Longshan Temple, Bo-an Temple, Tsuzhur Temple
Trip Start
Nov 17, 2006
1
13
19
Trip End
May 09, 2007
Temples of Taipei,
Taiwan
Monday, April 16, 2007
One of the grandest Temples in Taiwan is the Longshan Temple in Taipei. It's very big, set in a large courtyard with it's own waterfall! It was built by settlers from Fujian in China (the area most Chinese settlers came here from) as a copy of a big temple there - apparently the stones in the courtyard were originally ballast in the ships they came over on. Like most temples, it has a bit of everything in it, but is mainly Buddhist. I quite like this idea of mixing and matching bits of religions! we just need to convince the rest of the world of the merits of this plan, then people might stop blowing each other to bits quite so often
Incense Burner
. You enter the temple grounds through a main gate at the south end of the courtyard walls - in front of you is a big gate type thing - a covered area in front of the main temple itself. When you first come into the temple, you get some incense sticks and go stand here, facing the main buildings. Three bows and a quick prayer, and then you can move on to the main altars, or use the 'oracle blocks' to get a bit of help with some decisions. The oracle blocks are small red moon shaped pieces of plastic or wood - you hold them together in your hands, ask your question and drop them. If they land one curved side up, one curved side down, the answer to the question is positive, negative if they both land curved side up. If they both land flat side up you have to change the question and ask again. There are also 'fortune tellers' at a lot of temples (Longshan included), and you can use the oracle blocks to choose which one to use for your question. Each fortune teller has a number carved into a long thing piece of wood - you take the piece of wood, ask the blocks if it's the right one, and keep going until you get one that's ok. It an odd thing to watch - people chucking these little bits of wood all over the place in between other people bowing with bunches of long incense sticks held in front of them.
In front of this is a big table for offerings of food - I'm not sure if this food is supposed to be for the monks and nus at the temple, or for ancestors, but there's a dazzling array of things. Fruit, crisps, sweets, pot noodles, tins of porridge mix... It's very odd!! This all faces the main temple building housing the big altar. The central deity at Longshan is Gyuanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, but this being Taiwan they mix everything up and have 165 other deities for your worshiping pleasure. Different gods do different things - there's gods for health, 'scholarly pursuits', military things, business..
Main Long-shan temple courtyard.
. The list goes on an on! In the big house in the middle is the main altar room - it's very decadently decorated, lots of murals, carvings, gold, statues. People hold their incense and bow to the statue again here, maybe stopping to use oracle blocks again or read from some scriptures. Behind this big house is another row of smaller altars with statues to other gods inside. There's walls covered in tiny lights too - these are for people that have dies and their family has made a donation to the temple on their honour.
The Longshan Temple is a massive riot of colour - golds and reds all over the place, really gaudy and very very busy. The Bo'An Temple was a bit different - It's a Doaist temple rather than a Buddhist one. This means even gaudier as far as I can tell! There's a lot more decoration on the walls - big murals about things from history, but the general layout is the same. There was a lot fewer people, so you could have a nice wander around instead of stepping on people's toes left right and centre. The main deity here is the emporer Boashen, who was famous as a doctor - hence lots of people come here to pray for good health.
The Tzushur Temple was completely different again. It's not in Taipei, but is in a small town called SanShia (which means Three Mountains) half way between there and Toayuan
Offerings at Bo-an Temple
. It's very very old - first built in 1769, but it's been rebuilt a few times. It's nice and quiet because it's out of Taipei, and felt much more like a place of worship than temples in the city. Some of the busier ones feel more like a cattle market - take a ticket, move on as quick as you can - so it was nice to actually be able to appreciate the place properly. What makes the temple so amazing is the intricate details that have been put into the decoration. It's a Daoist temple, so is very decadently decorated, and it has been reconstructed recently by a famous painter. The pillars and walls are carved with cranes, swallows, fish, lions, trees, and there's only one real altar area. Inside this is crazy - gold gold gold EVERYWHERE!! The wood pannelling is intricately carved, along with the ceilings. The ceilings are cool - they are twisted up into a cone - this is to try to confuse bad spirits into thinking it's the sea so they go there instead of hanging around in the temple. Although the inside is all bright and shiny, the outside is stiull waiting to be re-tiled. This gives the temple a completely different look - instead of the brightly coloured fish, dragons etc that normally adorn the roof in a riot oif colour, you have to look a bit harder, but you can actually see the structure better.
It was nice to see so many different kinds of Temples - I wish I knew a bit more about what was going on though, a lot of it is very alien to me. A nun tried to explain a bit to me in a temple close to work when I first got here, but that was only about the oracle blocks, it'd be nice to learn more about other things that are going on.
I'll try to get some photos up in a couple of weeks.
