Wuqi Zhenwu Temple ( zh, t=梧棲真武宮, p=Wúqī Zhēnwǔ Gōng) is a

Taoist Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Tao ...

temple located in

Wuqi District Wuqi District () is a coastal suburban district in southern Taichung, Taiwan. The Port of Taichung is located in Wuqi District. History After the handover of Taiwan from Japan to the Republic of China in 1945, Wuqi was organized as an urban ...

Taichung Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Ta ...

, Taiwan. The temple is dedicated to the Taoist deity,

Xuantian Shangdi Xuanwu () or Xuandi (), also known as Zhenwu (, ) or Zhenwudadi (, ), is a powerful deity in Chinese religion, one of the higher-ranking deities in Taoism. He is revered as a powerful god, able to control the elements and capable of great magic ...

History

Wuqi has a large population belonging to the Tsai clan (蔡), which originally came from Liantang Village in Quanzhou,

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its cap ...

. In 1849, Zhenwu Temple was built in by the owners of a trading company named Jíshùnhào (集順號) owned by the Tsai clan in accordance to their traditions in Quanzhou. The temple became an important meeting place for the clan and was also used for trade and educational purposes. The

1935 Shinchiku-Taichū earthquake The 1935 Shinchiku-Taichū earthquake occurred with a Richter magnitude of 7.1 (7.0 Mw) in April 1935 with its epicenter in Taichung, Taiwan (then Shinchiku Prefecture). It was the deadliest earthquake in Taiwan's recorded history, claim ...

severely damaged Zhenwu Temple and was repaired in 1953 and 1976 into its current form. On 28 March 2003, Zhenwu Temple was designated as a city-level monument.

Architecture

Zhenwu Temple is built in a traditional Hokkien architectural style with few alterations since its establishment. Wuqi was historically a port city, and before Zhenwu Temple was built, the land around it was used by trading companies as storage space for wood and stone imported from China. Zhenwu Temple heavily used these imported materials in its construction, including fir wood from Fuzhou and

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

from Quanzhou, which are still standing today. The interior of the temple contains sculptures of carp leaping into the air, while the swallowtail roof is decorated with dragon sculptures. In Chinese mythology, a carp turns into a dragon if it leaps across Longmen, a ravine on the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the sixth-longest river system in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Ha ...

; the sculptures are a metaphor for Tsai clan descendants to mature and prosper. The temple also contains a plaque dating from 1864 that was gifted by Changhua

county magistrate County magistrate ( or ) sometimes called local magistrate, in imperial China was the official in charge of the '' xian'', or county, the lowest level of central government. The magistrate was the official who had face-to-face relations with th ...

Wang Zhen (王楨) for the deity's assistance in quelling the Tai Chao-chuen incident.

Worship

Every eighteen years, Zhenwu Temple holds an exceptionally festive

Zhong Yuan Festival The Ghost Festival, also known as the Zhongyuan Festival (traditional Chinese: 中元節; simplified Chinese: ) in Taoism and Yulanpen Festival () in Buddhism, is a traditional Taoist and Buddhist festival held in certain East Asian countrie ...

celebration known as the "Eighteenth-year Ghost Festival" (十八年普). The practice originated from when the Tsai clan was still in Mainland China, where the twenty-one neighborhoods in Liantang Village took turns hosting the event and cycling every eighteen years.

References

External links

{{commonscat
Wuqi Zhenwu Temple
on the Bureau of Cultural Heritage website
Wuqi Zhenwu Temple
on the Cultural Heritage Department of Taichung City website 1849 establishments in Taiwan Religious buildings and structures completed in 1849 Taoist temples in Taichung