him although I had a chance to watch a short film about Buddha (This was a Chinese movie so I didn't understand much). I asked for a "lucky water" bottle and brought it home.

I stayed in Kaohsiung one night and flew to Vietnam the next day. In the evening, I wandered around the city. This city was much the same as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city. I felt so familiar with the atmosphere.

TL;DR

These are my thoughts about the culture and history of Taiwan and a summary about my trip. I was happy because I got to see a real version about the Chinese people which I read a lot from my books. Just for clarification, Taiwanese people are mostly from China but that doesn't mean they are the same as Chinese people at every point.

Bonus, here is the presidential office building.

Conclusion

My next article will be about the daily life and traffic in Taiwan. Stay tune!