Presbyterians in Taiwan

After the Qing Dynasty lost the Second Opium War with English and France, the Qing government was forced to sign the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858. The main purpose of the war had been to legal the sale of opium in China but one of the provision was for religious freedom in China. This meant missionaries could work without constraints.

Taiwan at that time was part of the Qing empire and so missionaries started work in Taiwan. The first such mission was from the British Presbyterians in Tainan in 1865, the second was Canadians Presbyterians around Taipei in 1873. Dr. George Leslie Mackay was the first Canadian Presbyterian missionary and the MacKay Memorial Hospital is still famous in Taipei.

Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell was the first Presbyterian missionary in Tainan and many of his accomplishments are still going strong here in Tainan. There is a local park named after him.

When Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese in 1895, these two Presbyterian churches were the only Christian churches in Taiwan. Japan had had trouble with missionary rivalries in Japan, so they prevented further missionary work from other religions in Taiwan until 1925. So the Presbyterians had a monopoly on missionary work in Taiwan for 65 years. By that time, the Presbyterian church had become indigenous and strong. Lee Deng Hui, the first elected president of Taiwan, was a Presbyterian. (Chiang Kai-shek the first unelected president of Taiwan, was a Methodist).

The writing on the front of this Presbyterian Tung-Men Church is the romanization of one of the aboriginal languages in Taiwan. When the missionaries came, they worked with the aboriginal people rather than the immigrants from China(Fujian) who were Buddhists and Taoists.

Dr. Maxwell also set up a seminary here in Tainan.

And the architecture of this school seems out of place in Taiwan until you realize that it was set up by Dr. Maxwell in 1885. This Chang Jung High School in Tainan, one of the best in Tainan.

This church is also from that time but I don't know its story.

Churches in Tainan

In Taiwan, the ROC(Republic of China) constitution guarantees the Freedom of Religion. In China, the PRC(People's Republic of China), the Communist Government does not recognize this right. 

In Taiwan, according to a Ministry of Interior survey 81% of Taiwanese practice some religion. Some of the breakdown is:

35%  Buddhism

33%  Taoism

5-6% Christian

In Tainan we have a lot of Temples(Buddhist and Taoist) and a lot of Churches(Christians). For me, the Churches standout because the Cross/Crucifix

stands out among all the Chinese characters. Here some of the Church fronts, and I know of several more that I have seen but forgot to take a picture.

 Lutheran

Baptist

Assembly of God

The Baha'i

I don't know

Church in Tainan

I don't know

Jesus is Lord

Full Gospel Church

Catholic

Seven Day Adventists

Another Church near the Campus

Mormons, I don't know where their Church is but I see their missionaries on the street all the time. White shirts, ties and bicycles.

Here is Christian church of Chinese origins.

End of the quarter(gardens)

Last week was the end of the winter quarter, all the final exams and homework assignments are over. It was a pretty hectic time, you could see the worry of the student's faces. The halls were not as loud as everyone was getting in their last words. It would have been a good time to visit a garden.


Of course the Art Department has a nice one.

At a high end apartment complex.

Sometimes with fish too.

The Civil Engineering Department has a nice one too.

It's nice to be surprised by a garden in the mist of chaos.

New Stores in Tainan/KaoHsiung

Globalization marches on, if you don't mind the price, whatever you have in the US you can get in Taiwan. Here are some stores than seem new to me.


I should try this place just to see how it compares.

It use to be that Taiwan has a half day of school and work on Saturdays but now civil servants and school children have Saturday off so I guess it's OK for this place now. (The legal work rate is 84 hours per 2 weeks, one half day on every other Saturday or more than 8 hours on some weekdays, but everyone works overtime anyway so it doesn't matter anyway.)

Pizza is big with the kids, Pizza Hut makes deliveries. Domino's too.

In KaoHsiung they have even more.

Ice cream is hot too.

With a nice display showing each cone disassembled so you know what you are going to get.

Now there is no excuse for getting lost in Taiwan.

And still going strong in Taiwan.

 And for the fashionably in secure, there are always the namebrand stores

Mail in Taiwan

Taiwan is a small island and so the mail delivery is excellent. Mail is delivered 3 times a day. Being as densely populated as Taiwan is mailmen on motorcycles are the norm. Motorcycles drive on the sidewalks as much as the roads so delivery is much easier(if dangerous for pedestrians).

The drop off boxes have two slots, one for ordinary(green) one for urgent/airmail(red). But with delivery three times a day, I think ordinary mail is a one day trip.

There are are a varieties of mailboxes, the simple standard box.

And a little more artistic.

Looking a little retro.

And they have junk mail too, just like US.

Good Ideas

Just walking around Tainan you run into good ideas. Here are some I liked. Here is an old building from Japanese time. It probably has a leaking roof, the solution is just to build another roof on top. I saw this solution in QiShan also.

Here one of the old buildings on campus is "Earthquake protected with steel gridders that match the gray cement.

Here is part of a lawn watering system with PVC plastic pipes attacked to the building, holes drilled into the pipes and values used to direct the flow.

Bicycles carrying more than one person sometimes 3 or more. The soft seat in the back allow women in skirts to ride sidesaddle.

What's a busy mother to do?

Roof based solar hot water heaters.

For construction sites, it's hard to get enough space to bring in a dumpster, the streets are too narrow. So these fiber glass baskets can be filled and then removed with a flatbed truck with an attacked crane.

Vegan Stuff in Taiwan

The vegetarian way is becoming more popular in Taiwan as people become more interested in health.

Even the displays for for dishes show more green than meat.

Popeye in KaoHsiung, the sea port, seems an appropriate logo for this vegetarian restaurant.

There are a lot of specialty restaurants build around some some vegetable, like corn in this case.

With varieties of the specialty.

But in Taiwan, the vegetarianism still has a Buddhist background as this sign shows with the Buddhist symbol(backwards swastika) shows. The characters in blue and those in white on a red background are those for vegetarian.