this is a photo of the altar of heaven temple in tainan. the inside is so colorful and beautiful!! it is a place you can go to pray to the highest dao god, the jade emporer. in the 1st and 15th day of each lunar month, people will go there to pray for help from bad luck. i was there on the 15th day, and the temple was flooded with people making offerings and praying for good luck. the inscription you can see on the tablet over top of the temple says "yi," which is chinese for "one." in the dao religion, there is only "one" way, and that's what this means.
you can see a monk in the bottom right corner in purple. the big gold thing in the front is the place where you burn the incense after you've made your offering and said your prayer. this temple has no god in it, even though dao temples usually do, and its also over 300 years old!
thank you lonelyplanet, best travel guides ever, though i already knew most of this.
I get a little sad that they're called lonelyplanet...what are your life plans currently btw?
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