By Claudia Dowling

I landed in Taipei in the evening after a grueling 13-hour flight. My friend Changping met me at the airport. I call her Older Sister, because I lived with her family in Taipei when I was in college and we both were 20 years old—she a little older than me.

One of the first things we did when I woke up the next day—evening in New York—was walk to the block where we lived when I went there more than 50 years ago. She now has an apartment right around the corner.

I started sightseeing slowly because of jet lag—a visit to the Sunday flower market, a long walk in the park, a visit to a calligraphy show. But yesterday we took a trip to a temple in Sanxia, about an hour away. Changping knows I like temples, because of their exotic old style architecture. The temple we visited is dedicated to a wizard and medical guru, which may explain why among the people praying to him and burning incense was a young man with a cast on his foot. My guess is that most of the people praying were asking for help with a medical problem.

The temple was built at the end of the 18th century, but was destroyed twice. Once by an earthquake and once burned down by the Japanese in their occupation of Taiwan. It was rebuilt after World War II by Taiwanese artists and artisans. Its elaborate decorations are a marvel.

Then and now. When I lived with Changping’s family in 1971, the house was a single story with a courtyard outside on an alley with open sewers outside. Today it is a modern (and rather pricey) apartment building.