Taiwan Today

Quite a few traditional and folk trades are staging comebacks these days. For instance, over 200 people applied for job openings for Taoist priests three years ago at the Cheng Huang Temple situated next to the Songshan Railway Station in Taipei. There, Ms. Xie Jia-jing, who was born in 1980 and is a master's degree candidate, has become the temple's main priest after three years of special training. Xie has learned how to carry out all sorts of rites, including releasing souls from purgatory, helping improve people's luck, and assisting people in getting over frightening events. Nothing is too hard for Xie. Xie admitted that despite being a graduate student at Fu Jen Catholic University's Department of Religious Studies, she still had to learn how to act as a temple priest from the beginning. What she lacks most at this point is practical experience. Xie said one has to be open-minded as a mortal. "This is a service industry! The ancient books and records we studied at school, as well as the opportunities we had to communicate with believers in various faiths have come in quite handy," she adds. Taoism is the most traditional folk faith among the public in Taiwan. Most Taoist priests here pass along their knowledge to members of the younger generation in their own families. To be sure, it is quite rare for women to become Taoist priests. Xie says that Taoism emphasizes a balance and harmony among various forces. While male priests focus on the “yang,” female priests focus on the “yin” parts, she said. Since the older generation believed that one's destiny decides one's career as a Taoist priest, her joining the rank was quite natural: she became deeply interested in Taoism as an undergraduate, and was introduced into the actual practice of Taoism by a senior priest at a temple. While Xie has not been serving at the temple as a priest for long, she said she has encountered many things that science would be hard pressed to explain. For instance, a devotee recently brought a teenage girl to the temple and sought assistance from the temple. The girl had gone into a coma for over 10 days for an unknown reason. Ultimately, she was brought to the temple so that the priest could carry out various rites, ridding the girl of the various bad forces that had become lodged in her body. In a while, the girl's condition improved. The parents brought her back to the temple to pay their respects later on. People just starting out these days are finding it difficult to make ends meet because of low starting salaries. However, Taoist priests just starting out enjoy a relatively stable salary. Shortly after beginning her work at the temple, Xie was making at least NT$40,000 a month for her efforts. Wu Yan-qing, another Taoist priest who also happens to have graduated from Fu Jen Catholic University with a master’s degree, said that so many sectors these days place importance on a high level of education. However, this sort of traditional industry, Wu said, focuses more on inner understanding, which enables the Taoist priests to be successful at their trade. (This article first appeared Nov. 18, 2009 in the “Liberty Times.”)