Heard an interesting thing on the radio today. The North Gate of Taipei (北門) or Beimen – that little arch surrounded by roads near the central post office – was formerly used for officials to pass through, while ordinary people entered the city through the south gate – this is why the gate is called “承恩門” as 承恩 translates to “to receive the benevolence or favor [of the monarch or emperor].” Another interesting point he mentioned is that normally city gates face in one of the four points of the compass – but the front of the north gate of Taipei, instead faces towards the highest point in Taipei – Qixing (七星) mountain in Yangmingshan (陽明山).
OK, so Mayor of Taipei Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has chosen a rather unfortunate title for his book 《白色的力量》，which translates literally to “White Power.” He’s not advocating white power in a racial sense, but rather he’s talking about taking the medical style (white coats) of diagnosis and extending it to politics. Hope it doesn’t get an awkward English translation at any point.
This made me laugh when perusing the DVD shelves at Eslite Bookstore in Gongguan:
The English title of the third DVD from the left reads, “The Military Wisdom of Mad Tse Tung, although the Chinese reads as normal. Not sure if this was a passive aggressive gesture from the English proofreader or just a genuine mistake. Probably a more accurate representation of the content anyway…
I was outside 7 11, when I saw this bicycle with two ribbons tied round it and decided to have a closer look. The yellow ribbon had already faded to nothing, but I assumed that it was in support of the Sunflower Student Movement, though if I’m wrong, feel free to comment below.
The red ribbon read:
Save the fire fighters
I searched online for this and found several linked websites and Facebook pages advocating for fire fighter rights, as below:
The websites all advocate for better working conditions for firefighters in light of recent events, in particular with reference to the explosion in Kaohsiung, and a later demonstration on August 18. Continue reading →
Have been showing my little sister round Taipei, which occasioned the customary visit to Taipei 101. After the guided audio tour around the top – which is basically an extended advertisement by the Taipei City Government – and the trawl through the layers of gift shops set up to make it feel like a complete tourist trap, we descended back to ground level and caught sight of this guy driving around the district:
The message on top of the car says “Long live China” then underneath it says “We’re all one family”. He’s a pro-reunification activist – hoping that China can incorporate Taiwan, which is currently an independent country – although the majority of people I saw reacted to him more with incredulity or amusement than anything else.
The area outside Taipei 101 is often an interesting place to visit, as Falungong practitioners meet with mainland tour groups, along with other tourists. Falungong is banned in Mainland China, after a mass rally was organized by practitioners, which Beijing saw as a threat to its authority.
Paul Farrelly, a doctoral candidate at Australian National University and contributor to eRenlai, did a slideshow on the Falungong protesters which gather around the main sites visited by mainland tourist groups in Taipei, watch it here:
On the bus to work this morning, I saw these stickers stuck below seats on the bus. They were stuck on in a rather inconspicuous way, which suggested they weren’t necessarily there to be seen.
I’d downloaded a program at work called Mojikyo, which allows you to type obscure and antiquated Chinese characters – which don’t have a unicode assignation (a system that allows for consistency in characters across different systems), as well as oracle bone and seal scripts, into Word with special fonts which modify modern Chinese characters. It also has something called Siddham characters, which I later learned from Wikipedia is a form of Sanskrit. I recognized the characters from in the picture below from playing around with the program:
I worked out that the character on all four of the outer sides of the picture were all the Siddham character . Through a little guess work I found out that the two vertical pillars within the circle were Buddhist mantras associated with Guanyin (觀音), also known as Guanzizai (觀自在) and Avalokiteśvara – who is incredibly popular in the Chinese-speaking world, and is known for his/her compassion for the suffering of humanity.
[On a side note, the ambiguity of Guanyin’s gender came under fire recently from a Christian preacher Kuo Mei-chiang (郭美江), whose comments sparked public outrage in Taiwan:
She starts off this diplomatically by saying: “Guanyin, this evil spirit, is neither male nor female…”
She’s also paranoid that Taiwan’s universities are being “invaded by gays” but that’s another story for another day. Back to Guanyin mantras on the bus…]
The mantras seem to be the same as this one:
It is pronounced “oṃ ma ṇi pa dme hūṃ” according to a website on different Buddhist mantras, which has been translated to English as “oṃ the jewel in the lotus hūṃ”, although there are questions about this translation which you can find out more about at the website.
One of my Taiwanese friends whose family is quite heavily into Buddhism told me that the first sticker is the “大寶廣博樓閣善住祕密陀羅尼咒輪” and that the second, which is below, is the “四解脫咒輪”, written in Tibetan script.
“大寶” can mean bodhisattva, or Dharma, “廣博” is broad or expansive, “樓閣” is pavilion, “善住” is one of the 36 guardian deities that is in charged with protecting from deadly injuries. “陀羅尼” is the Chinese for Dhāraṇī – which is a kind of protective charm which summarizes the meaning of a sutra.
The first sticker would seem to be to protect people from deadly injury, while the second is to help the dead move on after they’ve died, which fits in with what my friend told me when he said that it was likely that the bus had been in a deadly accident before, and the stickers were an attempt to exorcise the spirits of the dead. He said it wasn’t definitely the case but it was a possibility, and that this is part of Taiwanese culture, and it reminded me of my curiosity at flowers being tied to fences at the side of the road in the countryside in Ireland at accident black spots.
If anyone has any more information or corrections to make, suggestions are welcome in the comments section.
I’m going to continue to try and decode the Siddham characters on the first sticker, and will update in the comments section too. Here’s a list of websites I found pretty useful:
. Through a little guess work I found out that the two vertical pillars within the circle were 
