Taichung Bao Jue Buddhist Temple Audio Guide

PaoChueh Temple: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to PaoChueh Temple

   Welcome to PaoChueh Temple, known in Chinese as 寶覺禪寺. It stands on Jianxing Road in Taichung's North District, in the neighborhood of Jinlong Village. It is a Rinzai Zen Buddhist temple, a tradition that grew out of Chinese Chan and is best known today through Japan. That Japanese thread runs through almost everything you will see here. The temple dates from the late 1920s, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. Its mountain name, the title Buddhist temples give themselves, is Zhengfa Mountain. In the Japanese era it was called Jiuping Mountain, a name written with the characters for eagle and screen. For many decades it has been a place where Taiwanese worshippers, Japanese visitors, and the memory of a shared and complicated history meet. As we walk, I will take you through the temple's founding, the unusual gifts that arrived from Japan, and the details of its buildings and courtyards. Along the way you will hear a story about bells, a poem carved in stone, and the quiet role the temple has played for families far from home.

2. 02

   PaoChueh Temple: Founding in the Japanese Era

   Even the founding year is a small puzzle. Most accounts say the temple was established in 1927, which is the Showa second year in the Japanese calendar. Others give 1928, and a few mention 1926. Whichever you prefer, the temple is now close to a hundred years old. The founder is told in two ways. One account credits the Zen master Tokai Gisei as the temple's founder. Another credits a monk named Liangda, who is said to have launched the building project. Both agree on what came next. Local figures, including Lai Manjie and Lai Tiansheng, helped the temple rise. Its first abbot was Master Miaochan, who earned the affectionate title of the artist monk. This was no quiet hilltop retreat. In the Japanese era the temple ran a Buddhist academy and a kindergarten, so it served its neighbors as well as its worshippers. After the war, its abbots were Zongxin and then Xinguan, both trained in Japan, which is why the temple kept so much of the Rinzai character. Zongxin even ran a Chinese language class and published a Buddhist magazine, first called Juequn Weekly and later renamed Jue Sheng Monthly. On the seventeenth of October, 1954, the Great Compassion Lecture Hall was completed.

3. 03

   PaoChueh Temple and the Memory of Those Left Behind

   To understand why Japanese visitors have long come to PaoChueh Temple, go back to the end of the Second World War. Japanese residents of Taiwan were sent home, their property was confiscated, and each person was allowed to carry only 1,000 yen in cash and whatever luggage they could move themselves. Many people who died in Taiwan could not be taken home. The temple became a place to remember them. It keeps memorial tablets of Japanese who passed away in Taiwan, and for years it was an important place of worship for Japanese in old Taichung. Its seven-treasure pagoda has held the remains of Japanese who lived here in the colonial period. One was Irita Haruhiko, a Japanese police officer who was a friend of the Taiwanese writer Yang Kui. His family from Kumamoto Prefecture later carried his remains back to Japan. Soldiers from both Taiwan and Japan who died in the Second World War are also remembered here, and their families come to pay respects. The temple holds spring and autumn memorial ceremonies, called Higan services. A 1987 newspaper report called it the temple most visited by Japanese travelers in Taiwan. Cruise passengers landing at Taichung Harbor came here, and the former Japanese prime minister Mori Yoshiro once came to pray.

4. 04

   PaoChueh Temple: Bells, Kannon and Gifts from Japan

   Some of the temple's most charming stories come from the objects given to it. The dream-changing Kannon, also called the Peace Kannon, is a bronze statue given by the All Japan Buddhist Federation in 1954. After the war, Japan made several copies and sent them to different places. A year later, a Japanese Buddhist mission escorting the relics of the monk Xuanzang to Taiwan brought a wooden statue with the same name. A dispute arose over whether it was a Japanese national treasure. That wooden statue was later given to the Shishan Quanhua Hall. Then there are the bells. One bell was a gift from the Japanese Governor-General of Taiwan. The Friendship Bell was inaugurated on the seventh of December, 1966, in a four-story bell tower built just for it, with a door plaque written by He Yingqin. A third, a red copper bell weighing 740 kilograms, was cast after the war with donations from more than a thousand Japanese, and is inscribed with the words Friendship Forever. In December of 1973, the Myoshinji head temple gave the Child-Protecting Ksitigarbha, a statue eight chi tall. And in 2008 a haiku monument was set up, carved with a poem by Hada Gakusui: under the flowers of the bodhi tree, the smile of Maitreya. Hada had studied in Taiwan as a young man. In 2018, fifteen Japanese poets gathered at the stone with the ninety-year-old Taiwanese haiku poet Li Jinshang.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you wander the grounds, notice how the temple layers its eras. The main hall follows a Japanese temple style with a raised, gabled roof, and in front of it two white elephant statues stand guard. They are said to recall the Buddha's past life. Japanese stone lanterns stand in the courtyard, and carved wooden hanging fish decorate the eaves. A large new outer hall now shelters the old hall, and the contrast between old and new is one of the most interesting things to look at. The temple enshrines Shakyamuni Buddha, Medicine Buddha, and Amitabha Buddha. Around the grounds, look for the Friendship Bell tower, the Kannon pavilion, the memorial monument, and the Maitreya Buddha, which gives the temple much of its fame in the city. Take your time, and see how many layers of the temple's story you can find in a single courtyard.