Banishing evil spirits, taming wandering ghosts, deity processions, Taiwanese opera and martial arts performances are among the events planned for the 2011 Taipei Xiahai City God Temple Cultural Festival (台北霞海城隍文化季), a month-long event that begins tonight at Dihua Street’s (迪化街) historic Xiahai City God Temple (霞海城隍廟).
The yearly festival is held to celebrate the City God’s (城隍) birthday, which is on the 13th day of the fifth lunar month (June 14 this year). All events are free and open to the public.
“This is a perfect opportunity to show Taipei residents that Taiwan’s folk culture isn’t only to be found in central and southern Taiwan,” said Titan Wu (吳孟寰), a spokesman for the temple.
Photo Courtesy of Xiahai City God Temple
Celebrations get under way tonight with Ghost Buddha (鬼菩薩), a Taiwanese opera performance by Ming Hwa Yuan (Tien) Taiwanese Opera Co (明華園天字戲劇團). It will be shown on a stage in Yongle Square (永樂廣場) beside the temple.
On Tuesday, the temple will perform several rituals to cleanse the locality of evil spirits.
“Before removing the City God from the temple, we have to ensure the community is clean, and that means banishing ghosts and anything else that is impure,” Wu said.
Photo Courtesy of Xiahai City God Temple
“Positioning spirit generals to protect the five earthly temples” (放軍安五營), a ritual in which heavenly generals are placed outside places of worship, will be held on that day to ensure the deity’s safety before its inspection tour, while the “night patrol” (暗訪夜巡), which begins at 5pm on June 12, features “eight generals” patrolling the City God’s territory to banish evil spirits.
The latter ritual, Wu said, provides a unique opportunity to watch these “ghost hunters” in action.
Once the area is cleansed of unwanted spirits, the temple’s City God statue will be removed for its inspection tour (繞境遊行) of Datong District (大同區) — an “energetic and boisterous” (熱鬧) procession complete with the liberal discharge of firecrackers and ritualized performance troupes flanking the statue’s palanquin, Wu said.
Photo Courtesy of Xiahai City God Temple
A number of other folk art performance troupes (陣頭) from across Taiwan will descend on the temple on June 11 for drumming performances, martial arts routines and dragon dances. The entertainment is meant to both attract Taipei City residents to the area and to amuse the deity.
The City God is said to keep a ledger of the good and evil done by mortals, watch over the movements of ghosts and demons in the underworld and protect the people of Datong District, where the temple is located.
Photo Courtesy of Xiahai City God Temple
Photo Courtesy of Xiahai City God Temple
Photo Courtesy of Xiahai City God Temple
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and