Zihnan Temple (紫南宮), a famous Earth God temple in Nantou County’s Jhushan Township (竹山), was recently voted by the nation’s netizens as the No. 1 temple at which to pray for wealth.
The online poll was conducted by search engine Yam.com’s travel channel and its online voting forum between Dec. 30 last year and Jan. 23.
The forum listed 24 temples famous for praying for wealth, as suggested by a book written by Jack Chang (張天傑), a TV show host on Yam’s travel channel, and asked netizens to vote for their favorite temple, also assigning folk custom specialists to judge, along with Chang.
Photo: Chen Fung-li, Taipei Times
The judging wa done in three parts: The first part calculated the search frequencies of their keywords in Yam’s blog and travel channel, the second part decided by the nearly 200,000 votes posted over three weeks and the third part decided by the specialists and Chang.
The overall grade was calculated by adding up the weighted grades of 40 percent, 30 percent and 30 percent for the three parts respectively.
The No. 1 to No. 5 temples are Zihnan Temple in Jhushan Township, Fu-an Temple (福安宮) in Pingtung County’s Checheng Township (車城), Hunglodei Fude Temple (烘爐地福德宮) in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Jhonghe District (中和) and Kuan-ti Temple (關帝廟) in Greater Kaohsiung.
No. 6 to No. 10 are Kuandu Temple (關渡宮) in Taipei, Wufu Temple (五福宮) in Taoyuan County’s Nankan Township (南崁), Five Direction God of Wealth Temple in New Taipei City’s Jinshan District (金山), Xia Hai City God Temple (霞海城隍廟) in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山) and Dunhe Temple (敦和宮) in Nantou County’s Caotun Township (草屯).
Yam said Zihnan Temple is not a big temple, but folk wisdom has it that the temple is very efficacious, so it is often well-attended and attracts many vendors around it.
The Zihnan Temple will issue its own original commemorative coin to celebrate the Year of the Horse over the Lunar New Year holiday. A line of people has already formed at the temple, waiting to receive the lucky coin.
In addition, the Web site also announced six temples, chosen by the judges, as winners for their unique features: Xia Hai City God Temple for its most popular mustache, Yonglian Temple (湧蓮寺) in New Taipei City’s Lujhou District (蘆洲) for being a favorite of real-estate dealers and Dunhe Temple for its largest God of Wealth statue.
The other three winners include Chingfu Temple in Taipei ’s Zhongshan District (中山) for gathering many rich people, a stone wall at Nankunshen Daitian Temple (南鯤鯓代天府) in Greater Tainan for being a special wealth-attracting artifact and Kuantien Temple (廣天宮) in Greater Taichung for gaining the most votes by netizens.
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