Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Secret of the Small West Gate/小西門の秘密

こんにちは。皆さんはこの「小西門」覚えているかな。成功大学のキャンパスに有る。俺は以前もこの写真をブログに載せた:
昔は台南に門が沢山有った。でも地図を見てみると、成大のキャンパスは昔の台南からすれば、大分東の方に有る。実は、キャンパスが「東区」に有る。なんで東区に「小西門」が有るの?
俺はこの間台湾人の知り合いにそう尋ねてみたら、彼女は後で調べて呉れた!なんて優しい!
なんと、この門は移動されたらしい。実は、この場所に元々門が有った。でも「小東門」だった。小東門は工事によって壊されたけど、近頃この「小西門」を保存する為にここに移動された。凄いな!
又、最近始めて知ったけど、門の裏に違う事が書いて有る。これは小西門だけでなく、全部こう成っている。小西門の場合は:清波門。なんか風水的な意味が有ると読んだ。今度「大東門」について書くので、その時はもうちょっと説明する。

 So why am I posting pictures of the Small West Gate that's on Cheng Da's campus again you ask?
Well, I found out something interesting recently.  I commented to a Taiwanese person I know "Why is there a small WEST gate on the campus?  Cheng Da's campus is way in the eastern part of old Tainan!  Was it moved to preserve it or something?"  (Actually, the district the campus is in is even called "East District", and there's a "Big East Gate" just south of campus, so it definitely is strange that Small West would be here.)
Well my friend told me the next time she saw me that she had looked it up, and she found out that the gate had been moved, just as I had guessed.  Furthermore, this location is actually the original location of a gate.  Apparently the "Small East Gate" was located here (and I believe the ruined walls around the gate are actually remains from the old city walls).  So this location did originally have a gate, just not this one.
The top photo shows the front of the gate with its name, and the bottom two photos are showing the other side where its alternate name is.  All of these gates had alternate names that were based on the significance of their compass position in Feng Shui.  Small West Gate has "Clean/Pure Wave Gate" on its backside.  I don't know the significance of this name though because I know very little about Feng Shui.  Hopefully, having the Pure Wave Gate in the eastern part of town isn't giving us bad mojo now.

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