Taiwan’s Temples

With this in mind I flew to Taipei recently for a week in Taiwan as a guest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Within hours of landing in the city, our host Konrad Wei-kuang Hao, First Secretary on Home Assignment Foreign Media Services Section Department of International Section, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Republic of China (Taiwan), took us to one of these famous sites of worship – the Lungshan Temple in the Manka district of Taipei.

This was followed by two other temples during my visit – the Bao-An Temple in Dalongdong (previously Daronpon) district and one lesser known (by tourists), the Chenhuang Temple in Dadaocheng district.

Lungshan, my first exposure to a Buddhist temple, was as exciting as it was awe-inspiring and convinced me immediately that no trip to Taiwan can be completed without taking in some of these intricately fashioned wonders.

Our visit took place in the late afternoon and the sheer volume of people worshipping astounded me.

Each person seemed completely alone in the crowd as they applied their minds to the worship of whichever god they were there to honour.

While the tourists, and other followers, pushed past those praying, they seemed oblivious to the interruption and focused only on the task at hand – some in silence, others in chant-like song.

Appreciating the sanctity of the temple, I tried my best not to disturb those at worship and to subtly take in all the temple had to offer visually.

Silence is no easy task, however, as each new site increased the awe with which I viewed my surroundings.

As I took a closer look around the temple I was astounded and, I must admit impressed, by the intricate decorative work around the temple complex, the decorations around each deity in the various sections of the temple and the attention to detail paid to every element, from the largest dragon adorning the roof of the temple, to the guards painted on the doors and the tiny figures carved into every visible panel both inside and out.

For someone totally unfamiliar with the temple structure, Lungshan offered a fascinating glimpse into a world I have not previously been privy to.

What followed over the next week was a discovery of the beauty of these temples – each unique in its decoration but all equally lovingly designed and constructed with the utmost attention to the finer details and a love of the deities represented in each.

These, my guide told me, are too numerous to name and differ greatly from temple to temple depending on the beliefs – Buddhist or Tao – and preferences and interests of occupations of the people worshipping in that area.

According to Konrad “anything can be a god, the Taiwanese love to honour the things that are important to them”.

Having taken in only three of the magnificent temples I passed in my travels through Taipei and Taichung, I would strongly recommend a couple of days set aside for this rich part of the country’s culture.

Here, to whet your appetite is a little taste of the three temples I was fortunate to visit.

Lungshan Temple

The temple was founded in 1738 and dedicated to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy Guan-Yin and took its name from the Lungshan Temple in JinJiang county of Fujian province in mainland China.

The temple is no longer housed in its original buildings but in newer buildings constructed between 1919 and 1924, and is divided into three halls.

The fore hall is the entrance and the space for people to worship.

The main hall is in the centre of the complex with a statue of Guan-Yin as the main god of the temple. She sits in the centre accompanied by two bodhisattvas – Manjusri to her left and Samantabhadra to her right.

The 18 Arhat are also present to both sides as attendants.

When the temple was built it was erected for Buddhist deities only, but when Manka was assigned as an official port of trade with Quanzhou and Fuzhou in 1792, the merchant guild of “Quanzhou” erected the rear hall to venerate their patron Mazu to pray for protection for their safe sailing to China.

This rear hall has three parts – the centre is dedicated to Mazu, the left to the gods of literature and the right is dedicated to Guan-Yi, the god of war.

When the temple was rebuilt in 1919, Wang Yi-shun, a master temple builder from southern Fujian was employed as the architect and Lungshan has become a masterpiece of his work in Taiwan.

The temple was bombed by allied aircraft on June 8, 1945 and the statue of Guan-Yi survived this attack despite the fact that the entire main hall and part of the right annex were burned.

Owing to the survival of this pivotal statue, and according to Konrad, the people of Taipei believe it is a place of safety and protection.

They may be right but it is also a place of piece and beauty for anyone visiting it.

Bao-An Temple

Legend has it that in 1742 some early Daronpon settlers returned to their Tong-an County motherland in Chuan-chou Prefecture, begged Bai-jiao Tzu-ji Temple for shares of the spiritual incense, and brought it back to be enshrined in Taiwan.

The temple was named “bao-an” which contains the sense of protecting Tong-an folks.

The initial temple was a rather shabby wooden structure owing to a small population and scarce resources. Its construction began in 1755 and was completed in 1760.

In 1805, neighbouring Tong-an gentries raised funds to reconstruct the Bao-An Temple.

This reconstruction took place in several phases and was completed in 1830.

The presiding deity is Baosheng Dadi.

He was a specialist of Chinese medicine and was known to have performed numerous medical miracles during his life. He is reported to have cured serious diseases and revived many people, leading to him being revered as the god of medicine.

Although his work with people was certainly impressive, two of his other medical acts are far more interesting to me. He is believed to have been a healer of all and is said to have cured a dragon’s eye and pulled a hairpin from a tiger’s throat.

The temple is seated north and faces south comprising of an entrance hall, main hall and back hall with guard rooms on the sides.

It boasts four dragon columns at the front of the temple – the inner columns were carved with two dragons each in 1918, while the outer columns feature one dragon apiece and were carved in 1804.

It was while roaming around this, my third temple, that I realised I would never be able to take in every nuance one temple has to offer.

While each is very beautiful as a whole, even centimetre of each hall of each temple is decorated with different image with no image being (notivably) repeated anywhere in the temple.

The creativity and imagination required to decorate even the smallest temple is insurmountable and made me determined to return to Taiwan, if only to take in some of the finer details of even one more of these artistic masterpieces.

Chenghuang Temple

The smallest of the temples we visited, this one was certainly my favourite.

Chenghuang Temple, also known as Dadaocheng Xiahai Chenghuang Temple, is considered to be one of the most authentic traditional temples in Taipei.

It is situated in a part of the city not usually frequented by tourists, this was Konrad’s answer to showing us the local Taipei, and is surrounded by fascinating local shops carrying all manner of goods from Chinese medicinal herbs (for which you need a prescription from your doctor) to sweets and dried foods.

The Taiwanese dry every imaniable (and some not imagined until that day) to make it last longer and whatever you heart desires can be found in this district.

The century-old Xiahai Chenghuang Temple is host to statues of the City god, his wife, the Chinese Cupid, and 600 other deities and has the highest statue density in Taiwan.

Tradition has it that if the statue of the Chinese Cupid is standing, he is more eager to find a good marriage for people. The temple therefore attracts a lot of singles looking for a significant other. Couples visit this temple in search of a good life together.

In spite of its small, narrow space – the temple is only about 420 square metres in size, – Xiahai Chenghuang Temple has always been a centre of religious belief for local residents in Dadaocheng area, and it is one of the largest temples in Taipei in terms of the number of faithful who go there to worship.

It is considered as part of Daoism or the Chenghuang religious belief in Taiwan’s folk culture.

In Chinese Daoism, Chenghuang is the god who serves as a channel between the human world and the underworld and is also known as the god who defended cities and castles in ancient Chinese methodology.

Chenghuang is in charge of recording the good and evil behaviour of human beings, passing the recorded information on to the underworld, making judgements, and sending the judged individuals to other “worlds”.

Today this godly figure is worshipped in Chenghuang Temple.

*Historical information about each temple is taken from pamphlets obtained at the temples.