Penghu’s Wang family has preserved very pure forms of traditional papier mâché and “plague boat” construction for three generations. The first of these handicrafts is inextricably connected to funerals and Daoist ritual, while the second is closely linked to the worship of the Wang Ye (“the royal lords”), Daoist deities responsible for warding off disease and evil.
Also known as the Qiansui Ye (“thousand-year-old lords”), the Wang Gong (“princes”) and the Da Ren (“great ones”), the Wang Ye are folk deities widely worshipped in southern Fujian Province in mainland China, and in Pingtung, Kaohsiung, Tainan, Chiayi, and Penghu in Taiwan.
Seeing off the Wang Ye
There are several stories about the origins of the Wang Ye, but the “plague god” story is most common. It describes them as deities tasked by the Jade Emperor with managing disease by patrolling the world and expelling plagues on his behalf. While their worshippers revere them, they also worry that failing to propitiate them with offerings could result in an outbreak of disease. The Wang Ye faithful therefore welcome the gods into their communities with a triennial ceremony. It concludes by “seeing off the Wang Ye” with a ritual boat burning. In the traditional Wang Ye faith, this burning of the plague gods represents sending them to “roam the Heavenly River” on their way back to the Heavenly Court.
Nearly all of the plague boats built in Taiwan are intended to send the Wang Ye back to the Heavens. But in the old days it was traditional to make these plague boats from papier mâché, because it was inexpensive and Taiwan was poor. Once Taiwan began to enjoy a measure of prosperity, worshipers began replacing the old papier mâché boats with three-masted wooden sailing vessels. Whether made of paper or wood, these ritual vessels were expected to emulate real boats both inside and out. As a consequence, nearly all the early plague boats were built by actual shipwrights.
The Wang family’s plague boats
Now 65 years old, Wang Hsu-hui is a member of Penghu’s Wang family of artisans and a third-generation plague boat builder. The family trade goes back to Hsu-hui’s grandfather, Wang Yu, who in the late Qing Dynasty studied papier mâché and plague boat manufacturing with a monk from the Chinese mainland at Penghu’s oldest Mazu temple, the Tianhou Temple in Magong. The techniques he learned have since been passed down through three generations. Hsu-hui’s youngest brother, Hsu-sheng, inherited the family’s papier mâché crafts. Hsu-hui himself became obsessed with plague boats and began studying boatbuilding with their father, Wang Zongtian, at the age of 15.
Examples of Hsu-hui’s work can now be found in the collections of the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung, the National Museum of History in Taipei, and the Penghu Living Museum. He built his most recent plague boat for the Jinghai Temple in Magong’s Wukan Borough in 2013.
Hsu-hui says that one of the things that make the Wang family’s boats unique is that he carries out every step of the production process himself. Plague boats built elsewhere in Taiwan are crafted by teams of carpenters, who split up the various tasks. “The division of labor on Taiwan proper lets them build boats faster than we do, but our boats have a better structure and stick closer to tradition.” While visiting southern Fujian, he learned that Penghu’s plague boats are very similar to those made in Quanzhou, both in their look and their construction. The striking decorations of Taiwan’s plague boats, on the other hand, differ markedly from the much more spare traditional style.
Preserving and innovating
Plague boats are at the core of the Wang Ye belief system. Plague boat artisans must therefore observe the relevant rites when building them. For example, the first step in the process is a ritual known as the “first chop” that must be carried out before beginning work on the keel. It involves symbolically chopping into the wood that will become the keel with a hatchet, to drive out any evil and bring good fortune. Hsu-hui says that for the ritual the wood must be wrapped in red cloth, and the builder must be barefoot and wear a red sash around his waist. He then chops from left to right three times while intoning, “The first chop, peace for the nation and security for the people; the second chop, clement weather; the third chop, good fortune the year round.”
Later, the craftsman must conduct a “bringing in the deity” ritual. For this, he bores a hole into the “Wang Ye cabin,” then fills it with auspicious objects including the five grains, pig iron, the five metals, and “dragon silver” (money). “This makes the boat divine,” explains Hsu-hui.
Plague boat builders in Fujian, Taiwan proper, and Penghu are all expected to carry out both rituals, but the objects they place into the hold and the decorations they create vary with location. Hsu-hui says that the Penghu Wangs’ attention to the finer points of the old ways is one of the things that make their plague boats unique. For example, the family is adamant that their boats include features symbolizing the 12 animals of the zodiac, such as a “mouse bridge” (a makeshift path that enables sailors to walk from bow to stern). “In plague boats from Taiwan proper these have gradually been replaced with representations of the animals themselves.”
But Hsu-hui doesn’t simply adhere to tradition; he’s also improved aspects of the production process. For example, he uses a combination of hinoki and teak to make his masts, which helps prevent warping.
Cultural assets
Hsu-hui has a great passion for building boats, more than his three brothers, and more even than his father and grandfather before him. He spent a portion of his 30s as an apprentice at a Changhua shipyard as a means of increasing his knowledge and skill. While nominally there to learn woodworking, “my real purpose was to filch their method for working with fiberglass reinforced plastics.” At the time, his only objective was learning their techniques so he could open an FRP workshop in Penghu manufacturing motorized fishing boats.
But life rarely turns out as we plan. When the government promulgated a policy limiting the construction of fishing boats, Hsu-hui was left looking for a new career. He first went into tourism, purchasing a sailboat with which to offer first-of-their-kind sailing tours of Penghu. In 2000, he went on to use his experience building and repairing boats to win a teaching job at the National Kaohsiung Institute of Marine Technology (now the National Kaohsiung Marine University), where he taught until two years ago. During his tenure there he built the plague boats currently in the collections of the National Museum of History in Taipei and the Penghu Living Museum, as well as plague boats for the Penghu townships of Dongwei and Jing’an.
Interestingly, for financial reasons, the boats he built for Penghu temples have not been burned as custom calls for. Wang says that more than half of Penghu’s temples are associated with the Wang Ye faith and carry on the plague boat custom. “The Heavenly Court sets a three-year cycle. The boats should set out every three years. But the temples don’t have the money to replace them, so they just keep them. Some have had theirs for 40 or 50 years.”
Building for the gods
After coming back to Penghu to build a plague boat for the Jinghai Temple two years ago, Hsu-hui felt an urgent need to pursue a dream he’s had for 20 years: building Taiwan’s first Mazu boat.
The Tianhou Temple in Penghu’s Magong City is the oldest of all Taiwan’s Mazu temples. The exact year of its construction in unclear, but historical records indicate that it is at least 400 years old. Hsu-hui says that the temple used to convene the Penghu fishing fleet every three or four years for a patrol of all of Penghu’s outlying islands. That custom gave Hsu-hui the idea of building a Mazu boat. He spent nearly six months creating a two-meter-long prototype, and envisions his full-size boat having the capacity to carry 20 people and the capability to sail to Fujian to visit the Mazu Temple at Meizhou.
For all that building boats for the gods takes a tremendous amount of time and labor, the work itself is so intermittent that few people are interested in learning the trade. Fortunately, the Penghu Wangs may have an heir for their artistry: Hsu-hui’s young son, who is now in the fifth grade, is already showing an interest in sailboats. Passing a trade on into a third generation is a remarkable feat, but Hsu-hui hopes for even more: he wants to hand on the torch to his son and keep the Penghu plague-boat tradition alight for yet another generation.
Wang Hsu-hui’s newest creation is a Mazu boat, which will contain a lifelike wooden model of Magong’s Tianhou Temple.
Hsu-hui uses traditional methods to build boats for the gods, and all are seaworthy. In the photo, Hsu-hui works on the prototype for his Mazu boat.
The Wang Ye faith’s “seeing off the gods” ceremony culminates in the burning of a plague boat to send the gods back to the Heavens. (courtesy of Wang Hsu-hui)
Celebrants mark the launch of the Jinghai Temple’s plague boat. Wang Hsu-hui built the boat for the temple, located in Magong’s Wukan Borough, in 2014. (courtesy of Wang Hsu-hui)
