Dec. 22 to Dec. 28
About 200 years ago, a Taoist statue drifted down the Guizikeng River (貴子坑) and was retrieved by a resident of the Indigenous settlement of Kipatauw.
Decades later, in the late 1800s, it’s said that a descendant of the original caretaker suddenly entered into a trance and identified the statue as a Wangye (Royal Lord) deity surnamed Chi (池府王爺). Lord Chi is widely revered across Taiwan for his healing powers, and following this revelation, some members of the Pan (潘) family began worshipping the deity.
Photo: Chen Ching-ming, Taipei Times
The century that followed was marked by repeated forced displacement and marginalization of Kipatauw’s residents, who once called home a large part of what is now Taipei’s Beitou District (北投). Today, the community is largely dispersed across the city, but one of the few physical traces of its history is Baode Temple (保德宮), where Lord Chi continues to be tended to by the Pan family.
Although few Indigenous residents remain, the neighborhood is still called Fanzaicuo (番仔厝) — literally “Indigenous Village,” although “fanzai” is now considered a derogatory term. This is where the Pan family set up the temple shortly after arriving in the late 1930s. The temple has also endured much hardship, moving several times due to MRT construction and a bitter land dispute.
Today, the shrine is greatly reduced in size, sitting on a concrete platform above the Fanzai ditch. Though just a 10-minute walk from Beitou MRT station, the area feels rural, and few passerbys realize the site’s historical significance.
Photo courtesy of Beitou Fanzaicuo Baode Temple
COMMUNITY SHRINE
The first two articles in this “Echoes of Kipatauw” series trace how Kipatauw gradually lost its land and assimilated into Han culture between the 1600s and 1800s — despite maintaining a distinct identity from their neighbors. Today they are considered part of the Ketagalan people, a collective term for the Pingpu (plains) Indigenous communities that once extended from northern Taoyuan to the Yilan coast.
The following piece (Taiwan in Time: “Echoes of Kipatauw: Century of displacement and erasure”), examines the community’s displacement under Japanese rule. Originally living in Kipatauw’s upper settlement near Guizikeng (貴子坑), the Pan clan was forced to sell their land for white clay mining during the 1910s. Many moved to the middle settlement near Fuxinggang (復興崗), only to be displaced again in the late 1930s to make way for a horse racing track. They ultimately resettled in the lower settlement known as Fanzaicuo.
Photo courtesy of Beitou Fanzaicuo Baode Temple
Beitou’s Indigenous communities were familiar with Han religious practices early on. Records show that many attended the establishment of the nearby Guandu Temple (關渡宮) in 1712, and a dragon pillar inside bears an inscription noting that it was donated by Kipatauw residents in 1784. By the late 1800s, many community members had also converted to Christianity. Following the Wangye statue’s revelation, it was rotated among the homes of Pan family altar keepers.
After settling in Fanzaicuo, the Pan family established a private shrine in 1944, reportedly off limits to Han residents. Over time, as more Han families moved into the area and came to recognize the Wangye’s reputed healing powers, the community built Baode Temple in 1971 to enshrine the deity and open its worship to the public, writes Lin Fen-yu (林芬郁) in “Witness of a Pingpu Settlement: Beitou’s Baode Temple” (平埔聚落遺跡的見證—北投保德宮).
As its name suggests, Fanzaicuo was once an Indigenous-majority village. However, when historian Lin Heng-dao (林衡道) visited in 1962, he found that only six out of the 72 households were Pan. At that time, it was a lively community adjacent to the Tamsui Railway tracks.
Photo: Chen Ching-ming, Taipei Times
PINGPU EARTH GOD
In the temple’s early years, its spirit medium would, during urgent cases, scrape small amounts of agarwood from the statue with a consecrated sword, and mix it into water for worshippers to drink. This practice was discontinued as the hole in the statue grew too large. Today, the temple has no active spirit medium because the deity hasn’t appointed one.
In 1973 or 1974, the nearby Fushen Temple (福神宮), dedicated to the Earth God, was destroyed by a flood, and the deity was moved to Baode temple. In 2000, during a pilgrimage to Chaotian Temple in Beigang (北港), the Earth God statue was accidentally dropped into the incense burner. Alarmed, temple staff retrieved it and while cleaning it later, they were stunned to discover the characters pingpushe (平埔社), meaning plains Indigenous settlement, carved into the statue.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Lin writes that Baode Temple’s ceremonies were no different from those of other Taoist temples, and that most attendees were of Han descent. Liang Ting-yu (梁廷毓), however, writes in “A preliminary study of the ‘Indigenous lion’ of Baode Temple at Beitou’s Fanzaicuo” (北投番仔厝保德宮的番仔獅之歷史初探) that the temple’s lion dance differs from conventional forms.
Liang writes that the lion dance ritual began taking shape in the late 1940s, after the private shrine was established and began holding ceremonies. They learned from nearby masters, but both the lion head design and dance moves remain unique.
LAND DISPUTE
Photo courtesy of Lin Yen-hsiang
Beginning in 1977, land expropriation for MRT construction forced more than 30 households to leave Fanzaicuo, scattering the Pan family. Around 1986, Baode Temple was temporarily moved to a vegetable garden, and the community rebuilt it 10 years later on land borrowed from the neighboring Shixin High School (十信高中) — without a written agreement. When school ownership changed hands, it sparked a drawn-out land dispute, during which the temple sought to leverage its Indigenous history to prevent its demolition.
At the same time, a Ketagalan cultural revival movement was underway, as long-marginalized Pingpu communities attempted to reassert their identity and gain official recognition, bringing the Ketagalan issue into the public eye.
Despite being listed as municipal cultural landscape in 2008, Baode Temple was still torn down in 2010 amid protests, with worshippers attempting to physically stop its demise. The temple initially won the case, but the school appealed, and the court ultimately ruled that the structure itself was of modern origin, with only the deities and ritual objects considered historic.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Late temple director Pan Ping-cheng (潘坪成), the great-grandson of the family member who revealed the statue’s identity, lamented to reporters, “We were driven from place to place by the Japanese and current government, and now even by a school.”
Pan Ping-cheng’s younger brother Pan Kuo-liang (潘國良) now looks after the temple almost daily, and continues to host regular rituals and celebrations.
“Before my father died, he told me that the Wangye belongs to our Pan family, and no matter what, we have to do our best to take care of him, and not let him wander from place to place again,” he said in a 2022 study by Lee Cheng-hong (李承鴻).
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that either have anniversaries this week or are tied to current events.
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