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| 2008/10/16 17:57:52瀏覽5416｜回應2｜推薦4 | |
Do you know what will you see and what you should never miss around here? Not only to visit the traditional architecture of the largest Confucius Temple in Taiwan but also to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Lotus Pond. Meanwhile, I’ll take you to see some interesting instruments of Chinese ancient music. First, this entrance door is called Pan Gong 泮宮 (It’s a Side Gate). The Pan Gong is the name of a school in ancient time. At that time, everyone entering this door would start their learning in school. Traditionally, there must be a school next to each Confucius Temple. It’s the place to teach classics and Confucianism. Now we may see, Confucius Temple over here and the school called Minglun Hall over there. O.K. Follow me please. Here is the Lotus Pond. If you walking around the pond, you may see the beautiful scenery and lots of Chinese-style architectures. The famous attraction is the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas (over there, in front of a little hill, can you see it?) Yes, those are two towers behind a dragon and a tiger. You may go inside the mouth of Dragon and go out though the mouth of Tiger. But don’t ever go inside the mouth of tiger because that will bring bad fortune to you. All right, here is a statue near us in the middle of Lotus Pond. It’s the tallest statue on water in Southeast Asia. It’s the statue of the Shuantian Emperor（玄天上帝）which is 72 feet (22 meters) high. There’s a story about him. Long long time ago, Shuantian Emperor was a butcher. He killed so many animals because he sold pork and chicken. Then he felt guilty and regret so he decided to cut himself, paunched his stomach and gut. He cleaned his stomach and gut in order to clean his guilt. Of course he was dead but finally became a god rising to the heaven. His stomach and gut still left in the world. A few years later, something strange happened. The stomach became a turtle and the gut became a snake. The turtle and snake were so bad just like devils that everyone was afraid of them. Shuantian Emperor was very angry at them so he took a sword to defeat the turtle and snake. Now we may see, Shuantian Emperor sits there, takes a sword which is 38.5 feet (12meters) long in his right hand and the turtle and snake are under his feet. Originally, Shuantian Emperor sat like this, but now he sits like this. Do you know why? Because his right foot feels a little tired and needs to take a rest. O.K. Just kidding. Anyway, it’s a legend. In the following, it’s the High Wall. Why this high wall stands here in front of the temple because one student of Confucious named 子貢 praised the knowledge and wisdom of Confucius being so high just like a high wall that ordinary people cannot see through the wall. Anyone has to try his best to find the door and enter by it, otherwise he cannot see its beauty in this temple. It means there’s no short cut for anyone if he wants to follow Confucius. From this picture of sculpture, we may see the brife story of Confucius：Confucius was born more than 2500 years ago. He established the first private school in China and insisted on teaching without discrimination. He had about 3000 students in his life and 72 among them had great achievements in history. His spirit of teaching according to the abilities of students and endless love of teaching was respected and followed by all education successors. He was honored as“ Ta-Cheng (means Great Achievement ) ,The Greatest Sage and the First Teacher, Kong Zi”. All right. Behind the wall, there’s the half moon Pool. It’s is a semi-circular pool in higher learning institution and there’s an arch bridge upon the pool. In ancient time, if you got the champion in the national examination, you could walk though this bridge to the Confucius Temple. Now congratulations, we’re all champions. Please walk through the bridge. By the way, as to me, it’s also a bridge of love. Because I had been dated with my girl friend here more than 20 years ago and now she is my wife. Now I would like to introduce this Confucius Temple. It’s the largest one in Taiwan. It was first built more than 300 years ago. Then because it was damaged by storms, so it had been rebuilt twice during the Ching Dynasty. The temple now we see was completed about 35 years ago. It is modeled after the temple at Qufu in Shandong Province in China. Qufu is the homeland of Confucius. The whole Confucious Temple area is about 6,000 meters squared (about 1.5 acres). Now we’re passing the Lingxing Gate 櫺星門. The Lingxing is a star with wisdom which can make us more clever. O.K. There’re two entrances doors in the both side, one is the Gate of Politeness and the other is the Path of Righteousness. In ancient time, everybody should go through the side doors in order to show respect to Confucius and understand what’s the meaning of politeness and righteousness. Here’s the Dacheng Gate 大成門, the Gate of Ceremonies. The Dacheng Gate is the entrance to Dacheng Hall. We may find, it’s really different from the other temples, no guardian deities were painted on the doors, instead, there’re lots of decorative studs protruding from the wood. Because Confucius never talked about ghosts or gods so maybe he didn’t need deities to protect him in fact. Now we see are the East and West Wu 東廡西廡.“Wu” is the corrider like side-building surrounding Dacheng Hall. The East Wu and West Wu house the tablets of the outstanding disciples of Confucius and past great scholars who did much to promote Confucianism. Do you notice it? Unlike the other temples, no couplets are inscribed on the column because of the proverb “Do not flaunt your writings before Confucius”. O.K. That main constrution is Dacheng Hall（大成殿）. It imitates the Tai Ho Palace（太和殿 The Hall of Supreme Harmony） in Peking. Please notice the ridges (屋脊), you may see the statues of flying birds and walking animals standing on it. According to the numbers of these statues, we may know which level of the constrution is. The Confucius Temple has nine statues, it’s the highest level. In front of the Dachen Hall, the hightened base is a stage for performing Yi Dance. Yi Dance 佾舞 including a procession of music and dance for celebrating the birthday of Confucius every year. The Dachen Hall houses the tablets of Confucius, Four Sages and Twelve Philosophers. Here we may also see some interesting instruments of the ancient music. We call this music “Eight Tones and Ceremonial Music 雅樂八音”. The instruments include eight tones because all instruments are made of eight kinds of materials：Jin(Metal), Shi(Stone), Si(String for instrument), Zhu(Bamboo, ex. flute), Pao(Bottle-gourd), Tu(Clay), Ge(Leather) and Mu(Wood). Can you find which one is metal, stone, string, leather or wood? Let’s look, hear and guess it！It’s fun？ All right, Confucius is actually a wonderful teacher. He really influences the world a lot. He taught us to pay more attention to love and care about families and other people. He had ever said it’s a great pleasure to have friends coming from far from away. So, finally, I would like to say, welcome you again with all my heart because you are our friends coming from far from away. All right, that’s all my introduction. If you have any question, I’ll try my best to answer you. Thanks for listening and thank you very much! |
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