Lecheng Temple Audio Guide

Lecheng Temple: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Lecheng Temple

   Welcome to Lecheng Temple, known in Chinese as Lecheng Gong, in the East District of Taichung. You are standing in Hanxi Village, on Hanxi Street, beside the Han River. This is one of the earliest settled corners of the area, and it has a temple to match. The goddess worshipped here is Mazu, protector of sailors and sea travelers. Because of the nearby river, she is known locally as Hanxi Mazu, the Mazu of the Han River. Lecheng Temple is her home, and her name travels well beyond these walls. Over the next few minutes we will look at how a farming community came to build a temple here. We will walk through the craftsmanship of the main hall, and then follow Mazu on the long annual pilgrimage that carries her out into the surrounding villages. Come with me and let's begin with the land itself.

2. 02

   From Farmland to Temple

   Picture this district long before the city arrived. The land around Hanxi Village was gradually opened up by the Lin clan during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor in the Qing era. Once the settlers had made headway cultivating the soil, they did what many Taiwanese communities did. They pooled their money to build a temple to Mazu. That first temple, the predecessor of today's Lecheng Temple, went up in the fifty-fifth year of the Qianlong Emperor's reign, which is 1790. It drew a steady stream of worshippers. Because of the river beside it, people came to call it the Mazu Temple of the Han River. The temple also has a link across the water. It enshrines a golden statue of the Second Mother, a divided spirit of the goddess from the Tianhou Temple in Meizhou. The temple's tradition ties this community to the home of the Mazu cult on the Chinese coast.

3. 03

   A Master Builder's Roofline

   Now look closely at the building in front of you. None of the original temple structure survives. What you see was built between 1921 and 1928, during the Japanese colonial period, and the rear hall was the last piece to be added, in 1991. The expansion was supervised by Tan Ing-pin, who lived from 1864 to 1944. He was a master temple builder from Zhangzhou, in mainland China, and in Taiwan he is remembered as the celebrated Zhang-school wood artist known as Binsi. Chen Yingbin is the same name in Mandarin pronunciation. His masterpiece here is the five-door Sanchuan Hall. It has a beautiful, high, double-eave gable roof, and it is considered one of his most distinctive works. This style influenced later temple architecture in Taiwan and helped launch a localized design aesthetic on the island. When you tilt your head back toward those layered eaves, you are looking at a landmark of Taiwanese temple building. The city of Taichung protected the temple as a city monument on November 27, 1985.

4. 04

   Mazu on the Road: The Eighteen Villages Pilgrimage

   Lecheng Temple: This place is busiest on national holidays and on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month.

   Lecheng Temple is famous for a journey. Each year Hanxi Mazu leaves her temple and travels among the villages in a pilgrimage known as the Eighteen Villages procession. It began with a request. Farmers in Xializi, in what is now Wuri District, asked the temple to bring Mazu to their village to drive away the pests. The temple agreed. Neighboring settlements then began asking for visits of their own, and it became a yearly tradition. The pilgrimage lasts 22 days. It begins on the first day of the third lunar month, and the Mazu palanquin returns to Lecheng Temple on the twenty-second day. Followers then gather at the temple on the twenty-third day to celebrate Mazu's birthday. The route covers 10 districts of Taichung: Wuri, Dali, Taiping, Wufeng, East, South, West, North, Nantun and Beitun. Over the Qing dynasty, the Japanese colonial period and the Republic of China era, the form of the pilgrimage has gradually changed. On August 12, 2008, the Taichung City Government recognized it as intangible cultural heritage.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Before you move on, take one more slow look around. Think about how a settlement on a river plain raised a temple in 1790, and how that temple grew into the building you see today. This place is busiest on national holidays and on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month. If you ever see it then, you will watch the temple doing what it has done for generations. If you come in the third lunar month, you may catch the season when Mazu sets out on her journey. So as you leave, listen to the street, look at the rooflines once more, and ask yourself which village Mazu is heading to next.