He's one busy dad

By David Momphard
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, May 22, 2005, Page 18

Liu He-mu is shown above at a feast at his home in Lukang, and below at center posing with his family eight years ago. Liu has eight wives and 32 children and is the founder of a religious sect called Wuji Dadao Datong Shengye. PHOTO: DAVID MOMPHARD, TAIPEI TIMES

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."

PHOTO COURTESY OF LIU HE-MU

"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.

"I felt a force lift my finger and I began writing automatically."

Liu He-mu, founder of Wuji Dadao Datong Shengye

"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.

But as his family grew, so too did criticism from fellow worshippers, according to local media, which reported that he was ostracized from Yi Guan Dao. Liu won't say. In fact, beyond the questions he's frequently asked about legalities and living arrangements, he prefers to keep his family life private.

Legally, he has only one wife as Taiwan law prohibits multiple marriages.

The whole family lives together in a six-story building in Liu's native Lukang, he said, but chose not to respond to recent reports on ET Today (東森電視) that he shares his bed with more than one wife at a time.

His fellow worshipper, Lee Si-ming (李賜明), was more forthright. "Taiwan media are sick," he said and complained that news reports have unfairly made Datong Shengye out to be a kind of sex cult.

Liu founded Datong Shengye after talking with fellow Yi Guan Dao adherents who believed he had the ability to channel spirits. The difference between the two, Liu said, is that the ultimate goal of Datong Shengye is universal brotherhood, whereas Yi Guan Dao strives for the transcendence of the individual soul.

In practice, it has more in common with a pyramid marketing organization than a cult or religious sect. Datong Shengye practitioners earn commissions by getting new members to join. Prospective members can join for as little as NT$590.

In Chinese, 590 sounds like "I'll save you," but inductees are encouraged to join with greater amounts to obtain a better standing in the group and to receive nicer gifts.

Group members also earn money from the sales of a line of skin care products imported from Austria. A bottle of Neydharting Moor revitalizing cleanser costs NT$4,500. A 1l bottle of "miracle mud" costs NT$17,500.

Far from being solely a sales club, though, adherents are given courses in the living arts, with chapters on breathing, eating, sleeping, working, making love, studying, travel, entertainment and talking.

The group's manual on how to make love (房中說法) is even written in verse. "The remote and quiet valley stretches wide/And into it I respectfully, courageously stride."

It says nothing of polygamy nor of multiple sex partners.

Liu, in fact, is the only one of Datong Shengye's reported 600 adherents to have multiple wives -- a unique status the group's members accord him as readily as they accord him a kind of divine ordination. "God speaks through him," Lee said.

And how does he answer his detractors; those for whom the eight wives, the 32 children and the NT$17,000 bottles of mud are a bit too much? Liu looks out the window to the street below, where a cacophony of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism had paraded by hours earlier. "I don't have many people criticize me," he said.