From turtle cakes to turtle coins
Given people’s constant preoccupation with career success and earning money, it was but one small step from worshipping the God of Wealth to the current practice of borrowing capital directly from him.
Well before establishing the current system, Zinan Temple, home to the largest spirit lending operation in Taiwan, had in fact a long history of offering emergency loans of up to NT$6,000 to the community faithful.
Zinan Temple committee chairman Zhuang Qiu’an tells the story of one local who 20 years earlier had borrowed money from the temple and headed to Taoyuan to start a business selling sausages. He did so well in business that the other vendors were clamoring to know the secret of his success, at which point he revealed to them the provenance of his initial business loan.
The following year the market vendors headed south in a bus to borrow money from the Earth God at Zinan Temple. When other people experienced similar success, the temple’s fame began to spread. The number of visitors swelled to the point that the temple was compelled to reset the maximum loan amount at NT$600, but that didn’t prevent the stream of cash from constantly widening.
Zinan Temple’s roaring practice may be partially attributable to coincidence, but Wu, Lin, and other folklore scholars believe that spirit lending may have evolved out of an earlier popular tradition known as qigui, or turtle cake offerings.
Since in Chinese iconography turtles symbolize luck and longevity, turtle cake offerings are often present at the Lantern Festival or at celebrations of deities’ birthdays. The temple provides turtle-shaped cakes made from either flour or sticky rice that are placed in front of the temple. Worshippers cast divination blocks to be granted the privilege to take them home in the hopes that they will bring peace, health and prosperity. In accepting the cakes, the winners will typically express a wish for the following year; if that wish comes to fruition over the course of the year, they will bring multiple turtle cakes, typically bigger than the one they “borrowed,” back to the temple.
The custom has evolved over time so that turtles constructed of stacked coins or turtles made with gold have replaced the cakes. Turtles eventually gave way to cash loans, and what began essentially as a votive ritual has become more concrete and practical.
The most famous spirit bank, Zinan Temple in Nantou, offers worshippers a huge imitation yuanbao gold ingot made of bamboo plaiting to touch, a gesture symbolizing taking fortune home. In Taiwanese, the pronunciation of the characters “golden chicken” sounds similar to “increase gold.” The golden chicken statue at the temple has been rubbed so often that most of its paint is gone!