Daxi’s Other New Year

A Century-Old Festival That Brings the Whole Town Together

Cathy Teng　/　photos Jimmy Lin

July 2026

中文

The 24th day of the sixth lunar month marks Lord Guan’s birthday. Daxi has celebrated the occasion with a procession for more than a century.

Many cities around the world have a festival that comes to represent them: Kyoto has the Gion Matsuri and Munich has Oktoberfest. What makes these celebrations memorable is not simply the spectacle, but the way an entire city takes part.

Daxi District in Taoyuan has a similar festival of its own. Falling on the 24th day of the sixth lunar month (aka Lunar June 24) and affectionately called Daxi’s “second New Year,” it is a celebration to mark the birthday of Lord Guan, for which residents across the town set aside their daily routines to join in.

A whole town comes alive

Daxi slips into festival mode well before the big day arrives. Preparations begin on the first day of the month, when Puji Temple convenes a planning meeting, confirms the procession route, carries out a thorough cleaning known as “washing the temple,” and posts notices at nearby temples inviting their deities to attend while making ready to welcome them.

Towering deity figures and the lead banners of local Daxi community associations are brought together for the celebration of Lord Guan’s birthday, symbolizing the groups’ shared commitment to the festival and the unifying power of local faith.

Local community associations also begin rehearsals of their own amateur procession groups. Members go to work as usual by day, but temple forecourts come alive at night as dragon troupes and deity-general performers practice their formations, and the sounds of Beiguan music, gongs, and drums once again echo through the streets. With schools on summer break, young people studying away from home can return and take up the roles they have known since childhood. As the dates approach—August 5 and 6 this year—the rhythm of the whole town shifts toward a single purpose: celebrating Lord Guan’s birthday.

As night falls, the procession troupes formed by community associations begin rehearsing, and young people returning home take up their familiar roles once again. (photo by Cathy Teng)

A century of unity

Huang Chien-i, a longtime researcher of Daxi history and culture and founder of Da Vinci Melon Handicraft on Heping Old Street, says: “Daxi’s Lunar June 24 celebration is Taiwan’s largest religious procession mounted by local amateur community troupes.”

Huang Chien-i notes that for more than a century, Daxi has sustained a procession organized and funded by local residents. “The people of Daxi have quietly followed this path for over 100 years, with very little change.”

Daxi was once a major commercial center in northern Taiwan. Lord Guan was revered by merchants as a god of wealth, and devotion to him became deeply rooted in the town. The birthday festival took shape in the 1910s, with its earliest written record being, according to Huang, a newspaper account appearing in the Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō in 1915. He notes that during the era of Japanese rule (1895-1945), the colonial authorities restricted some forms of folk religion—for example, nearby Furen Temple, dedicated to Kaizhang Shengwang, was temporarily closed and used as a hospital—but Puji Temple, where Lord Guan is worshipped as the Martial Sage, was less affected at the time. Huang says this was probably due to the fact that there has long been a tradition of venerating this deity in Japan, which made it possible for his birthday celebration to continue in Daxi.

Yet for Huang, the most important thing about the celebration is not its religious content, but “community unity.” In earlier times, temple festivals across Taiwan required entire neighborhoods and villages to mobilize. All of the participants, from lion dance companies and Beiguan ensembles to deity generals and elaborate parade floats, were organized by amateurs and depended on residents sharing the workload: Adults carried palanquins and played Beiguan music, while children beat drums and learned the formations. The entire community took part.

Children in Daxi learn dragon drumming, lion drumming, and lion dancing from an early age, carrying the town’s festival culture forward. Shown here is the Daxi Elementary School lion dance team.

But over time, many religious processions elsewhere came to rely on professional performers. Daxi, however, has preserved the tradition of local associations organizing the event themselves. Residents contribute their own money and rehearse outside working hours, returning to their performance troupes when the time comes. “The people of Daxi have quietly followed this path for over 100 years, with very little change,” Huang says.

A museum that brings Lunar June 24 to life

Inside the Lunar June 24 Story House—a former Daxi Farmers’ Association storehouse that is now part of the complex of institutions under the Daxi Wood Art Ecomuseum—visitors find an ideal starting point for understanding the festival. Exhibits introduce the histories of local community associations and use images, palanquins, and performance troupe artifacts to reveal the people and stories behind the celebration.

The Lunar June 24 Story House displays the histories and artifacts of many community associations and their performance troupes.

What is especially striking is that each of the many community associations in the procession has its own history and identity. Of them, 15 were founded during the era of Japanese rule and continue to take part today. Drawn from Daxi’s many trades and occupations, their memberships read like pages from a history of the town’s development.

One example is the Tongren Society. Founded in 1917, it was formed by Daxi residents who had gone to Jiufen to mine gold. According to local tradition, the miners believed Lord Guan had guided them to the gold they found. On returning home, they pooled their money to build the first palanquin and founded the society to join the procession.

Meanwhile, the Xing’an Society, founded in 1919, was made up largely of general store merchants and became known as the “Businesspeople’s Society.” Its parade float still features an oversized abacus and scales, symbols of Daxi’s historic commercial culture. The Xieyi Society, also founded in 1919, brought together workers from the timber and woodworking trades; the giant carpenter’s ink-line reel carried by its procession troupe remains a vivid emblem of Daxi’s identity as a woodworking center.

Daxi is known as a “stronghold of deity generals.” Figures representing celebrated warriors from the Three Kingdoms appear in the procession, accompanying Lord Guan on his tour and joining in the celebration of his birthday.

Most guides at the museum were born and raised in Daxi. They share not only the stories behind the exhibits, but also their own memories of growing up with the festival.

Join the festivities

The celebration has endured for more than a century not only because Lord Guan remains revered, but because the local people choose to participate year after year. Adults lead children into the procession, and when the drums sound again in the temple forecourt at night, what passes from one generation to the next is more than faith: It is the bond that holds the town together.

This August, why not follow the swelling sounds of drums and Beiguan music into the streets of Daxi and experience a local celebration more than a century in the making. As the procession winds through the lanes of the old town, it becomes clear that the people of Daxi are safeguarding not merely a religious procession, but a way of life passed down from one generation to the next.