...."The largest freaking Buddha statue I’ve seen in Taiwan
Religion is a funny old thing in Taiwan. In day to day life you almost don’t see it. There’s the odd temple here and there blended into the landscape and outside of certain religious days/events, there’s no real schedule to attend them or anything.
It’s almost as if for most of the Taiwanese, religion is more of a superstitious convenience. It’s easier to attribute luck, Buddha, ghosts or something else for anything good or bad event that happens I guess.
That said, quite like the west you have the token religious populations but then you also have the die hards.
A few months ago now I was cycling through Hsinchu county and came across a place called Emei lake. As I cycled through Emei lake, out of the blue and seemingly in the middle of nowhere, popped up the biggest freaking Buddha statue I’ve ever seen.
My first glimpse of the statue was along an adjacent mountain. Piqued with curiosity as to what this statue was doing amongst random countryside I got closer and discovered the statue was deceptively gargantuan from afar.
Massive is a bloody understatement. This gargantuan Buddha statue comes in at 72 meters or 236 feet tall. Standing as close as I could get to the statue you really get a sense of being dwarfed by its size.
After I got home I hit the net for some further answers and turns out it’s a Maitreya Buddha; otherwise known as a future Buddha. From what I can gather he’s set to return at some point and well share his enlightenment with us or whatever it is Buddhas do when they return.
Next to the statue there’s some construction work for what I can only assume is going to be some sort of massive accompanying temple. I managed to convince the security guys watching over to let me on site for a quick photo and hopefully you can get a sense of the epic construction being undertaken here.
The building site is freakishly massive and quite impressive. Meanwhile I’m wondering how many millions a project like this costs and where the money comes in. Surely you need a bit more then random donations to erect something as massive as this.
As I cycled away with a newfound respect for Taiwanese architectural skills I couldn’t help but wonder the carnage should the statue ever fall over. Unlikely due to it’s weight I know, but cmon…. that things just begging to be toppled over by a typhoon.
Imagine the carnage if it fell onto the temple building!
August 31st, 2010 at 6:09 am Andy(Quote)
Most of the Chinese in Taiwan do not have a religion. Buddhism is a teaching which is why Buddhism is different throughout many countries in Asia where as a religion is the same no matter where you go.
Reminds me of where the teacher whispered a small story to the first kid in a classroom and was asked to tell it to the next kid and so forth until the 30th kid (last kid) stood up and said what he was told. The first kid was laughing at what the last kid had to say.
August 31st, 2010 at 10:07 pm Caffeinated SentryGnome(Quote)
i disagree.
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:32 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Aren’t most religions teaching? Whether it’s the Bible, Quran or some buddhist scriptures (?), they all set out to teach something don’t they?
There’s got to be some organisation (not in the company sense of the word) behind it for them to put together such vasts amount of money. There’s no way this construction job would be cheap, even by Taiwan’s standards.
September 4th, 2010 at 7:14 pm Andy(Quote)
I agree with the above statement but to the locals here it is all about money. From the time they are born till the time they die where they pack the coffin full of fake money and burn them in the end.
Here is a link I found online where they compare Islam and Buddhism. Link is just one example. Yo would need to do quite a bit of reading though by clicking on the 5 top categories.
http://www.islamandbuddhism.com/1.html
April 18th, 2011 at
[...] Great Standing Maitreya Buddha who rises above the shore of Emei Lake near Beipu in Xinzhu County, Taiwan, doesn’t exactly [...]