Lunar New Year - A day of peace and tranquility

Today is the First day of the Lunar New Year; My parents, two sisters and I visited the Wunchang Temple and Mazu Temple, in Taichung, to attend the New Year services, held this morning. There we pray for a good year which belongs to the OX. It was very crowded but even more so inside but it was done in an orderly and graceful manner.

Then we visited another temple in the Sioushuei Township. This is a 40 minute driving from Taichung City. There my female cousin (my father's brothers daughter) is a Buddha nun. We arrived at this amazing Buddhist temple, Cosmos, the fields of flowers at the front made a very nice picture.

When we entered the temple, everyone is smiling and holding red candles. The sweet smelling scent of the burning incense sticks and the heavenly mixed sounds of Buddha music and the buddhist nuns singing made an everlasting impression. My parents are very sincere worshippers of Buddhism and I am always amazed at how they carry out the steps of their worship to exact detail.We spent fifteen minutes praying for peace, health and prosperity. After that we admired the architecture and decoration of the temple. It was truely a memorable and heart warming ceromony.