The first month of the lunar year is the peak season for worshippers to visit the Lungshan Temple. The faithful mingle with tourists in hallways obscured by wisps of smoke rising from smoldering incense. Inside the threshold of the temple proper, there are various knots of people: pious grandmothers fingering their prayer beads while softly chanting Buddhist sutras, middle-aged men reading Buddhist texts and pausing to talk over the meaning, and grizzled elderly gents idly passing the time in chatting. Meanwhile, those in the courtyard just outside the threshold are virtually all men, and their only topic of conversation is politics. Out on the fringes of the crowd several uniformed security guards are making their rounds.

A group of elderly men are gathered around a wall plastered with copies of the Taiwan Times, the Min Chung Daily News, the Liberty Times, and the Independence Post, papers which are mostly critical of the central government. The men are discussing efforts by Chen Shui-bian, the newly elected mayor of Taipei and a member of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, to put the city's administration in order. Comments like "Ah Bian is doing the right thing" are said in a tone of voice that sounds as proud as if the speaker were talking about his own son.

It is now nearly 3:00 in the afternoon, and the crowd is growing. Few of the people here are actually Wanhua residents; most come from other districts of Taipei or from places like Panchiao, Sanchung, Yungho, and Hsinchuang, colorless urbanized communities adjacent to Taipei. Many people come here each Sunday at 3:00, as part of their regular routine, to hear the political organizer Huang Fu give his spiel calling for "establishment of the Republic of Taiwan and entry into the United Nations."

To each his own. While inside Buddhist sutras are being read with solemnity, out front a speech in Taiwanese dialect calling for an independent Taiwan begins to heat up. All of the 300 or so people in the audience are older and middle-aged Taiwanese men. Some shout their approval, some look bored; most gaze at the speaker, attentive as students in a classroom. Suddenly, a mainlander who has come to the temple to worship points at the stage and shouts, "Who do you think you are?!" The crowd gets riled, somebody throws a punch, and others step in to mediate. On stage, Huang Fu is calling, "Ignore him, he's drunk." Finally the old man, unable to take on the whole crowd, and with blood on his face, is escorted out of the temple by neutrals and security guards.

The diversity of characters at the temple is itself a tourist attraction. Japanese tourists observe a man meditating over Buddhist scriptures.

All walks of lite

The Lungshan Temple was originally built in 1738, the third year of the reign of the Chien Lung Emperor of the Ching dynasty, and it is designated a national level historic artifact (grade two). It is either the first- or second-ranked temple in northern Taiwan in terms of number of worshippers, historical value, number of deities, and complexity of construction. It ranks behind only the National Palace Museum and the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall as a Taipei tourist attraction.

Many seniors in Wanhua, and even in Taipei, remember the Lungshan temple as a neighbor having an intimate role in their daily lives. The main hall is dedicated to Kuanyin, goddess of mercy, while the back hall is given over to images of a number of deities including Tien Shang Sheng Mu (Holy Mother in Heaven), Wen Chang Ti Chun (the God of Literature), Kuan Sheng Ti Chun (a red-faced general) and Chu Sheng Niang Niang (the Goddess of Fertility). It is said that all the images are very effective in bringing forth responses from the deities they represent. Divine beings both major and minor are venerated here, and the temple encompasses virtually all of the spirits worshipped by Buddhists and Taoists in Taiwan.

Whenever local residents have had difficult problems related to personal conflicts, illness, examinations, childbirth, business transactions, or the passage to paradise after death, they have come here to burn incense and chant sutras, or to engage in the practice of making a wish and then casting crescent-shaped wooden blocks for clues as to how it will turn out. And long before anyone ever thought of holding the Lantern Festival competitions at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, people used to come here on the holiday to admire the decorative lanterns.

As the focal point of the Wanhua district, not only is the temple crowded with believers and tourists, it is also jammed in on all sides by the flow of traffic from Taipei's satellite cities like Chungho, Hsinchuang, and Panchiao, since people coming from those suburbs can only access Taipei through Wanhua. Wanhua residents refer to these passers-through as "people from everywhere who do anything." "You won't find as colorful or as convoluted a place in all of Taiwan," says Lin Shih-tsung, a Panchiao resident who is at the moment crouching off to the side of the courtyard eavesdropping on a discussion of Buddhist doctrine.

Located less than ten minutes by car away from the Shin Kong Life Tower skyscraper--the latest symbol of modernity in Taipei--the hustle and bustle of the Lungshan Temple area retains the grass-roots feel of days gone by.

Outside the walls of the temple are streets and neighborhoods 200 years old, yet not decrepit. Because there has been no urban planning here, old low-slung single-story dwellings are haphazardly sandwiched in among new concrete multi-story buildings. Tucked into every lane and alley are throwback shops like mom-and-pop eateries, bakeries, craftsmen who make decorative lanterns and paper houses (burned as offerings to the deceased), and pharmacies specializing in Chinese herbal medicine. Woven in amongst this old fabric are roadside vendors offering household goods, hardware, and cut-rate clothing. And when it is time to light the lamps, just a block away from the temple is the notorious "Snake Alley" (whose name derives from hawkers selling potency elixirs made from snake gall) and its adjoining sex district.

For many older and middle-aged people who aren't very comfortable hanging around Taipei's fashionable shopping districts, for laborers, for those who have come from central or southern Taiwan to make some money in the big city, and for drifters with nowhere to go, the area around the Lungshan Temple is rich with opportunities for employment and enjoyment. The Sanshui Market, located just in front of the temple, is the site of a labor market each day at dawn. Construction companies, temple procession committees, and organizers of political demonstrations all come here to find a helping hand. There are also plenty of dubious characters, so all types of crime occur frequently.

Lungshan Temple is located in the heart of the secular world. Although a temple devoted to Kuanyin, the goddess of compassion, should probably be serene and solemn, inevitably those from "all walks of life" have left their soiled footprints behind.

It is said that Lungshan's statue of the goddess Kuanyin is very efficacious, so many elderly women come here to read the sutras.

No opinion leaders here

Ah Bu, Old Wu, and Chiu Chuan-shao are seated on little wooden stools beating their gums. Ah Bu, whose feet are swollen, likes to sing sacred songs to Kuanyin at the top of his voice for everyone to hear. Old Wu, who must be in his fifties, took the overnight bus from Taichung the previous evening to come to the Lungshan Temple "to have a little fun." He comes twice a week without fail to pick up the latest gossip. Chiu, 48, lives in Hsinchuang. His family sells home-remodeling and construction materials. He says that you can find all sorts of people at the temple, from the dregs of society to chairmen of the board. Some come to gamble, some to patronize the brothels, others to "have their say." "It's like an open university, and you can learn from everybody's experiences."

Little Kuo, who had been unobtrusively sitting in a corner of the front hall reading Buddhist scriptures, is a Wanhua boy born and bred, and is now studying in graduate school. When he hears talk about the elements now making up the temple milieu he perks up and begins pointing all around, explaining this and that in an amiable and composed way. He points out that the courtyard outside the threshold is a "political zone." The walkways--which in a Chinese temple are covered and skirt the outside of the main courtyard--are occupied by little groups of fortune-tellers, devout Buddhists, and elderly men, each conversing on their own themes.

People meet here like ships passing in the night. This is an ocean of faces, not names. It is enough to become familiar with somebody just by seeing them over a long period of time, and nobody asks too many questions so as to avoid friction. "There are no opinion leaders here, because anyone who shoots off his mouth is liable to get himself into a quarrel. Or even punched out. It's better to sit quietly and listen."

Be that as it may, looking back through history the Lungshan Temple has played far more than just a religious role. The largest temple in a commercial district, Lungshan has often been an important stage for cataclysmic political events, and also a field of battle for clashes between social groups. Lungshan Temple has had an eventful history.

Lungshan is crowded with worshippers in the first month of the Lunar calendar.

Battle ground

Two-and-a-half centuries ago, large numbers of immigrants from the Quanzhou and Changzhou regions of Fujian Province in China began to flood into Taiwan. In those days people used the expression "three here, six dead, one returned" to describe the precariousness of immigrant life. It meant, simply, that six of every ten immigrants died, and another one fled back home, leaving only three surviving. Thus they sought protection in crossing the sea and help in ensuring that their pioneering would go smoothly.

Most of the immigrants who at that time settled in the Wanhua district (then known as "Manga") came from Qinjiang, Hui'an, and Nan'an in Quanzhou Prefecture in Fujian; they were known collectively as the "people of Sanyi" (which means "three districts"). They brought over an image of Kuanyin from the Lungshan Temple in Anhai Township in Qinjiang and built a "branch temple." The Sanyi folk took responsibility for this important public works project because they were the leading figures both down on the docks and in the business community. Pious worshippers were not the only visitors; local residents, the elderly, hometown associations, and guilds of all types used the temple as a meeting hall or just a place to relax and chat.

An enormous problem in the immigrant community in that era was the struggle by clans and by hometown-groups (i.e. people sharing the same town of origin in mainland China) against outsiders for commercial advantage. Lungshan Temple was the scene of ferocious melees. Competing commercial associations--one organized by Sanyi people and one by natives of Tong'an--frequently clashed over the rights to unload goods on the docks. In 1853, the third year of the Hsien Feng reign of the Ching dynasty, the Sanyi natives set up their command center in the Lungshan Temple and attacked the Tong'an people, occupying the latter's base at Talungtung. In the ninth year of the Hsien Feng reign period, a brawl between Quanzhou and Changzhou natives destroyed more than half the marketplace.

Manga was a good place to do business then, and it remains so today. Many outsiders have moved here in hopes of making their living. Ku Hsien-jung, a much talked about Taiwanese of the Japanese occupation era and patriarch of what is now one of the wealthiest families in Taiwan, got his start in this way. And legend has it that Liao Tien-ting, a Robin Hood-type bandit, often came to the Lungshan area to sound out people's opinions. The grass roots power represented by the Lungshan Temple was such that the Japanese governors-general would always come here to pray on the day after they assumed office, and they never missed a temple ceremony or festival.

Every day 40 or 50 buses full of tourists, mainly Japanese, come to the temple.

Temple in a trap?

After the end of the Japanese occupation era, Lungshan temple remained a beehive of activity, but with an additional item: election campaign rallies. Many opposition figures (that is, politicians outside the ruling Kuomintang), including Kao Yu-shu, the mayor of Taipei back in the 1960s, made speeches here. Because at that time Taiwan was still in a legal "state of emergency" (martial law), so that the mass media was heavily censored, big crowds always turned out at election time to hear opposition figures reveal "inside information" and criticize the policies of the ruling party.

As opposition activities increased in the 1980s, the intensity of the speeches at Lungshan grew. Wang Fu-chang, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Academia Sinica and a specialist on the opposition movement in the 1980s, says that at that time many people in the crowds at the temple were indeed deeply dissatisfied with the government.

Yen Chin-fu, a legislator from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, represents the Tatung-Wanhua voting district. He notes that, to start with, most of the people who live around the Lungshan area are older Taiwanese, so naturally they have a strong sense of provincial identity, which makes it more likely they would have a bone to pick with the governing party, many of whose original leaders were from provinces other than Taiwan. On top of this, Wanhua has not had any redevelopment or renewal, its infrastructure is aging, and the government has traditionally offered little in terms of welfare or recreation for the elderly. Thus, concludes Yen, residents have tended to listen more to what the opposition has to say. And when you consider that many drifters and laborers doing the dirtiest jobs in society congregate here, it is no surprise that Lungshan Temple has been a "hotbed of disaffection."

Because "unofficial views" have always had the run of Lungshan Temple, in 1986 opposition figures decided to hold their sit-in to protest the 38th year of martial law here. The temple was immersed in a tide of people, political banners, and "big character posters" (a traditional form of political protest in China). Everyone was talking politics then, and Lungshan Temple acquired the handle "sacred ground for the opposition movement."

After the lifting of martial law in 1987, there was a great expansion of freedom of speech. At the temple, conversation centered around statements of support for the just-established Democratic Progressive Party, which grew directly out of the opposition movement. In 1989, when Taiwan independence advocate Cheng Nan-jung immolated himself, supporters erected a memorial altar here and held a vigil that lasted over a month. The board of directors and the religious were not amused over the virtual conversion of the temple into a political theater, and Huang Tzung-hsi, then chairman of the temple management committee, led a group of believers to City Hall to hand in a written protest.

You can get some idea of the change in circumstances at the Lungshan Temple by comparing the 240th anniversary celebration in 1979 with the 250th in 1989. In 1979 the entire area was strictly controlled by police, almost all the participants were religious devotees, and everything proceeded in an orderly fashion. Ten years later the streets were jammed with people, and when Mayor Wu Po-hsiung and Legislative Yuan Speaker Liu Kuo-tsai came to watch the event and make offerings, some extremists on the street hurled insults at them.

Of course times are always changing. In 1988 the management committee began to reevaluate the role of the institution. "The Lungshan Temple should not dragged into the disputes of the secular world. Religion should be separate from politics," stated current chairman Huang Chung-huang. In order to prevent the possibility of political conflicts on temple grounds, the committee made a decision unprecedented in the history of the institution: The grounds would no longer be lent out to outsiders, no matter which party, faction, or group they belonged to.

But this decision caused many of the people who hung around the temple to wonder whether the committee had not cut a deal with the Kuomintang to use the ruling as a device to keep down the opposition movement. This sparked a fracas in which a crowd ransacked the office, beat up temple staff, and even set fire to the incense kiosk.

The Lantern Festival display at Lungshan is famous; the lamps are all made the traditional way, by hand.

Beggars banquet

When political movements reached their peak at the temple, drifters also began "moving in" in large numbers, making for another large segment of the temple population.

In fact, Lungshan Temple has always played host to homeless people. This is because there are many pious Buddhists around, which makes for easy panhandling. It's also easy to scoop up some of the fruit or biscuits left on the tables as offerings to the gods. Also, before being torn down a year-and-a-half ago the "Lungshan Market" in front of the temple had a labor market, with opportunities for picking up a little cash by participating in temple processions, joining a funeral line, or doing odd jobs, which was another draw for those down on their luck.

But it was only with the arrival of political activities that drifters would come in for no reason but to watch the action, and after the event had finished, stake out a space for themselves and settle in. Fu Lai, a drifter of 40 who has lived "I don't know how many years" in the district around Lungshan, mumbles, "I've been around to lots of places, but I'm stuck on Lungshan Temple now." He strolls around the courtyard, boxed lunch and cooked pig stomach in hand, chatting with familiar faces. "Here people will treat me to lunch or buy me a drink." Like many drifters, he sleeps on one of the roadside vendors' tables that sit idle after closing time at the Sanshui market, and does odd jobs by day. He has been in countless demonstrations organized by the DPP. "Once I was in front of the Legislative Yuan, stripped from the waist up, and they took my picture for the TV news," he crows.

For the first three or four years after the lifting of martial law, drifters, beggars, and mentally ill people were frequent residents on the grounds. And because charitable groups gave away boxed lunches nearby, these homeless people were less willing than ever to leave the temple. They slept on the walkways night and day, and sometimes in drunken stupors would defecate or urinate wherever they happened to be. Sometimes one would attack tourists, worshippers, or temple staff. Local papers scoffed that the beggars had run the caretakers out of town, and Japanese media labeled the temple a "high-risk area for tourists."

Not only that. A number of fortune-tellers, monks and nuns of unknown and dubious origins, and hucksters taking old people's blood pressure and selling them miracle cures appeared. There was nothing very unusual in those days about stories of con men and fraud on the temple grounds.

An old gent plays an accordion while others sing in a corner of the court yard. Many old people hang around here amidst the strains of old Taiwanese, Japanese, and army songs.

A war of attrition

Thus did the reputation of Lungshan Temple, which for over two hundred years had been a pillar of the community, decline after the lifting of martial law. A series of violent crimes even scared off most of the temple security personnel.

Moreover, because the number of "outsiders" grew larger than the number of local people, the management committee, much of whose authority derives from local community ties, found itself powerless to control the interlopers. As a result, in the two months prior to the 1991 National Assembly elections they had to go to the city's Bureau of Civil Affairs and to the police to ask for help. In the end they decided to hire private security guards to clean up the temple.

However, at first, owing to the reputation the temple had acquired, they couldn't find anyone willing to take the job. Some staff members said in a fit of frustration that they should just turn the task over to the Wanhua mafia and let them get on with it. When the clean-up campaign finally began, the temple and the crowds entered into a "battle of attrition."

At first, in order to sweep out the unkempt drifters sleeping on the ground and put a stop to the harassment of worshippers, drinking, gambling, and fighting, the security force "fought fire with fire." They got into melees with the crowd, during which temple staff were insulted and struck and the office was trashed. Nevertheless, given the determination of Huang Chung-huang, four years and three security firms later the temple is definitely much improved. Leaving aside the safety risks posed by potential clashes between political groups outside, at least we can say that compared to the chaos of just a few years ago the Lungshan Temple is a much cleaner and more orderly place.

Some people have objected that the temple is violating the spirit of religion by not welcoming homeless people. Huang Chung-huang counters that, "The Lungshan Temple is a window on our country. With so many tourists coming here every day, the old situation was definitely having a negative impact on the nation's image." The committee gives NT$30-40 million a year for medical care for the indigent and assigns volunteers to help homeless elderly to get into hospitals; such acts testify to its good will.

Huang Chung-huang suggests that there are a lot of idle elderly hanging around the temple because there have never been any recreational facilities in the Wanhua area. The temple management committee is waiting until the Bureau of Civil Affairs completes the "Wanhua General-Use Building," after which it will sponsor activities for local senior citizens. "Sympathizing with and looking after our street friends is one thing, and maintaining the dignity of the temple is another thing altogether," he says firmly.

For many years now the quiet and gentle "Ah Po" has come to Lungshan every day; he is a living trademark of the temple.

When will tranquillity prevail?

The entry of Huang Fu's speech past the thresh-old and into the worship area has created an embarrassing situation for the temple on this day. Although the temple has banned outsiders from using the grounds, Huang Fu's lectures have continued uninterrupted for seven years. "We don't interfere with each other," he says. Huang Chung-huang admits that the temple does not have the authority to chase off the crowd or forbid speeches.

"When I was small, if someone brought up the battles at Lungshan from the 1850's, others would always retort, 'but that was in the third year of the Hsien Feng reign, for Heaven's sake.' They meant there was no point in bringing up ancient history, and anyway Sanyi natives and Tong'an natives have long since blended together," says Huang Chung-huang. But he wonders when the political clashes between Taiwanese and mainlanders will end, and when the standoff between Taiwan and the PRC will also become as irrelevant as "the third year of the Hsien Feng reign period." Is that when the Lungshan Temple will finally see restored to it the tranquillity that befits a house of worship?

[Picture Caption]

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Lungshan Temple has been designated a Grade 2 national historic site. Over the last 250 years it has seen much social change and has often been the site of fierce melees.

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The diversity of characters at the temple is itself a tourist attraction. Japanese tourists observe a man meditating over Buddhist scriptures.

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It is said that Lungshan's statue of the goddess Kuanyin is very efficacious, so many elderly women come here to read the sutras.

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Lungshan is crowded with worshippers in the first month of the Lunar calendar.

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Every day 40 or 50 buses full of tourists, mainly Japanese, come to the temple.

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The Lantern Festival display at Lungshan is famous; the lamps are all made the traditional way, by hand.

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An old gent plays an accordion while others sing in a corner of the court yard. Many old people hang around here amidst the strains of old Taiwanese, Japanese, and army songs.

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For many years now the quiet and gentle "Ah Po" has come to Lungshan every day; he is a living trademark of the temple.

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At every election or political crisis, politicians come to Lungshan Temple to pray or to assert their incorruptibility. The photo shows independent legislator Lin Cheng-chieh during the 1992 elections.

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Huang Fu has been making political speeches at Lungshan for seven years. Seven years ago he drew only a handful of listeners; today he gets three or four hundred.

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Bringing together drifters, the elderly, and the working class, the area around Lungshan Temple is known as a "hotbed for the opposition."

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The current man in charge at Lungshan is Huang Chung-huang (right). He has dedicated himself to cleaning up the temple grounds, and insists, "we must keep this window on our country clean." (photo by Vincent Chang)

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The temple has gone through three security companies in the last three years, but today it is a much more orderly place than it was three years back.

At every election or political crisis, politicians come to Lungshan Temple to pray or to assert their incorruptibility. The photo shows independent legislator Lin Cheng-chieh during the 1992 elections.

Huang Fu has been making political speeches at Lungshan for seven years. Seven years ago he drew only a handful of listeners; today he gets three or four hundred.

Bringing together drifters, the elderly, and the working class, the area around Lungshan Temple is known as a "hotbed for the opposition.".

The current man in charge at Lungshan is Huang Chung-huang （right）. He has dedicated himself to cleaning up the temple grounds, and insists, "we must keep this window on our country clean." （photo by Vincent Chang）

The temple has gone through three security companies in the last three years, but today it is a much more orderly place than it was three years back.