Taiwan Today

In one sense, a temple resembles military camp. It exists for its own sake, discharging vital functions, attracting a steady flow of visitors and acting as an important focal point. But if it is to work properly, a temple, like a gar­rison, requires an astonishing amount of backup and support, much of it commer­cial in nature. Some of the businesses that can be found in the vicinity of camps or temples cater to the needs of the occupants, supplying them with clothes—be they vestments or uniforms—along with provi­sions, furniture, and other essentials. In contrast, certain enterprises choose to focus on those who merely come to visit. Temples are extremely complex places; the ancillary businesses they attract are many and varied.

One sultry Saturday afternoon, not long ago, a group of excited Japanese tour­ists crowded into a tiny booth located in one of downtown Taipei’s busiest pedes­trian underpasses. The women giggled and the men laughed as they listened to poly­glot fortuneteller Tsai Yi-hsien (蔡乙賢) interpreting their fortunes in their mother tongue. Tsai, who is in his late seventies, is only one of many fortunetellers who regularly set up their stands in this under­pass near Hsingtien Temple. The temple is dedicated to Kuan Yu, better known as Kuan Kung, a renowned general during the Three Kingdoms period in the 3rd century A.D..

In Taiwan, fortunetellers and temples naturally go together. Temples were, and in many villages still are, community centers. People come to pray for blessings from various gods, to ask divine oracles for guidance when life has reached a difficult crossroads, to honor gods on their birth­ days, or simply to meet friends. When at the age of forty Tsai decided to give up his previous business in favor of fortune­ telling, the decision to set up his stand near Hsingtien Temple was an easy one. “Hsingtien is a tourist spot,” he says. “Peo­ple come here from all over the world­ Japanese, mostly, but I get Americans, British, Canadians, even Saudis.”

Tsai became a fortuneteller after experiencing two unusual encounters­—one with a monk, one with a tiger—that were eventually to change his life. “It was in 1949,” he recalls. “I was running a can­teen at the Taipei City Zoo when I met a Zen Buddhist monk. The Nationalists had just relocated the ROC government to Tai­wan [after losing Mainland China to the Chinese Communist forces in the civil war]. I was in my early thirties and knew next to nothing about religion. But this monk insisted on teaching me for­tunetelling and feng shui. He said I’d find the ancient Chinese heritage useful some day.”

The monk’s words came true. In 1957, a tiger broke loose from its cage at the zoo. The keepers wanted to shoot it. Tsai was the only person to argue for cap­turing the big cat instead. Unfortunately, he tried to do it with his bare hands. “I was mauled by the tiger and badly injured,” he says, showing the scars on his left arm. After that, he lost all interest in business and turned to fortunetelling, which for him is an art that combines philosophy, math­ematics, psychology, medical science, and theology.

Tsai, who likes to discourse on what he calls the universal ray, magnetic fields, and how DNA and RNA together affect one’s secret code of destiny in the cosmos, is apparently doing good business. Even the onset of heavy rain did nothing to deter a couple of women from joining the queue outside his booth, waiting for their turn to steal a look, with his help, into the unknown future.

Temple business is also booming in the small town of Lukang, central Taiwan. Lukang used to be a prosperous mercantile port city, second only in importance to Tainan in the south. Among its forty or more temples, Tienhou Temple is the most famous.

Tienhou is dedicated to Matsu, God­dess of the Sea. On Matsu’s birthday, which falls on the 23rd day of the 3rd lunar month, worshippers from around the island organize a pilgrimage to Tienhou Temple to pay tribute to the goddess and pray for peace, health, and prosperity. Some come bearing their own Matsu idols to have them “recharged” with spiritual power at what they regard as the mother temple.

Vendors’ carts sporting colorful para­sols line up on both sides of the temple gateway to offer rosary beads and Bud­dhist and Taoist figurines, along with typi­cal Lukang delicacies such as fresh oysters and shrimp, tea frappe, and even home­ made ice cream when the weather turns hot. Peddlers hawk their wares while the ice-cream men, honking their horns, strive to catch templegoers’ attention amid the general cacophony. The air is pungent with the smells of firecrackers, incense, grilled sausages, and fried oyster omelets. A visi­tor’s eyes, ears, and nose are assailed from all sides.

Several elderly people have come to gather around a cart containing traditional Chinese gongs and string instruments. Each selects an instrument and, after tun­ing up, they begin to make music with the cart’s owner, Lao-wen(老穩). Their tune, now festive, now sad, is amplified through a loudspeaker. The octogenarian Lao-wen has been selling string instruments and gongs in front of the temple for more than eleven years. He always had a flair for all things musical, but because he received no formal education he had to teach himself how to make—and play—the instruments from scratch. Lao-wen has thoughtfully prepared photocopies of music scores, along with a comparative table that relates the Chinese notation to its Western coun­terpart. He uses these as teaching materi­als when giving free lessons to anyone who buys instruments from him. “It’s easy,” he laughs. “Like this, Do, Re, Mi, Fa....” The normally laconic old man grows animated as he demonstrates how to play the double­ stringed erhu. Is business doing well? “No,” Lao-wen says. “Sometimes I make only NT$50 [less than US$2] a day, maybe by selling a couple of steel strings.”

In the first courtyard of Tienhou Tem­ple, some elderly women wearing sleeve­ protectors and bamboo hats held in place with floral handkerchiefs peddle incense and spirit money—standard offerings to deities and ancestors. The women are well wrapped up against the sun, leaving the visitor with only a glimpse of their wrin­kled faces. “Miss, buy some incense and spirit money,” one of them calls out. “It’s only twenty dollars.”

The woman flashes a friendly smile. When asked for her name, she merely says, “Chen.” “I am 70 years old minus one,” she goes on. “I’ve been selling incense and spirit money at Tienhou Temple since I was twenty. I did it because my mother-in­-law was doing it, to earn a little money to help with the family.” Asked how things are going, she says resignedly, “Business is bad. Sometimes, I stand here all day and make no more than NT$100 [US$4]. Most templegoers bring their own incense and spirit money with them.”

Lukang, being close to the sea, is exposed to bitter winds, especially during winter. To counter the rough weather, local inhabitants built shelters that some­ times covered whole streets. It is for this reason that Chungshan Road was once known as Puchientien Street, literally, “Can’t See The Sky Street.” Chungshan Road is Lukang’s main drag. Apart from hawkers, it also has shops selling incense, traditional Chinese desserts, and even the ornate sedan chairs that are used for trans­porting the statues of deities in procession.

Shih Chin-yu Incense Shop, located just opposite Tienhou Temple, is more than a century old. Shih Chi-tsan(施起燦) is the present owner of this family busi­ness. He started to learn about incense after graduating from primary school, nearly forty years ago—he is the first to admit that he wasn’t so fond of studying. His apprenticeship took three years. He began by learning how to cleave a piece of bamboo into thin sticks. After that he had to dip each stick in liquid adhesive for about two-thirds of its length, coat it with incense powder, and leave it in the sun to dry. This is far from easy work, as the incense ingredients must be blended in exactly the right proportions.

“Making incense is like cooking—the recipe is most important,” Shih says. “Once you’ve chosen your wood—cedar, for example—you have to blend the vari­ous herbs in such a way that they won’t overwhelm the wood’s own aroma.” That is where expertise and experience are needed. A good nose is essential for an incense-maker. “Chefs depend on their taste buds for their living,” Shih says, “while we incense-makers rely on our noses.”

Incense woods from different regions and countries have different qualities, but it is extremely difficult for anyone who is not an expert to tell which is which. When Shih first started, he frequently made mis­takes and bought wood for more than it was worth. But that all happened a long time ago, and nowadays business is good: his reputation has spread so far and wide that even Japanese and overseas Chinese customers are buying incense from him. Shih reckons to take in around US$750 a day

Further down Chungshan Road, peo­ple are queuing up outside Chen Wei-chen, a bakery that makes Western, Japanese, and traditional Chinese desserts to order. This small bakery, despite its unassuming appearance, is famous on account of its owner, Cheng Chen-shan (鄭振山). Cheng is seventy-one, although he looks a good ten years younger, and he is no ordinary baker. Coming from a family that specialized in traditional Chinese desserts, Cheng perfected his skills by learning from Shih Tien-hsing (施天興), who was mas­ter chef to Chiang Kai-shek and also to his son, the late Chiang Ching-kuo.

Cheng well remembers what those two former presidents used to like. As he talks, he continues to make buns. “Presi­dent Chiang Kai-shek ate very little,” he reminisces. “Chiang Ching-kuo was a big­ger eater than his father; he preferred meat.” Both presidents liked Cheng’s des­serts. When asked how long preparation usually took, Cheng says, “It varied. There were times when it took us one whole week to prepare a twelve-course meal for ten people.” He is modest about his cooking skills, claiming that his creations are usu­ally mere variations on everyday dishes. The skin of the buns he is making is spongy and sweet, the meat filling juicy. He can sell around 2,000 of them every day.

Chen Chia-chin (陳嘉欽), nicknamed “croaking rooster” on account of his loud voice, is squatting at the front of his work­ shop, smoking a cigarette while he watches a religious procession pass by. Chen, though illiterate, is an accomplished woodcarver who makes sedan chairs for carrying statues of deities, as well as carved screens for decorating temples. Inside his workshop can be found sedan chairs with canopies, only for exalted dei­ties like Matsu, and others open to the sky, for ranking military officers such as Kuan Kung of Taipei’s Hsingtien Temple fame. Each chair bears a different intricate pat­tern of decoration. Some of these tell folk stories like those found in the great Ming dynasty novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms; others carry representations of graceful phoenixes or fearsome dragons. One chair boasts a phoenix whose wings are attached to the sides with springs: when worshippers hoist the chair aloft, the wings flap up and down.

Where does Chen get his inspiration? “I work to my customers' specifications,” he says. “If they want the phoenix wings attached to the body with springs, I’ll do it.” He is especially good with dragon carv­ings. The beasts’ wild eyes and flaring muzzles give them a formidable appear­ance, almost as if they are about to attack the onlookers.

Depending on the craftsmanship and the materials, one of Chen’s sedan chairs will cost between US$7,500 and $22,000. He has more than fifty carvers on the pay­roll. The quality of his workmanship is out­standing, and word of mouth has brought him orders from as far away as Japan.>

So does this maker of celestial sedan chairs believe in the supernatural? “To tell you the truth,” Chen admits, “I don’t alto­gether believe in the gods’ supernatural power. But I worship all deities, Buddhist as well as Taoist.” His ambivalence may have something to do with the fact that a few years ago the gods signally failed to bless him in a lottery, causing him to lose a lot of money. But Chen has now appar­ently been reconciled with the spiritual world—according to him, a god told him through a medium that there are no bless­ings to be had by gamblers!

Although the majority of the shops along Chungshan Road have a long his­tory, there are also a few new ones. The location is considered excellent. Take Hsu Chen Chun (許陳春), an embroidery artist, who opened her workshop there a couple of years ago, after winning a folk arts award for her three-dimensional embroi­dered peacock.

“I’ve been always interested in embroi­dery,” Hsu says. “After I won the award, I thought about how to make use of my skills and improve them. My brother [a well-known tin artist] advised me to open a workshop here so that people would get to know about me quickly.” Hsu, who is in her fifties, does not go in for traditional embroidered temple hangings, but spe­cializes in three-dimensional works, such as roosters, dragons, and old-fashioned shoes specially crafted to fit feet broken by the ancient foot-binding process. Her works are expensive, and more people come to watch her make her handicrafts than to buy them. But Hsu Chen Chun simply enjoys doing the embroidery, which to her is a valuable means of self-expression.

Hsinkang, a rural township in southern Taiwan, is home to another of Matsu’s temples, Fengtien. Nearby can be found the successors of a man who made his fortune from confectionery after estab­lishing his shop close to the temple. He was Lu Chi-tou (盧欺頭), founder of Chin Chang-li Confectionery, which is legen­dary for sweets called Hsinkang Yi, also known to the Japanese under the name “Shinko Ame.”

According to Lu Yang Hsiu-mei (盧楊秀美), who married into the Lu fam­ily and now manages the business, Lu Chi-­tou invented Hsinkang Yi more or less by accident. In 1891 Lu, a poor peddler from neighboring Minhsiung, was barely able to eke out a living by selling peanut brittle and malted sweets outside Fengtien Tem­ple. Once it rained non-stop for several days. Lu’s sweets melted, and the peanut brittle lost its crunchiness. Lu, faced with disaster, had an inspiration—why not cook the sweets and peanut brittle together? The result exceeded all expectations. On Mat­su’s birthday, Lu carted a load of his new confections to Fengtien Temple and set up a stall. The sweets quickly became so popular that Lu grew rich and bought a house close to the temple. His descendants are there to this day, still selling an ever­ popular range of candies.

Lοcation, location, location: famously, the three most important considerations when contemplating the start-up of a new business. Commerce requires a steady flow of people. In Taiwan, that makes tem­ples a natural choice.