It is said that most Taiwanese practice a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and folk beliefs. But what are these folk beliefs and how are they
practiced?
Taiwanese folk religion is centered on the concepts of attracting good fortune and repelling ill fortune. Pursuing Good Fortune -- Taiwanese Folk Cultural Artefacts, the new special exhibition at the Museum of World Religions in Yonghe (
The entryway to the exhibition is narrow and crooked and co-vered with floor-to-ceiling pictures of brick walls and curving Chinese roofs. It gives you the sense of walking through the narrow alleyways of a small town somewhere in Taiwan.
The first section of the exhibition is dedicated to "spaces" and contains a temple display and a residential display. The representation of a traditional Taiwanese temple is much simplified yet unmistakable: Imposing, angry-looking painted generals stand guard on either side of the door; stylized mythical beasts sit atop beams and pillars; and the altar inside is illuminated with red light.
Special attention is given to the beasts in this section of the exhibition. The sculptures of phoenixes, dragons and lions all have their specific duties of protecting the temple. For example, a dragon-fish beast called the aoyu (
Some of the more humorous items in the residential display are the clay "wind lions" (
The section on personal items contained mostly pendants worn to ward off evil spirits, including the donut-shaped coin pendants that are still popular today.
Some of the exhibition's most beautiful items were the ceremonial baby clothes in the stages-of-life section. The little caps adorned with embroidered mythical beasts were especially
adorable.
As informative as the exhibition is, non-Chinese-reading visitors should bring a Taiwanese friend along with them to
translate, as the artefacts' descriptions are in Chinese only.
The NT$150 ticket for admission gets you into the rest of the museum, which contains some lovely displays, such as intricate models of major world temples. To get to the museum, take the Nanshijiao MRT line to Dingxi Station and wait for the free Sogo shuttle outside Exit 1. The museum is in the same building as Sogo.
Exhibition notes
What: Pursuing Good Fortune ? Taiwanese Folk Cultural Artefacts(
Where: Museum of World Religions, 7F, 236 Zhongshan Rd, Yonghe, Taipei (
Telephone: (02) 8231 5966
When: To Feb. 10, 2006
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
RSS