The annual Qingshan King Festival (青山靈安尊王), one of Taipei’s most important religious and cultural attractions successfully wrapped up earlier this week - The festival, which continues to solidify its role as one of the most important religious events on the yearly calendar has once again proven quite successful in attracting large crowds of people and more importantly, helping to keep old traditions alive.

More commonly known to locals as the Bangka Temple Festival (艋舺大拜拜), the annual event has played an important historic and cultural role in one of Taipei’s most storied districts for several centuries, but you might be surprised to learn that it was once in danger of almost completely disappearing.

The revival of the festival over the past decade and the popularity it currently enjoys (especially in terms of attracting the young people of Taiwan to come out and enjoy this cultural experience) is an amazing success story and not only has it helped garner more interest in the cultural, historic and religious history of the district, it has also helped show the sons and daughters of the area that Bangka is actually a pretty damn cool place to live.

The festival celebrates the birth of the Qingshan King (青山王), a folk-religion deity hailing from the Quanzhou (泉州) area of Fujian Province (福建省) in China where many of the areas residents trace their ancestry.

Falling on the days between October 20-22 (on the Lunar Calendar), temple followers parade the temple god around the district with his troops, oracles and generals to inspect homes and businesses and banish evil spirits as well as bringing good luck to the locals.

As one of the largest and liveliest temple festivals in Taipei and the entire district looks forward to this special time of the year where residents often celebrate into the early hours of the morning.

Since I’ve already blogged in greater detail about the festival, I’m going to keep this one short.

It is important to note however that as the festival continues to grow, additional events and activities are always being added to the already jam-packed three day schedule.

So if you have a chance to attend you’re going to be treated to something new and exciting.

Qingshan King Festival: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

This year I spent most of my time I did have following the popular “Lead Generals Troupe” (官將首) taking their portraits as they paraded through the streets of Bangka.

The generals are one of the most popular aspects of any of Taiwan’s temple festivals and they always put on a great show.

If you want to know more about this special festival, I recommend checking out the links above.

Likewise, if you want to know more about Taipei’s most historic district, some of the links below may interest you:

Temples: Bangka's Top Three Temples (艋舺三大廟門) | Bangka Longshan Temple (艋舺龍山寺) | Bangka Qingshan Temple (艋舺清水宮) | Bangka Qingshan Temple (艋舺青山宮)
Street Photography Posts: Monga | Bangka | Wanhua

For now, enjoy some of the photos I took.