He's one busy dad

It's Sunday afternoon and the streets of Lukang Township are teeming with temple celebrations. Worshippers carry a palanquin bearing a statue of Matsu, Goddess of the Sea, past the 300-year-old Lungshan Temple. Two girls perform a pole dance on the bed of a truck paneled with fake flowers and blasting Cantonese techno music. Young men sweat in the sun, their uniform red T-shirts hiked half way up their bellies to beat the heat. Firecrackers punctuate the proceedings.

Five stories above the fray, Liu He-mu (劉和穆) and 100 others are having a celebration of their own.

It's been one year since the founding of their religious sect, Wuji Dadao Datong Shengye (無極大道大同聖業) and Liu is handing out door prizes while several ladies set up a vegetarian buffet in the back of the room.

When I called Liu days earlier to arrange an interview, I knew nothing of Datong Shengye, as its adherents call it, or that Liu was its founding father and principal sage. He was already a feature of the evening news for a different reason. "I hear you have eight wives and 32 children," I said over the phone. "I'd like to interview you."

"Come by on Sunday," he said.

Liu is an affable fellow, 51, with close-cropped hair that's begun graying at the temples. He wears an infectious smile, has cherub cheeks and crow's feet claw at the corners of his eyes when he laughs. The single white hair growing from a mole draws a circle under his chin.

"When I was young, I never thought of marrying," Liu said. "I was too shy."

About the time most young men become interested in girls, Liu took an interest in religion. The influence of a favorite teacher in high school led him to a fascination with the Confucian classics. He did poorly on a test to enter college to become a teacher and instead took up studies at a Taipei temple.

In particular, he studied Ruzong (儒宗), a Confucian master whose writings would form the foundation of his religious beliefs. Adherents to Ruzong shenjiao (儒宗神教) believe spirits can be channeled through writing and Liu claims to have first had such an experience during his early 20s when he involuntarily began writing characters in a bathroom mirror.

"I felt a force lift my finger and I began writing automatically," he said. "I had no idea what I was writing before I saw the characters in the mirror."

The experience reinforced his belief in divinity even as his life had taken on new, more earthly, obligations. With his younger brother, he started a plastics manufacturing business. He insisted that each of their 50-odd employees be vegetarian and hired a cook to prepare meals for the staff.

She would become his yuanpei (原配), or original wife. He was 26. Over the next 16 years he'd marry again seven times and conceive 32 children; a new wife and four new kids every two years.

He had also overcome his shyness. The episode in the mirror led him to believe that he was ordained with a gift and he now saw fatherhood and family as a calling. "Chinese traditionally had more than one wife," Liu said.

"My first wife accepted as much because her father had more than one wife. She understood this was something I wanted before we married."

Liu had become an adherent of Yi Guan Dao (一貫道), a syncretic religion that seeks to identify the common principles underlying Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam. It is Taiwan's third-largest religion, according to the Ministry of the Interior, with over 3,000 temples and nearly 1 million adherents. It was through Yi Guan Dao that he met his remaining wives.