Mazu leaves DaJia - 6 April

One of the Chinese teachers, Jenny, who is originally from DaJia invited us to walk around DaJia during the Mazu festival. We were treated to thousands of people lining up for free food and many interesting sights, sounds, smells and tastes.

A food tent erected in the street to feed the hungry hoards

From left: Michelle, George, myself and Jenny having a free vegetarian lunch

Not having had enough rice and noodles we went to an even bigger tent where the rest of the hoard was eating.

A massive food tent

Apparently when Mazu leaves DaJia the free food is vegetarian, but when she returns it includes meat.
We then met up with some of Jenny's family who showed us a shortcut into the Mazu temple. It was milling with hundreds of people and smelled strongly of incense, so strongly that my eyes were watering and I had an occasional sneezing fit. We thought we may as well go the whole hog, so we lit a bunch of incense sticks. Jenny told us to put three here and there in the proper order. It was very interesting and the architecture was amazing. Very intricate and beautiful.

Inside the Mazu temple, lighting incence

Inside the temple at one of the shrines

One of the shrines outside the temple, and the thousands of people

Intricate artwork

I must admit that while it was interesting I was happy to get out for the sake of my eyes and throat!

These are our new pieces of heaven, they are crispy sweet potato balls. Very yummy

We walked around looking at the foods and other items available for sale. It was pretty, thirsty and hungry work. We bought some of the sweet potato balls above to share with Jenny and George, but George appeared not to like them! We were pretty surprised. Perhaps we have different taste to many western people. Renalda and I are pretty open to trying new things, good when you are in a new country and don't know what it is that you are pointing at. If it tastes good it's all good!

These cyclists will follow Mazu from Dajia South and return with her in 2 weeks

We got to see a few of these dragons whirling around

And I've been corrected that this is a Buddha 

Renalda really wanted to talk to the Buddha

I couldn't resist getting a pic with a black Buddha who has white arms ;)

Another dragon

We then walked around a bit more, got some free supper and some watermelon, before calling it a night. On the way home we saw this game. It's gambling, you buy a bunch of rings and try to throw the rings onto the bottles, if you do you win that bottle. Not unlike horseshoe throwing games or some of the fun fair games we see on American movies.

Throw to win

It was a good, but tiring day.