Yinshan Temple Audio Guide

Yinshan Temple: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Yinshan Temple

   Welcome to Yinshan Temple, known locally as 鄞山寺(汀州會館), on Dengong Road in Tamsui, in New Taipei City. Its address is number 15, in Dengong Village, and the neighborhood name is the clue to its nickname: people often call it the Dengong Temple. This is a temple with two jobs. It is a place of worship for Dingguang Buddha, a guardian figure of Hakka people from Tingzhou in western Fujian. It was also a Tingzhou guild hall, a hometown association for newcomers far from home. Tamsui people count it among the four great temples of the town, alongside Qingshui Temple, Longshan Temple and Fuyou Temple. Taiwan's government has designated it a national monument. As you stand here, think of a place built by migrants for migrants. In the nineteenth century this was where a traveler from Tingzhou could land at the port, find a familiar god and a familiar dialect, and get a roof for the night. The next few stops follow that story: the god, the building, and the long, bumpy life of the temple since.

2. 02

   Yinshan Temple and Its Guardian Monk

   The main god here is Dingguang Buddha, and his story starts about a thousand years ago. Tradition says he was a monk named Zheng Ziyan, who lived from 924 to 1015 and died at the age of 82. According to the Tingzhou gazetteer, he understood Buddhist teachings at eleven and went to Tingzhou to teach at seventeen. The legends are vivid. He is said to have driven off the flood dragons, creatures believed to bring floods, and to have tamed fierce tigers and giant pythons. Long after his death, the city of Tingzhou was besieged by bandits, and tradition says he appeared and drove them away. In gratitude the court granted a plaque and named his hermitage Dingguang Temple. From then on he was honored as Dingguang Buddha, protector of the people of Tingzhou in western Fujian. This devotion is a rarity. It belongs to the worship circles of southern Chinese Hakka communities, and in Taiwan only two temples enshrine him. One is here in Tamsui. The other is the older Dingguang Temple in Changhua City. So when Tingzhou families crossed the sea, they carried not just their belongings but a protector whose worship you will find almost nowhere else on the island.

3. 03

   Building Yinshan Temple: Land, Money and Homeland

   The temple was founded in 1822, in the second year of the Daoguang reign, and finished in 1824. Two brothers from Yongding in Tingzhou, Luo Kebin and Luo Kerong, donated land in Tamsui. A fundraiser from Guangdong named Zhang Ming-gang gathered the money to build. The design carries a message. The building was oriented to face the Tingzhou homeland, and its layout, two halls, two corridors and two side rooms, is different from the usual Zhangzhou, Quanzhou or Chaozhou temples. Today it is the only temple in Taiwan in the Tingzhou style. The side rooms are the guild hall part of the story. In the nineteenth century, Hakka migrants from Tingzhou who landed at Tamsui would first stay in the temple. They would learn their surroundings and find a way to make a living, and only then move on toward the Taipei Basin. In effect, the temple worked as a combination of shrine, hostel and hometown office. Early Tamsui temples were often founded to protect fishermen and boat crews. As more settlers arrived, temples dedicated to gods of the ancestral homeland appeared, and Yinshan Temple is a clear example.

4. 04

   Details to Look For at Yinshan Temple

   The architecture is worth reading slowly, because much of it is original to the Daoguang era. The temple has two halls around one courtyard. The front hall has three bays, and its drum-shaped stones and the stone carving of a chihu, a dragon-like creature, around the hearth are simple and sturdy in style. The main hall has a hard-gable roof with swallowtail ridges, and its timber roof frame uses a traditional structure of three beams and five posts. Look at the stone pillars in front of the main hall, each carved with a single coiled dragon in the style of the Daoguang period. Notice also the ground. The site slopes from low in front to high behind, and the main hall platform stands 80 centimeters higher than the courtyard, which lifts it up and gives it dignity. The path leading to the hall is left plain, with no carving at all, matching the quiet spirit of a Buddhist temple. The real treasure is on the roof. The clay sculptures along the ridge, which are usually the first things to decay in a temple, are still the Daoguang originals. This is why the temple is valued as a rare, nearly complete picture of Taiwanese building in the early 1820s.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Yinshan Temple has had a long and uneven life. The Treaty of Tianjin in 1858 opened ships to Tamsui, tea from northern Taiwan flowed out through the port, and the town prospered. The temple was repaired that year, and again in 1873. Incense was so busy that crowds gathered to gamble, and a stele was set up on the left side of the courtyard to forbid it. Then the tide turned. Under Japanese rule, development of Keelung harbor shifted trade away from Tamsui, and the temple's fortunes faded. By the 1980s the writer Zhu Tianxin described it as a dying, run-down temple, and thieves took several antique statues and carved ceiling pieces. A major restoration began in 1991, and the Tamsui architectural historian Li Qianlang studied the site. In 1995 the interior minister honored the temple for its care of the monument. Before you leave, look at the roof ridge, the stone pillars and the stele beside the courtyard, and ask yourself what each one saw. And if you are curious to go further, the other Dingguang temple in Changhua is a story all of its own.