The Creatives Keeping Taiwanese Folk Religion Young And Alive
From designing anime-inspired deity costumes to growling religious chants with a strat in hand, meet the artists who prove that religion could also be fun and subversive
Digital art designed for Flesh Juicer’s Flesh Temple. (Design by @jonni0409)
This Friday, 200,000 people gathered in Southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City to celebrate the pilgrimage of Matsu. The consecrated statue of the goddess of the sea has travelled from Northern Taiwan’s Baishatun Temple to the local Longcheng Temple, which also houses a spirit of Matsu. This is an unprecedented occasion, as central Taiwan’s Chaotian Temple usually marks the end of Baishatun Matsu’s annual pilgrimage, an event that attracted a record-breaking 500,000 participants this spring.
Matsu is only among dozens of widely venerated deities that are part of the folk religion in Taiwan. Starting from the 17th century, emigrants from the southeastern coast of mainland China brought their folk beliefs and deities to pray for guidance and fortune. Over centuries, these beliefs have intertwined with local cultures and influences of Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian ethos to form a structured religion that is distinctively Taiwanese, and often referred to as the Taiwanese Folk Belief. Currently, around half of the 23 million population practises a variety of related folk beliefs.
Most deities are personified, consecrated spirits, and people pray for all kinds of occasions — students pray for excellent test results and politicians pray before elections. These deeply spiritual practices are deeply immersed in daily lives and have taken more contemporary forms under the influence of pop culture and the participating youth that’s unapologetically innovating — think techno at rituals and artificial intelligence that helps interpret communications with the deities’. With pride in religious freedom and diversity, and open-minded elders who manage religious institutions, Taiwan welcomed a generation of artists that fuels folk beliefs with new energy. Here are three of them at the forefront of this movement.
Flesh Juicer live in Taipei. (Photo Courtesy of Blow by Streetvoice)
Flesh Juicer, Metal Band, Age 35
Fengyuan Cih Ji Temple welcomed some unconventional guests at its 300th-anniversary celebration last week — a metal band to be exact. Flesh Juicer’s music is heavily inspired by ceremonial tunes that have echoed in Taiwanese temples for centuries, sampling sounds from traditional nanguan and beiguan instruments and arranging them with the theatrical pentatonic scale. The band has been dubbing their live performances “Flesh Temples,” sanctuaries for Taiwanese metalheads to recharge from life. Now, having performed at an actual religious sanctuary, it is safe to say Flesh Juicer is the epitome of musicians paying homage to Taiwanese folk beliefs.
“If the music genre is Flesh Juicer’s skin, traditional temple culture will always be the heart. We’re always thinking about how it could be evolved.”
The eighteen-year-old band may have shifted from its early days of deathcore and metalcore to a less explosive nu-metal and electronicore, but they stayed true to their roots. “If the music genre is Flesh Juicer’s skin, traditional temple culture will always be the heart,” said Gigo, the band’s vocalist. “We’re always thinking about how it could be evolved.”
The band started with a love of grassroots and folk culture. “We wanted to create music that paints a picture of what the streets of Taiwan look like,” said Zero, the band’s guitarist. They relate their music, however unorthodox it may sound, to the faith people look for in religion. “Faith is anything that empowers people to endure and persevere,” adds Zero.
It is with this philosophy in mind that Flesh Juicer bombarded their native Taichung with the first edition of Flesh Temple in 2016. Each year the Flesh Temple takes on a different theme that complements the concepts of their new music. Each year, Gigo also puts on a new design of his signature pig’s head mask, a homage to the pig’s head used in religious rituals (and a cheeky reference to the band’s signature pig squeal). In 2019, Flesh Temple welcomed the Shinergy Puppet Show, who performed not to their usual audience on a temple’s plaza, but to a moshing crowd. “Brutal, interesting, and fun,” is how the band describes their live performances.
This year’s Flesh Temple is their biggest ever: they headed to the capital’s Taipei Music Centre and took on the theme The Universe’s Prophecy, a sci-fi narrative that imagines a folk temple launching into space and onto different planets. “We don’t really care if the narrative is realistic or not, because its imperfection is what makes it real,” said Zero. “It’s no longer sci-fi, just a part of the real world you never noticed.”
Yu-Shen Li in his studio in Taipei’s old town. (Photo by Anderson Hung)
Yu-Shen Li, Costume Designer and Deity Dresser, Age 41
From designing for a queer adaptation of Midsummer Night’s Dream to dressing drag queens voguing Taiwanese Opera, Li has always had another role on his agenda — dressing folk deities — a practice that he also approaches with queer and contemporary interpretations.
Li’s new studio is tucked away in an alley next to the Xia-Hai City God Temple, which has protected the Taipei Old Town for the past 168 years. The studio is guarded by wearable armours of Generals Fan and Xie made of upcycled plastic and vegetable-tanned deadstock leather. “Deities don’t talk, but they carry godly personalities that are open to interpretation,” said Li while combing General Fan’s hair.
According to legends, the generals were constables of ancient times who sacrificed for each other during a manhunt. Touched by their bond, the emperor appointed them guardians of the underworld. “They might have died of brotherly love, but the queer community sees it differently, and local temples try to empathise with these sentiments at least ambiguously,” said Li.
“Queer pilgrims also deserve the deities’ blessings, and the older generation also understands that religion needs to bring people together.”
In fact, the annual pilgrimage of the Bangka Qingshan Temple starts with the Generals touring the neighbourhood’s Ximen area, the historical queer hangout spot, with their arms wrapped around each other. “Queer pilgrims also deserve the deities’ blessings, and the older generation also understands that religion needs to bring people together.”
The armours crafted by Li are consecrated and sometimes loaned to temples for pilgrimages and festivals. Due to their size, it was impossible to carry them down the stairs of Li’s studio, but it’s also disrespectful to take a consecrated armour apart. Li thought of the cockpits of the humanoid robots in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and reimagined his designs into armours piloted by the spirits of the Generals.
The result was a miniature glass ‘cockpit’ space that houses the consecrated spirits of the deities, along with the rest of the armours that could be easily taken apart and reassembled. “Our ideas still collide with the older generation that controlled the traditional spheres of culture, but we can always agree on the need to move forward to keep these beliefs alive.”
Earlier this year, Li also made a career breakthrough by sculpting and dressing two new deities for the 200th anniversary of the Longyuan Temple. The deities were dressed in costumes that embodied flora and fauna native to the area the Longyuan Temple serves. “The temple was eager to consecrate the unconventional silhouettes, signifying that we’re moving forward,” said Li. “As the new deities welcome the next century ahead, our ambition to innovate will be kept alive.”
Bamboo art by Ching-Ke Lin at Shennong Temple. (Photo Courtesy of Grid.atelier / Ching-Ke Lin)
Ching-Ke Lin, Bamboo Artist, Age 42
In 2016, contemporary bamboo artist Ching-Ke Lin saw how a light-fitting company illuminated a cathedral at Milan Design Week — an experience that inspired the possibility of exhibiting in a Taiwanese temple. The idea slept dormant for eight years until it revisited Lin at the beginning of the year while he planned his next steps, following a decade of successful bamboo craftsmanship that occupied spaces like galleries, national parks, and fashion runways.
The idea was realised in sculptural bamboo installations, titled Incense, which seamlessly interwoven with the architecture of the Shilin Shennong Temple. It is inspired by the incense worshippers light when communicating with the deities.
“Local beliefs shouldn’t be minimised to traditional practices — they should be redefined in the context of a contemporary lifestyle.”
“Local beliefs shouldn’t be minimised to traditional practices — they should be redefined in the context of a contemporary lifestyle,” said Lin about his collaboration with the 283-year-old religious sanctuary that still welcomes worshippers today. “Spiritual needs are just as important as material needs, and bamboo art is a materialised bridge between the two that makes spirituality more palpable.”
Shennong temple houses a harvest deity, a wealth deity, and a guardian deity that blessed the historically agricultural neighbourhood in Northern Taipei. Modern locals, including Lin, pay respect to them for peace and prosperity. “We had rigorous conversations with the temple’s management and they were open-minded enough to welcome my contemporary interpretation as long as I respect the ceremonial customs,” explained Lin. One of these customs was how the flow of the smoke-imitating bamboo sculptures followed the customary route worshippers take when moving through the temple.
“The bamboo itself embodies a duality of traditional craft and modern visual language,” Lin continued. The single-circle weaving technique was traditionally used to weave lanterns, but Lin used it to connect helices of over 30,000 bamboo strips, which intertwined with intricately carved pillars and natural light-filled impluvium. “The fast-paced urban life detaches us from traditional rituals, but I am rethinking how faith can keep cultures alive, whether that’s craft or rituals” added Lin.
Lin did not stop there. Wude Temple, a 67-year-old temple in central Taiwan, now houses Silver Cloud Patterns, stainless steel-plated bamboo suspended under a lighted roof. This is Lin’s second collaboration with a religious site. The cloud-shaped installations are inspired by the prints on the costume of General Black Tiger, one of the temple’s 36 deities. Wude temple welcomes an estimated 8 million visits by pilgrims around Taiwan, and photography of the installation is also currently exhibited 8000 miles away on Manhattan’s Governor’s Island. “We’re hoping our projects in New York run smoothly with the blessings of General Black Tiger,” said Lin.
