Chi Ming Palace Audio Guide

ChiMing Tang Temple: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to ChiMing Tang Temple

   Welcome to ChiMing Tang Temple, known locally as 啟明堂, on Lianchi Road in Kaohsiung's Zuoying District. You are on the southwest side of Lotus Pond, one of the city's best-loved lakeside landscapes. Mountains frame the water here, and a string of temple pavilions and sacred figures dots the surface. This is not just another shrine on the shore. ChiMing Tang Temple belongs to a particular tradition called the phoenix hall, a kind of temple where teaching and moral instruction sit right alongside worship. It is described as a Confucian temple, and it is closely tied to the story of how this tradition took root around Kaohsiung. Over the next few minutes, I will walk you through its beginnings in a private home in 1899, the strange and wonderful way it came to honor both a martial sage and a scholar sage, and the layers of building that grew up beside the lake. Let us start where the story starts, with a group of worried neighbors and a set of divination blocks.

2. 02

   ChiMing Tang Temple: A Hall Born in a Private Home

   The year was 1899, the twenty-fifth year of the Guangxu reign, and Taiwan had only just come under Japanese rule. Culture, customs, education and religion were all being reshaped by the new colonial government. The temple's founding pioneers, among them a man remembered as Xie Zhiweng, looked at all this with deep unease. They threw divination blocks before the gods to ask what to do. The answer, as the temple tells it, was to set up a phoenix hall, a place for spirit writing that would, in the words of the tradition, spread goodness and help save the world. So that same year they founded a hall called Mingde Tang in the private home of a devotee named Chen Zhongsan. Its main deity was the Five Lords Bodhisattva. From the very beginning the hall had a double purpose. It held sacred edict lectures, public talks meant to encourage virtue, and it trained spirit-writing mediums in the art of flying-brush writing, in which a brush moves to deliver the words of the gods. That is why this small household shrine is counted among the important starting points of the phoenix hall faith in the Kaohsiung area.

3. 03

   ChiMing Tang Temple: A New Name and Two Sages

   Now comes the twist that gave the temple its name. In 1903, a Guandi temple in the old city, the walled town of the Fengshan area, had fallen into ruin. The members of the hall could not bear to see the god's statue gathering dust, so they welcomed the image of Lord Guan, Guan Sheng Dijun, to their own hall. That same year, the temple's account says, the deity Fuyou Dijun descended through the phoenix writing carrying a divine decree. It ordered the hall renamed ChiMing Tang and appointed Lord Guan, the martial sage, as its main deity. That decision laid the foundation for what makes this temple unusual: the martial sage and the scholar sage, Confucius, are honored together. The name stuck, and so did the pairing. Even today the temple's full title is the Southeastern Imperial Palace Lezhan Society ChiMing Tang, and its main deities are the two sages, Confucius, the civil sage, and Guan, the martial sage. Think of it as a temple where the pen and the sword share one altar.

4. 04

   ChiMing Tang Temple: Growing Beside the Lake

   The temple's lakeside home came from an act of gratitude. In 1906, a local woman named Lai Linxiang, whose debts had been eased with the temple's help, donated half of the plot beside Lotus Pond, the very land the temple stands on today, for the building of a hall. In 1926 the gods directed the creation of the Lezhan Society, devoted to sacred edict lectures and charitable work. Then the building grew in steps. In 1951, following a divine instruction, the temple began building the Spring and Autumn Pavilion to honor the Spring and Autumn ideals, and it was completed in June 1953. The pavilion stands out on the pond, and the temple's own account counts it among the eight scenic spots of Taiwan. In 1973 work began on rebuilding the main temple as a two-story palace-style building, finished in 1976. The story did not stop there. In 1984 a rear hall, the Lingxiao Treasure Hall, and the Three Officials Hall were added, and they were completed in 1995. With these, the temple rises four stories. Look for the temple's setting too: it faces southeast with its back to the northwest, with the lake before it and the Guishan and Banping mountain ridges beyond. Around the pond you will also find the nine-turn bridge, the golden-roofed Wuli Pavilion, and the statues of Guanyin on a dragon.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   From a private home and a brush that wrote for the gods, to a four-story temple beside Lotus Pond, ChiMing Tang Temple carries more than a century of local story. It began as a response to uncertain times, and it grew through gifts of land, donations and the devotion of its community. As you look around, try to read the temple as a layered thing. Notice how the main hall, the pavilion on the water and the taller rear halls were added in different decades, each one answering a different moment in its history. Then look out across the pond and consider how the temple, the pavilions and the mountain ridges fit together as one landscape. And if you have time, wander along the shoreline. Each pavilion, bridge and statue has its own story, and the temple is a very good place to start asking about them.