A temple not for worship?

Temples were the meeting grounds for folk arts in ancient Chinese society. Painters, woodcarvers, calligraphers and embroiderers all contributed to furnishings of the buildings, while opera singers, puppeteers and dragon-dancers strived to present their best performances in front of the temple gods.

While modern temples have altered or simplified their architectural styles and Taiwanese have many other recreations besides temple festivals, the National Center for Traditional Arts (國立傳統藝術中心) decided that the best way to preserve these temple-related arts is to have a temple built for the purpose. When the new Wen Chang Temple (文昌祠) was opened yesterday, it became the first government-built temple since the Chinese Nationalist Party came to Taiwan.

The birthday of Wen Chang Di Chun (文昌帝君), the main god at Wen Chang Temple, falls today on the lunar calendar, the second day of the temple's opening ceremony. Priests will carry out religious rituals while some of northern Taiwan's best-known traditional performance groups present their shows.

The center complex of the temple, which opened in 2001, promotes traditional arts and the 13 gods worshipped in the temple are all patron saints of mandarins and artists, except the Land God (土地公), which endows prosperity on the neighborhood.

"Many traditional craft forms originated from temple buildings while the performances at temple functions provided communal recreation for rural society in the past. Therefore, to make the Center for Traditional Arts complex more comprehensive, it's necessary to have a temple here," said Chen Mei-ling (陳美玲), a project specialist at the center.

Many visitors to the complex look on the temple as a nice background for snapshot portraits, or as a complement to the complex's small old-town atmosphere.

The traditional arts-and-crafts streets leading to the temple are a red-brick recreation of an ancient northern Taiwan rural township. Thirty-three shops, selling anything from glass vases, to clay pipes, from paper-cuttings to glove puppets are busy with tourists.

As no ancient towns in Taiwan could have survived without their local center of worship, Chen said, Wen Chang Temple makes the recreation of old-time Taiwan as realistic as possible.

The most prominent feature of the building is the use of wood in its structure, instead of the increasingly prevalent mortar and concrete.

"Most of the temples in Taiwan have unintentionally adopted northern Chinese architectural designs. Here we remained truthful to the southern Chinese styles, both in color schemes and painting patterns," said Lee Chian-lang (李乾朗), a historical buildings scholar who designed paintings for the temple. "Southern Chinese temples have more intricate patterns, such as human figures among flowers. Temples around Beijing, for example, use only flowers. Most temple paintings done in the past 30 years have confused the two," Lee said.

The paintings of door-gods on the three temple gates also follow tradition. They have larger heads and rounder bodies compared with the modern-day door-god paintings that have the gods take on the physical proportions of human beings, which, Chen said, may be due to the influence of Western movie posters.

The idols in the temple include the "industry-gods" rarely enshrined in temples. Tian Du Yuan Shuai (田都元帥) and Meng Fu Lang Gun (孟府郎君) are patron saints of bei guan and nan guan artists respectively. Si Ching Wang Yei (西秦王爺) governs all genres of performance arts. Chiao Sheng Shian Shi (巧勝仙師) and He Yei Shian Shi (荷葉仙師) specialize in carpentry and stonemasonry respectively. Lu Gong Shian Shi (爐公先師) is in charge of all iron furnaces.