Gates

Since moving to Taiwan I have seen a lot of cool gates and doors. I thought I would assemble the pictures here. Some are super cool, some are not. Several of the pictures have appeared in this blog before but not all.

I will begin with the grandest door I have ever seen. It is at the National Martyr's Shrine.

We go from very grand to very humble, though this is by no means the humblest. This is an ordinary door seen all around Taiwan.

Next, what I think is a rather pretty wooden door.

This next one is sort of a gate. It rolls down at the entrance to a shop in Danshui. It has been painted with a romantic sunset scene. I think they are stretching things a bit if they want you to believe this is a typical scene. To me nothing in Taiwan is ever this placid. But who knows, maybe if you're in Danshui at sunset... I doubt it.

The next is one of my personal favorites, which is why it gets two photographs. If I could take these doors home I would. I just love the wood carving.

Fairly grand:

Incredibly humble:

And many covering pretty much the entire gambit in between:

Most of these pictures were taken in Taiwan, although a couple are in Indonesia and one is in America. I thought I might have a contest and see if anyone could guess which one is in America. But what is a contest without a prize? I looked around to see if I have any cool Taiwanese thing that I could give away but I do not. Bummer, that would have been fun!