Tie Non: Big East Gate etc./大東門など

この間キャンパスに近い歴史的な場所を回ってみた。最初の目的地は「大東門」だった。キャンパスに有るのは「小西門」よね。この間俺そう書いたけど、覚えているかな？ちゃんと話聞いているのか？よし。じゃ、小西門が有る場所に元々は何門が有ったでしょうか？そうだ。正解。「小東門」が有った。

小東門の元場所から真南に有り、自転車でこの大東門までは１０分もかからない。

The other day I travelled around to some historical spots near campus. The first one I went to was "Big East Gate". As I'm sure you all remember because you commit my every blog post to memory because they are so fascinating, on Cheng Da's campus is the "Small West Gate" in the location where the "Small East Gate" originally was. The Small East Gate (deceased) and Big East Gate are only about 10 minutes apart. I rode my bike straight south from campus and found myself at this impressive gate, surrounded by a traffic circle. They love traffic circles in Tainan, so there are lots of them. It turns out too, that historic, Qing period gates look really good inside traffic circles.

I couldn't decide which of these shots ^v I liked better, so I put them both in. Totally unnecessary, I know. Please forgive me.

Here we have four plaques commemorating the four seasons. The four "Big" gates back in the day were named after the four compass directions, and in Chinese Feng Shui cosmology thinking, those four directions are associated with different attributes. That's what we're seeing here. The seasons are presented here in order from spring to winter. And the animals at the top of each plaque are the following: dragon, magical bird thing that is usually translated as "phoenix", tiger, and turtle.

上記の四つの写真に春、夏、秋、冬とその風水によって一緒に成る動物、つまり、龍、鳳、虎、亀、が載っている。清時代に四つの「大」が付いている門が有って、北南東西の名前が付いていた。そして、風水学は中国人にとって大事だったから、四つの大の門に季節の名前も付けた。東には春とか。

何か、実際に「大東門」という名前が付いていない。みんなそう呼んでいるのに。地図にもそう呼ばれている。代わりに「東安門」と書いた。
で、下がその季節の名前。東だから、風水によって春を歓迎する。

If you don't know any Chinese the above two pictures don't mean much, but basically one says "East Safe Gate" and one says "Welcome Spring Gate". As you remember, the "Small West Gate" also had an alternate name, "Clean Wave Gate". In the case of the four "Big" Gates, they were given alternative names based on which compass direction they were, and which season that direction was associated with based on Chinese cosmology. East is associated with Spring, so this gate is the "Welcome Spring Gate".
It's all explained below, so just go ahead and read it!

...or you could read my crappy translation instead.

"In 1725 the Big East Gate was built on the eastern border of Tainan. It was a major project. In 1736 it was converted from wood to stone construction. [And I think they made it taller with more floors and did something to the base in 1788.] According to Yin Yang 5 Elemental theory, East is associated with the element wood, and the season spring. During the Qing period there was some festival to welcome spring done on the day before the first day of spring (the first day of spring according to the solar cycle that is, so the day directly between winter solstice and spring equinox, not spring equinox) and it involved cows somehow? Because welcoming spring is very important for farmers, this was a major festival. [And I might be reading this wrong, but I think they may have painted it different colors according to where in the 5 element cycle they were.] [Something about the rains falling properly, etc. Farmer stuff.]"
チンプンカンプンしか分からないけど、以上の看板は大東門を説明している。1725年に建てられて、1736年に木造から石に代えられた。1788年の書いている事がよく分からないけど、もしかしてその時にはこの二、三階の有る建物が出来た。（垣根にも何かの工事をしたみたい。）陰陽五元素の考え方によって、東は春と木と関連するから、大東門は春を歓迎する門とされた。清時代に毎年春を迎える行事が有って、何か牛と関係が有った。

この写真はバイクおばさん「ありバージョン」も「なしバージョン」もある。お好きな方をどうぞダウンロードしてパソコンのバックグラウンドにして下さい。

元々はこの辺りに大東門しか知らなかったけど、観光客むけの看板が大東門に有って、近くに砦が有ると書いたから、それも見に行く事にした。
I set out in the morning not knowing of any historical sites in the area aside from Big East Gate, but at the gate was a sign/map for tourists which showed a fort nearby, so I decided to go and see that as well.

"Taiwan (old word for) City Syun Fang Cannon Platform"

At first, from the street side, this is al I saw, and I thought, oh, is that it?

歴史的な砦というより、普通なコンクリートの建物に見える。道側は確かに圧迫感が無いけど、、、

、、、向こうはもうちょっと面白い。

しかも、登れる！
I almost left without properly seeing this fort since it looks like nothing from the street side. It's now on the grounds of some big Buddhist building, so you have to walk into what appears to be a private driveway to get to the other, more interesting side. You can climb up on top and have a sit in the broiling hot sun too if you wish.

俺のチャーリー

足が見えるおじさんは偶々私が着いた時に砦に居た。私は多分分からなさそうな、惚けた顔をしたから、おじさんは私に声をかけて、色んな事を説明した。中国語だったけど、優しく喋って呉れたので、だいたい分かった。この砦は昔、台南の東端に有って、砲台が乗っていた。実は、清朝が台湾の先住民ばかりを狙って作ったんじゃなくて、よく反乱を起こす中華系の台湾人にも狙った。清朝に対する不満が多かったから、反乱が頻繁に有った。

When I got to the other side of the fort, probably because I was standing around with my mouth hanging open, this middle-aged guy came up to me and started telling me about the fort. It was all in Chinese, but he spoke so that I could understand. You can see his legs in the photo above. The fort was a gun fort, and at the time it was on the eastern end of Tainan City. It was built not only to protect the city from outside attack from the non-Han, aboriginal people of Taiwan, but also to help the authorities control the unruly, Han population of Taiwan. Han people living in Taiwan during the Qing Dynasty had a lot of grievances, and they revolted on a fairly regular basis.

Because the fort is now on the property of this Buddhist place, they've added this plaque about like "Purifying your heart" to the fort. Very weird on a building that was built for the express purpose of killing people more efficiently.

The plaque above is older than the others, and probably predates the Buddhist Temple. It's just the name of the fort, and it's so worn it's hard to read. The other clearer plaques have also been added by the temple, and one has the name of the temple, one says "Old Fort/Building" and one says something about guns since this was a gun fort.

二個以上の写真の石板は古く見えるけど、それ以外のはっきり読めるやつらは最近付け加えた様だ。砦は現在この禅のお寺（お寺かな？）の土地に有るから、「修禅院」が上に書いて有る。

昔の石は灰色のところだ。その上の変なペンキは後で塗られた。
They (who? I don't know. The temple?) put some paint over the old stone on the inside. Where it's chipped away you can see the stone.

Old-school door hinge

One of the gun rooms for shooting out of. I guarantee you the holes would not actually have been this small since the guns of the time were probably too big to use a hole this size.

当時の銃（というか、大砲ね）は大きかったため、この位な穴が使えなかったと思う。でも一応こういう感じのところから敵を狙って撃ったはずだね。

よかろう？偶然に撮れた。何回か遣って見たけど、他のやつはみんなぼやっとして駄目だった。

This is that hole from the outside. My guess is originally the gun/cannon would have been shot out of this square window.

Last stop of the day was the Old Tainan County Magistrate Residence. This is another place I didn't know about but found out about from the tourist plaques at the other sites. It's an art center now. It was built in the Japanese period, hence the European-inspired colonial architecture.