First week in Taichung

It is my first time to visit beautiful Taiwan. Having the responsibility of being International volunteer, there are five members and I working in Yuan Bao temple. 

There was a lantern painting contest held by the temple. This contest is organized annually before Chinese New Year since 2008. There are three categories of participants from elementary schools in Taichung:

i) Year 1 and 2

ii) Year 3 and 4

iii) Year 5 and 6

The best two masterpieces from each category will receive a laptop as their reward.

The judgement of the lanterns will be on the 2^nd of February by a few art teachers from different elementary school. The kids are so creative with their masterpieces. Since 2015 is the year of the goat, they used a lot of materials like cotton, newspaper, and sponge to make their lantern look like a sheep. All the lanterns looked so vivid. On behalf of this event, we also took part in the activity and here is my lantern.

Every morning, after we check in, we are assigned to help the aunties to clean the altars in each level of the temple. My first impression of this temple was so great because the temple looks so grand due to its 5-level building which consists of different gods and emperors. The people there is so kind and considerable. They build slanted platform and lift so that even if you are in wheelchair, the movement of the person from place to place to pray will not be a problem.

We had a brief meeting with the management committees of this temple. They welcomed us with warm-hearted. Due to some communication barrier, I assisted them to translate the information in English so that my partners who are from Thailand, Indonesia and Canada can understand well.

On the next day. Things went as normal. We do our job scope by lending a hand to the aunties who are in charge of cleaning section. After that, we were assigned to stick a 1 NT coin to a blessing card. The cards were then slipped inside the plastic plackets. Hence, these packets were called as "Wealth packet". The wealth packets will be distributed to the citizens at Taiwan High Speed Rail Station on the other day which will be decided by the person in charge of the temple. It is believed that people who receive the packets will gain more wealth in the future.

I think it’s good for the youngster to involve in the religious rituals because they can understand more about the purpose of each ceremony held by the temple at a certain time. Through my observation, there are some university students living in Taichung spend their holidays working in the temple. It is a good sign to see them helping out in the temple as the main God, Bao Sheng emperor in the temple will bless them and they will know their own religion and culture besides earning pocket money there.