Furen Temple Audio Guide

Furen Temple: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Furen Temple

   Welcome to Furen Temple, known to its neighbors simply as the big temple. It stands at 100 Heping Road in Daxi District, Taoyuan, at the end of the lively Heping Old Street. The street is a busy shopping strip, and the temple gives it a calm, solemn anchor. The temple is dedicated to Kaizhang Shengwang, the Sage King who Opened Zhangzhou. It was founded more than two centuries ago by settlers from Zhangzhou, in Fujian, who wanted their patron deity close to home. It is still the main place of worship for many people in Daxi. The local name is 福仁宮, and you may hear it said that way as you wander. Over the next few stops, we will look at how the temple began, how its halls are built, and two famous customs. One is a pig-offering festival, and the other is a top-spinning tradition played on the courtyard. The temple is listed as open from 4 a.m. until 8:30 p.m., every day of the year, so you can often step in at a quiet hour.

2. 02

   Furen Temple: A River Crossing Avoided

   The story begins in 1813, the eighteenth year of the Jiaqing reign. Zhangzhou settlers in Daxi had a recurring problem. To worship Kaizhang Shengwang at festivals and New Year, they had to cross the Dakekan River, today's Dahan River, to reach the temple at Buding. That was a real inconvenience, so they decided to build a temple on their own side of the water. The money came from several local figures. Li Bingsheng, the father of Li Tengfang, was one of them. Lü Fandiao and Lin Benyuan were the others. Furen Temple was founded as a branch of the Buding temple, Renhe Temple, which means its main deity was brought across from there. Here is a surprise. Although this is a Zhangzhou temple and the heart of Daxi's Zhangzhou faith, it also honors local deities of the Hakka, Chaozhou and Quanzhou communities. That mix is quite rare. It suggests a temple that grew into a shared spiritual home for the whole town, not only for the group that founded it.

3. 03

   Furen Temple: Halls, Plaques and Wartime Chapters

   Look at the scale of the place first. The temple covers more than 300 ping, and it is one of the grander temples in the Taoyuan area. It has three halls. Each has a roof in the false four-sloped style, and the middle hall and the side rooms each feature a pair of dragon pillars. The main hall is raised to the same height as the two-storey rear hall. The idea is that the principal deity and the accompanying deities are not ranked by size. Above the front entrance hangs a plaque reading Zhangjiang Yi Ai, and beside the three-bay entrance stand finely carved, old-fashioned sedan chairs. Inside, plaques from famous figures of past eras hang in the hall. One dates from the fifth year of the Daoguang reign in the Qing dynasty and reads Ling Zhe Min Bang. The building has also lived through turbulent times. When Japanese forces came to Taiwan, the temple housed an Anmin Bureau, a local base of resistance. Under Japanese rule it served as a garrison hospital. It has been rebuilt twice since.

4. 04

   Furen Temple: Sacred Pigs and Giant Tops

   The courtyard is where the temple's traditions come to life. On the eleventh day of the second lunar month, the birthday of Kaizhang Shengwang, Daxi holds its pig-offering contest. Ten surnames take turns presenting a sacred pig, so each family's turn comes once every 10 years, and it is treated as a major event. The pig is painted with patterns by a specialist master and brought to the temple square. Worshippers follow the procession through the streets with beiguan gongs and drums, and there are folk opera performances. The records are legendary. In 1999 it was the Li family's turn, and their pig weighed more than 1,500 catties. Its owner turned down an offer from Sanxia Zushi Temple to buy it. Today many offerings are creative pigs made of flour turtles, noodles and oranges, but the festival remains a highlight. The courtyard also has a top-spinning story. In August 1968, a carver named Jian Wuxiong thought adults should be able to spin giant tops, and the idea spread. In 1981 the Daxi top club held a top king exhibition here. In 2013, new stone paving made large tops hard to spin, and players moved to the front of Puji Hall for a time.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you leave, notice how the courtyard is split by Heping Old Street. Children once gathered here to spin tops, and neighbors stopped to chat. Today it doubles as a parking area and a community gathering space, and the friendly atmosphere has lasted for generations. Before you go, look up at the roofs and the heights of the halls, and think about the settlers who chose not to cross the river. Then see if you can find the Zhangjiang Yi Ai plaque above the front entrance and the carved sedan chairs beside the entrance bays. If your visit falls in the second lunar month, the birthday of Kaizhang Shengwang, you may catch the pig festival atmosphere in the square. And if you walk back along the old street, see how the temple's presence changes the mood of the shops around it.