Religion!
Too often seen as a curse – the triumph of the irrational over human affairs, leading to the oppression of women and minorities by brutal regimes masequerading as the Rule of the Righteous (no shortage of examples in today’s world!) – in some cases, no better example than Taiwan, it might also represent a free society, a nation where the freedom of worship is the guarantee of other freedoms conspicously absent from mainland China – e.g, the freedom to criticise the government and the politicians, the freedom to live as individuals rather than slaves, the freedom to chose how one wishes to live…..in other words, the opposite to a police state.
The following photos were taken during my journey of two weeks travelling around the Taiwan. In the number and variety of the temples – in the cities and towns as well as the outlying rural areas – I discerned the quintessance of the ongoing tensions between a Bully State and a Lilliputian democracy.
Serious Travel Images 