Taiwan Today

A temple honoring a dog-spirit is a popular place of worship for people in search of luck, health, and wealth.

A foreign visitor riding in a taxi in heavy Taipei traffic or taking an elevator to the top floor of one of the city's skyscrapers might wonder whether the spirit of traditional China is still alive in this hectic city. Is Taipei just another impersonal twentieth-century metropolis, which has shed its cultural heritage on the way to modernity?

But a closer look reveals that the past is very much alive in future-oriented Taipei. An amulet hanging from the taxi's rearview mirror protects the driver from the relentless traffic, and the Western suit-clad businessmen on the top floors of the skyscraper consult spirit mediums before making decisions of far-reaching consequences in the financial markets of Tokyo and New York.

Modern technology has not supplanted traditional gods. On the contrary, faced with a rapidly changing society as well as a wildly fluctuating stock market, people cling to them ever more fervently. A large flow of cash from a booming export industry enables the construction of many new temples and shrines. Religious festivals that are conducted on the birthdays of popular gods, such as the goddess Matsu, draw crowds of millions. And a growing class of professional mediums provides services ranging from marriage counseling to investment consulting.

Perhaps nowhere is the coexistence of modern technology and traditional religious practice more apparent than in a local dog-spirit temple in the Shihmen district of Taipei county. The Eighteen Kings temple (十八王公) stands at the northern tip of the island facing the East China Sea. Its history is intertwined with the construction of an adjacent nuclear reactor. Seventeen of the "kings" worshipped in the temple are human - the eighteenth one is a dog.

According to a local legend, a hundred years ago a boat containing the bodies of seventeen fishermen (or, according to another version, pirates) was washed ashore following a storm at sea. In it was also a dog - weak, but still alive - who remained loyal to his dead masters. He guarded the corpses from wild beasts and birds of prey until the people of Shihmen came and buried them. Then, refusing food from the sympathetic villagers, the dog committed suicide by jumping into the open grave. He was entombed with his masters.

Communal graves containing the remains of unknown heroes are often the site of religious worship in Taiwan. Hungry ghosts that have no descendants to provide for them need to be propitiated, and the Eighteen Kings were no exception. A small shrine was built on their tomb, and the people living nearby would occasionally go there to offer incense.

The cult remained strictly local until the Taiwan Power Company decided to build a nuclear reactor on an adjacent site. Following the reactor's construction in the early 1970s, stories circulated that it had been originally designed to encompass the area of the sacred tomb. But, the stories continued, the heavy machinery broke down whenever nearing the shrine. The engineers had to abandon their original plan and as any visitor to the temple can see, the nuclear station's outer wall borders the tomb, but does not encompass it.

This is not the only case in modern Chinese mythology in Taiwan where twentieth-century technology has been no match for the power of sacred objects. The Neihu suburb of Taipei prizes a temple for a large boulder called the Yellow Boulder Lord. According to legend, the boulder blocked the path of a planned road, and would not budge. Only when it was promised a temple did it agree to be moved to the sidewalk.

The construction of the nuclear reactor, and the dissemination of the legends regarding the failed attempt to encompass the tomb of the Eighteen Kings, helped transform the local cult into an islandwide craze. In 1975 a temple was built over the tomb, and near it a vast parking lot which, despite its size, could hardly accommodate the daily convoys of cars, buses, and motorbikes carrying pilgrims from the nearby cities of Tamsui, Keelung, and Taipei.

Before long, a marketplace emerged next to the temple, featuring dozens of booths offering visitors everything from seafood, beer, and intoxicating betel nut, to palm reading and video games. A group of local entrepreneurs even tried to capitalize on the cult by constructing a replica tomb and temple a few miles to the west and advertising them as the originals.

The Eighteen Kings temple is different from most other pilgrimage centers in Taiwan in that the objects of worship are ghosts, not gods. Furthermore, their number, eighteen, is also believed to be the number of hells in Chinese folk religion. The temple is thus shrouded in mystery and danger. Whereas in most temples worship generally takes place during the day, the Eighteen Kings are most responsive at night. It is, therefore, around midnight and during the small hours that the seaside road from Tamsui to Shihmen is jammed by traffic headed toward the temple.

Whereas gods are offered burning incense, the Eighteen Kings also receive burning cigarettes, along with the naive printed drawings of clothes and other items of daily use that are commonly donated to the spirits of the dead. As the visitor descends from the main floor of the temple to the underground tomb, the sense of an unsettling yet enticing danger is further intensified by the cries of a mynah bird that screams at him in perfect Mandarin: "What are you doing here!"

Power and efficacy are, thus, closely related to danger in the cult of the Eighteen Kings. This is even more so, as it is the dog, not the seventeen men, that stands at the heart of the cult. The dog's statues dominate the temple and it is his image that is painted on the temple's amulets.

Traditional pictures of hell, for example, often depict the morally corrupt residents as the helpless victims of vicious dogs. And in the past, the blood of black dogs was used in magic rituals. A change in the Taiwanese attitude toward dogs has been noticeable only recently, when under the impact of the West dogs are being introduced as pets.

The sense of danger that characterizes the temple is commonly attributed to its worshippers as well. People often say that the temple is frequented primarily by prostitutes and gamblers. As anthropologist Robert Weller has suggested, law-abiding people enjoy visiting a temple that they believe is frequented by criminals. The portrayal of the temple's clientele as marginal augments its mysterious powers. But the large variety of visitors one encounters in the temple, not to mention their sheer quantity, precludes the possibility that it is only the domain of marginal or criminal groups. For example, many taxi-drivers visit the temple, and they suspend the temple's amulets from their rearview mirrors or have small statues of the robed dog-spirit on their dashboards.

Fiction and drama played an important role in the dissemination of gods' cults in traditional China. In present-day Taiwan, films and television series function in much the same way. The Eighteen Kings are the subject of both a movie and a television serial in the Taiwanese dialect. The two differ, however, in one respect: Whereas the movie narrates miracles performed by the Eighteen Kings following their death and burial in Shihmen, the television serial celebrates their heroic exploits prior to their martyrdom.

The movie is a curious combination of ghost-show and slapstick (it makes much of the temple's association with prostitution). Broadcast in 1985, the serial has a more serious and dramatic tone. It transforms the Eighteen Kings into courageous rebels trying to overthrow the alien Manchu regime (the Ching dynasty, (1644-1912), and restore the preceding Ming dynasty (1368-1644). They die at sea while trying to escape their tormentors.

One of the actors is said to have prayed to the Eighteen Kings, and the next day he was picked to be one of the kings. As for Lisa, the Alsatian that plays the role of the dog-spirit, her hair was dyed black to match the deity's images. Neither the movie nor the serial is the product of a conscious proselytizing zeal. They are financially motivated entertainment shows. But both testify to the great popularity of the Eighteen Kings cult, while at the same time they further enhance it.

The Eighteen Kings temple is not the only temple in Taiwan to honor a dog-spirit. There are others in central Taiwan. The Righteous People temple in Chiayi, and the Nineteen Lords temple in Peikang pay homage to dogs as well. The two have striking similarities to the Eighteen Kings temple. Both are located on the communal graves of young men and their loyal dogs. Unlike the Eighteen Kings, the men died in battle, not at sea. The Chiayi and Peikang heroes met their untimely deaths fighting the forces of Lin Shuang-wen, who rebelled against the rule of the Manchu court in the second half of the eighteenth century.

The Chiayi dog came to the rescue of his besieged masters by kowtowing profusely to the magistrate of Tainan, who responded by arranging a rescue force. But the troops arrived too late. The dog's masters were already dead, their heads hoisted on the staffs of the rebels' flags. When they were finally laid to rest, the dog committed suicide by smashing his head repeatedly on the ground.

The Peikang dog was famed for assisting his masters on the attack and on the defense, warning of approaching enemy forces. He was finally poisoned by the rebels, who were then able to take his masters by surprise, slaughtering them in their sleep. Both dogs were entombed with their masters.

Both the Chiayi and Peikang temples are older than the one honoring the Eighteen Kings, and their myths provided the pattern for the latter temple. But in the layout of their altars they do not emphasize the dogs as much, nor do they enjoy as much popularity as the Eighteen Kings temple.

Thus, the cult of the dog in the Eighteen Kings temple is a better illustration of the coexistence of tradition and modernity in Taiwan. The power generated by a nuclear reactor does not diminish the efficaciousness of a dog worshipped in a nearby temple. On the contrary, the nuclear reactor itself is incorporated into the legends celebrating the dog-spirit, and the modern media has spread the legends throughout the island. - Meir Shahar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations at Harvard University. He wishes to express his appreciation to Huang Chunsen for assisting with the research for this article.