Qingshan King Festival (2022青山王祭)

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The annual Qingshan King Festival (青山靈安尊王), one of Taipei’s most important religious and cultural attractions, successfully wrapped up for another year in early November, and once again I was there for most of the day taking photos with both my digital and film cameras.

The festival, which seems to get bigger and better every year continues to cement its position as one of the most important religious festivities on the nation’s calendar of events, and once again attracted large crowds of people, helping to keep both old and new traditions alive.

The revival of the festival over the past decade, and the popularity it currently enjoys (especially with regard to attracting the youth 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 that Bangka can be a pretty cool place to live.

One of the reasons for the surge in youth interest in the festival (and the district itself) is in large part thanks to Bangkha’s rockstar legislator, Freddy Lim (林昶佐), who has worked tirelessly to promote the festival with events that have brought young people back to the district to celebrate its history.

Bangkha has suffered for decades due to its aging population and for it’s reputation for having a seedy environment and the decline in the district has been a problem for the local government for quite some time. In recent years however, the youth of Bangka have started to come back and investing in their neighborhood - opening up hip new restaurants, cafes, and bars, which in turn is helping to bring the district back to life after years of neglect.

Link: TokyoBike Taipei Cafe

Helping in his capacity as the district’s legislator, Freddy has helped to promote the Qingshan King Festival on an official level ensuring that government funding and support is available for these events.

For most politicians, that would be where their support comes to an end, but Freddy has gone back to his roots as the frontman of the black metal band Chthonic (閃靈) and helped to organize the Roar Now Bangkah (萬華大鬧熱) indie music festival, which lasts for about a week leading up to the Qingshan King Festival, bringing youth from all over Taiwan to the district.

Link: Celebrating a God’s Birthday with a Temple Rave (No Man is an Island)

If you weren’t already aware, the Qingshan King Festival, falls on the days between October 20-22 (on the Lunar Calendar) and is essentially an event where a Taiwanese folk-religion deity, known as the “Qingshan King” (青山王) comes out of his temple to inspect the neighborhood he calls home.

Coincidentally, it’s also a celebration of the his birthday!

Filling a role similar to that of the City God (城隍爺), the Qingshan King and his entourage parade through the streets of Bangka, inspecting homes and businesses, banishing evil spirits and bringing good luck to the locals.

As the sworn protector of Bangka, part of his role is to visit all of the places of worship within his territory to say hello, and every temple in town makes sure to prepare for his arrival. While some might wonder why a god from a deity the size of Qingshan Temple (青山宮) is so important, especially when it has neighbors such as Longshan Temple (艋舺龍山寺) and Qingshui Temple (艋舺清水巖), the historic and cultural importance taking place here is something that cannot be understated.

All of this activity makes for a pretty lively event with loud music, fire crackers, fire works, and thousands of people parading through the streets, bringing traffic to a standstill. While this might all sound like a great time, not every resident of the district appreciates all of the noise created by the several day-long festival. So as the festival has grown in popularity, officials have had to come up with ways to streamline the event and reduce the impact it has on the general public - and it seems that some of these efforts have been working as 78% of people polled in 2021 were satisfied with the steps that were taken to improve the festival.

Nevertheless, the event tends to be a loud one, so if you plan on attending in the future, a good pair of earplugs might be a good investment.

Being that I’ve written about this event on a few occasions, my plan is to keep this one short - Today I’m just here to share some of my photos of the event, which I’ll split up between my digital photos and my film shots.

Over the years, I’ve taken part in this festival on several occasions and have more or less figured out how to navigate the massive crowds with ease. This year, I spent all of my time following Qingshan Temple’s Eight Generals Troupe (艋舺青山宮八將團) on their procession through the city.

As part of an ongoing project of mine, I’m a bit more keen to follow them around than the rest of the parade, which I’ve seen in years past.

To briefly explain, the “Eight Generals” (八家將) are literally translated into English as the ‘Eight Home Generals’ and at Qingshan Temple, the group consists of eight officers and one young boy (引路童子), who serves as their guide through the streets of Bangka.

Each of the generals carries an ancient weapon used for torture, and they are meant to appear quite menacing as they are gods of the underworld who have evolved over the century to act as spiritual bodyguards for important deities such as the City God (城隍爺), Mazu (媽祖), Wangye (王爺) and the Qingshan King (青山王) or any deity who has a role in managing our world and the underworld, which corresponds to the theory of yin (陰) and yang (陽).

Every one of the generals is tasked with performing a specific role, which can be likened to supernatural policeman for both the living and the dead. Some of them are in charge of investigating and catching evil spirits (lock generals) while others are in charge of judging them and dealing out punishment (cangue generals) to whatever evil supernatural forces might be lurking in the district.

Their primary duty during the Qingshan King Festival is to clear the area of evil spirits as they make their way through the streets of Bangka in preparation for the arrival of their master. Their job is a serious one, so you are unlikely to see them smile (they do from time to time).

The number of generals that appear in these groups tends to vary, but at Qingshan Temple, you’ll find four generals with green faces (lock generals) and another four with red faces (cangue generals). For reference, the names of the generals who form the front of the line are General Gan (甘爺), General Liu (柳爺), General Xie (謝爺) and General Fan (范爺). The four in that make up the rear are named after the seasons, the General of Spring (春大神), the General of Summer (夏大神), the General of Autumn (秋大神) and the General of Winter (冬大神).

Link: Ba Jia Jiang (八家將), the Generals (Gods of Taiwan)

If you find all of this as fascinating as I do and would like to learn more about the festival, I recommend reading the other articles I’ve written about the festival in the past so you can get a better idea of what’s going on.

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

Digital Photos

Film Photos

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’Running it Back‘ (二連霸)

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You’re from Canada? You must love hockey, right?

I hate to be that guy, but yeah, I’m a typical Canadian, and a big hockey fan.

When I was young, I played basketball, baseball and practiced Tae Kwon Doe, but never really bothered to watch any other sports on television.

After my arrival in Taiwan, the time difference with North America made it difficult to keep up with everything happening back home, but I tried my best to continue watching hockey as much as I could, which meant I was waking up quite early every day to watch the games live.

Then, one beautiful summer’s afternoon, a bunch of friends and I decided to go check out a Taiwanese baseball game as we had heard that the atmosphere was electric, at least compared to baseball games back home.

Making our way to the Tianmu Baseball Stadium in Taipei, we were almost dumbstruck by everything that was happening. I still remember having to be reassured several times that we were actually allowed to bring our own food and drinks into the stadium - something unheard of back in North America.

That first game was so long ago that I can’t even remember who the opponent was, but the team that stuck with me were the Brother Elephants, who in their beautiful yellow and black uniforms took to the field and sent the crowd into a frenzy. After that first experience, we tried to make it a regular weekend excursion to go and watch games whenever we had free time, but when a match fixing scandal rocked the nation’s baseball league, it’s popularity kind of died off and we stopped going.

In 2013, the Brother Elephants were sold to a new owner and moved to Taichung in central Taiwan. With the scandal in the rear view mirror, the popularity of baseball in Taiwan started growing again, as did my interest in the game. For the first year or two we just watched games on television, but then some friends and I started making regular trips to Taichung to watch games, or to the games held here in Taoyuan when the team was in town.

Now known as the CTBC Brother Elephants (中信兄弟), the team may have changed owners, but it retained its massive fan base, and the beautiful yellow uniforms that they’re known for. That being said, even though the team is a perennial contender for the championship, they developed somewhat of a reputation for choking. Diehard fans refer to this as part of the PTSD whenever the playoffs roll around as the Brothers have ended the year with heartbreak on far too many occasions.

Hoping to help break the curse, a group of us went to Taichung for Game 7 of the Taiwan Series in 2020, thinking that our presence might help the team prevail. Unfortunately, we we wrong. They ended up losing again.

So, in 2021, when the team once again found itself in the Taiwan Series against the same team that they lost against the year before, we figured it best to just watch the game at a local bar.

But to our surprise, they actually won. And they weren’t messing around. They won with a four game sweep of the Tainan’s Uni-Lions.

This year, the team came out with their yearly slogan, “Run it back,” which I admittedly was a bit cheesy, but the point was that they were looking to win back-to-back championships.

From the start of the year, things weren’t looking very good - A number of injuries, COVID infections and foreign players leaving the team resulted in a poor performance in the first half of the season with Taoyuan’s Rakuten Monkey’s (桃園樂天猴子) winning the first half season championship.

It looked like that trend was going to continue through the second half, until one day the team suddenly rediscovered its championship prowess and went on a huge winning streak, earning themselves a spot in the playoffs.

However, due to a somewhat confusing mathematics and the system set up by the league, three teams entered the playoffs with the Brothers and the Wei-Chuan Dragons (味全龍) being forced to play a series that is similar to the MLB’s wildcard system. Starting that series up a game (thanks to math), the Brothers ended up prevailing over the Dragons after some pretty entertaining matches.

Winning Games 1 and 2 of the Taiwan Series against the Rakuten Monkeys here in Taoyuan, the series shifted back to Taichung for the next two games and my friends and I were faced with a choice - do we watch the game together at the bar, or try our luck watching one in person? When tickets went on sale, we had to decide quickly as they would sell out fast, so we ended up deciding to go to Game 4 to watch the game live.

When the Brothers won Game 3 in Taichung, we started to get a bit exciting as there was a chance of a sweep and the championship being won with us in person. Our experience in the past though, the PTSD I mentioned earlier, prevented us from getting too worked up, though.

Interestingly, even though I’ve probably been to about a hundred games over my years in Taiwan, I’ve never brought my camera. Most of the time when I’m at the games, I’m with friends and we’re having fun and drinking, so I don’t want to have to worry about my camera. This time though, I figured it was probably a good idea to bring my camera along just in case.

And I’m glad I did.

The team followed through and actually “Ran it back” curing some of the PTSD that fans talk about, at least until next year.

As a sports fan, it’s always great to see your team win a championship at home, but as a foreigner in Taiwan, it’s also an interesting cultural experience that I got to share with 20,000 other fans. It was an amazing experience and I’m looking forward to the new slogan they come up with for next year! Obviously, this isn’t the normal kind of thing I write about, I just wanted to share some thoughts and my photos from the experience and hope you enjoy them as well!

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Abandoned Church (廢棄的教堂)

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I’m going to preface this one with a bit of a personal story. 

Living in Taiwan, people tend to assume a few things about foreigners.

One of them is that we’re all American, of course.

Another is that we’re all Christian.

Given Taiwan’s post-war history, its understandable that a lot of older people would just assume that you’re an American. For most of us Canadians living here, it can be something that becomes relatively annoying, but after a few years, I came to the conclusion that there obviously weren’t any ill-intentions involved.

The latter though, I’m assuming is because there are so many clean cut missionaries bicycling around the island evangelizing that people just started assuming we’re all followers.  

I may have grown up in a predominately Christian community, with a grandmother who tried to frighten my younger sister and I into religion. As most young people of my generation are likely to understand, the old ‘fire-and-brimstone’ style of scaring people into religion was something that had to change as young people, like myself, rejected the negativity presented by the church. The shift wasn’t something that happened overnight, but I have vivid memories of being sat down in front of a TV during my pre-teen years at my grandma’s house with my younger sister and was forced to watch an ‘End of Days’ film.

The movie was so poorly made that it didn’t really have the desired effect.

The problem for most churches in North America is that the vast majority of congregations aged to a point that, from a business point of view, wasn’t very sustainable. Senior citizens were going to go to church every Sunday, no matter what was going on. When it came to young people though, a strategy change was necessary. So, by the time I was a teenager, church services started changing to a ‘less threatening’ rock concert-like experience.

Gone were the days of preacher man standing at his pulpit telling everyone they were going to hell.

Instead, the philosophy became one of “God is Love,” focusing more on the positive aspects of faith. 

None of this really had any effect on my life, but for some young people it was good enough.

One of them was my sister, who continued attending with my grandma for the rest of her high school days. Fortunately, my parents were pretty cool (non-believers themselves), and when I told them that I wasn’t interested in attending with my grandma, they didn’t force me.

Years later, I recall having a video chat with my family during the holidays, and my grandma asked if I ever started going to church here in Taiwan. I just smiled and didn’t say anything to which she quipped, “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re a nothing,” which probably sounds insulting, but it’s only because she doesn’t know how to say “non-believer” or “atheist” in English. And hey, it’s better than being called a “heathen” or a “sinner.”  

Shortly after that conversation, I heard from my sister that the church she grew up attending was forced to re-locate to a smaller building across town. Religious organizations may not have to pay taxes in Canada like the rest of us, but the price of heating and paying the staff became far too much for the small congregation to support, thus requiring a move. A year later, the declining attendance and revenue ultimately forced them out of business for good, sending my grandma and her church friends elsewhere.

That’s capitalism for you. 

In 2019, it was reported that out of Canada’s 27,000 churches, more than a third of them would face closure within the next decade. The Anglican Church of Canada for example had about 1.3 million members in 1961 but by 2017, that number had dropped to 282,000 - the vast majority of them senior citizens.

Sociologists predict that by 2040 the Anglican Church in Canada will have already disappeared. 

Link: COVID may have hastened Christianity's decline in Canada (National Post)

My experience of course is essentially a Canadian one, but the decline we have seen in Canada is not an isolated one as there have been similar issues for the church across the world.

But what about here in Taiwan?

When people think about this country, I think it’s safe to assume that most wouldn’t guess that Christianity is as prevalent as it is - There are so many Taoist, Buddhist and Taiwanese folk-religion temples wherever you go in the country that the growing number churches here almost seem insignificant.

That’s where you’d be wrong though.

One area where the church has succeeded in Taiwan, where it has failed elsewhere is attracting young people. The shift that we saw in the attitude of the church towards one of “love” instead of scare-tactics is one that works here, with quite a few young people attracted to the less rigid and less time consuming form of Christianity. Coupled with the fact that a high percentage of Taiwan’s Indigenous population (nearly 70%) are believers, Christianity in Taiwan is experiencing a surge in numbers that makes for a success story that churches elsewhere are likely to be quite envious of; Still, with only an estimated 3.9%-4.7% of Taiwan’s total population professing to be Christian, believers here see room for continued growth.

That being said, the topic of today’s post is an abandoned church, so even though the number of Christian believers appears to be growing in Taiwan, the country isn’t immune to the same closures that we’ve seen elsewhere. That being said, it’s safe to say that the closure of churches here in Taiwan are often for reasons that are quite different than other areas where the religion finds itself in decline. 

The largest factor for church closures across Taiwan is due to a decline in the population of small communities and villages. This is because the vast majority of the ‘traditional’ churches that you’ll find across the country are located within mountainous villages, home to Indigenous peoples.

Many of these communities have been in decline in recent years with young people leaving for better opportunities elsewhere. In a community that was once able to support several churches, some have had to close, share their space, or act as a community center or clinic during the week.

In most cases, the building which once housed a place of worship has been converted into a local community space rather than being completely abandoned. Nevertheless, there are a growing number of abandoned churches across the country, and the photos I’m sharing today are from one of them. 

Link: TUBA Church (基國派老教堂)

It’s at this point that I have to remind readers that this is an Urban Exploration article, so I won’t be offering specifics as to the location of this building, or how you can get inside;

So, enjoy the photos, but don’t contact me to ask for additional information. 

Part of the Catholic Church of Taiwan, this modest place of worship in the mountains of northern Taiwan’s farm country dates back to 1953, shortly after the Chinese Nationalists arrived on the island.

Located within a tea and rice farming community, the church was a branch of the much larger catholic church organization, headed by Spanish missionaries, which was part of an effort to evangelize to the people of the countryside. Unfortunately, historic information about those churches is difficult to find, but from what little is available, the thing I found most impressive is that the Spanish clergy held their services in either Taiwanese (台語) or Hakka (客家語), depending on where the church was located. Having proficiency in either language is an accomplishment that very few foreigners, including myself, are able to claim.

Due to the lack of information available about the churches, it’s difficult to pin down any precise information about when this specific building was abandoned, but from personal experience (I’ve been driving by the place for quite a while), it’s been abandoned for at least over a decade.

Coming with the main church building, a bell tower, classrooms and an office building next door, the entire complex has been overtaken by nature in recent years. When I first visited a few years back, it was obvious that someone was still maintaining the grounds, but they’ve stopped in recent years.

Navigating your way through the brush that has grown up in the administrative section next to the church, you’ll find that this is the area that seems the most dated. The building was gutted at some point, leaving very little remaining, but a skeleton of the original building. To the rear, you’ll find a space that was likely used as an office for the staff at the church. This section of the building is in better shape, but its completely empty as well. 

The main attraction here though is the interior of the church, which is quite beautiful in the right light.

Like the other buildings, not much remains within the interior as all of the chairs and decorations have been removed, leaving a mostly empty shell of what was once there. Having all of the clutter removed though isn’t necessarily a terrible thing as you’re able to get a much better perspective of its architectural design.

Just above the main doors to the building there is an open second level where you were likely to have found a piano at some point. This is also the space connected to the bell tower where staff would be able to ring the bell before services started. The second floor is reachable by a beautiful, yet very narrow set of spiral stairs.

From the top there isn’t much space, but you get a nice view of the interior as well as the stained glass windows that would have provided some excellent natural light during the early morning and afternoon. 

Likewise on both sides of the building you’ll find stained glass windows, some of which are broken, but are still quite beautiful. As someone who comes from North America, these windows are one of those familiar things that you don’t see too often in Taiwan, but are a welcome inclusion to the exploration experience. 

The pulpit area is where being abandoned to the elements has had the most detrimental effect to the interior as the wooden stage is in pretty rough shape. You have to be careful while walking on it as any step could find yourself sinking through the moldy wood.

Similarly, the curved ceiling is in pretty bad shape with some of the wooden panels starting to fall off.

One thing that I didn’t actually notice until I got home was that the ceiling was home to several large wasp nests, which actually makes exploring the church quite dangerous if they’re annoyed by your presence.

The only object that actually remains within the church is the altar at the read of the building. The simple table stands in a space just behind where the priest would have stood to give his sermons.

To the left of the altar was a rear exit to the building and to the right is a cubicle space that I’m going to assume was used as a confessional, but it’s in pretty bad shape so its hard to tell for sure. 

Suffice to say, there isn’t all that much to see at this ruin. If you’re able to find it, you’ll be able to explore the space and take an ample amount of photos in less than half an hour. 

You may find that some my earlier statements about the church somewhat negative, but I assure you, I’m ambivalent about all of it. People are free to believe in whatever makes them feel better. Christianity has played a massive role throughout our history, so it would be sad to see it completely disappear, but then again throughout our history some pretty terrible things have happened because of religion.

Back home in Canada, the nation is currently wrestling with the absolutely disgusting history of our so-called ‘residential school system’, where the church ran boarding schools for Indigenous peoples across the country. Now, after more than a century, we’re only recently starting to discover the horrible truth of what actually took place at these death camps, which is a stain on our nation, and is likely to drive people further away from the church. 

Who knows, maybe during my next trip home, I’ll be able to explore abandoned churches like this one!