30-second overview: Jiutian Xuannu is a Chinese goddess who, in myth, descended onto an ancient battlefield and taught the Yellow Emperor how to defeat his enemy. In Taiwan, she evolved into something far stranger: patron saint of the incense industry, popular matchmaker, exam-season savior, and — most remarkably — the namesake deity behind a troupe of former dropout teenagers who performed at Lincoln Center. Their founder spent 11 years earning a doctorate just to prove the cultural establishment wrong.
The Man Who Was "Humiliated" for a Decade
In 1995, a man named Hsu Chen-Jung (許振榮) founded the Chio-Tian Folk Drums & Arts Troupe at a Jiutian Xuannu temple on Dadu Mountain in Taichung. He had a high school diploma. His members were teenage dropouts nobody else wanted.
In Taiwan at the time, the word 陣頭 (zhèntóu) — the temple parade troupes that drum, dance, and carry deity effigies through the streets during religious festivals — was essentially synonymous with gang activity. When Hsu applied for arts funding at the Council for Cultural Affairs (the predecessor of today's Ministry of Culture), reviewers and professors dismissed him repeatedly. They did not consider parade arts a legitimate performing art. They considered it organized crime.
Hsu later described being systematically "humiliated" — his word — by the cultural establishment. His response was not to walk away. "I felt deeply that I needed to strive in academia to stand as an equal with experts and scholars," he said. (Source: ETtoday, 2018)
So the temple troupe leader went back to school. He started with credit courses at Ming Dao University, then completed a two-year program at Ling Tung University, then an EMBA, then a doctoral program at Chaoyang University of Science and Technology. Eleven years. In July 2018, he received his PhD in industrial management and business strategy.
What did he do next? He went back to Dadu Mountain and kept teaching kids to drum.
📝 Curator's note: Hsu didn't earn a doctorate to leave the temple. He earned it so the temple could no longer be dismissed.
An Ancient Goddess of Strategy
The story of Jiutian Xuannu begins with one of Chinese mythology's foundational wars.
The Yellow Emperor (黃帝) fought Chiyou (蚩尤) at Zhuolu. Chiyou conjured a fog that lasted three days, disorienting the Yellow Emperor's forces. At the moment of defeat, a goddess with a human head and bird's body descended from the heavens. She taught the emperor military strategy, the divination system of Qimen Dunjia (奇門遁甲), and gave him the south-pointing chariot — a compass. The Yellow Emperor won, and Chinese civilization's founding myth was set.
The earliest records appear in Daoist texts including the Inner Transmission of the Yellow Emperor and the Seven Bamboo Tablets of the Cloudy Satchel. In the Tang dynasty, the Daoist priest Du Guangting elevated her with the "Nine Heavens" honorific, moving her from folk legend into the upper ranks of Daoist theology.
Crucially, she was never just a war deity. Classical texts also credit her with mastery over astronomy, geography, alchemy, and medicine — a goddess of comprehensive wisdom. That breadth is what made her so adaptable when she arrived in Taiwan.
What Happened When She Crossed the Strait
Jiutian Xuannu's worship took root in Taiwan during the Qing dynasty. According to Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior religious database, dozens of temples across the island list her as their primary deity, with many more hosting her in secondary shrines.
The interesting part is what happened to her job description.
In mainland China, she remained primarily a deity of military strategy and divination. In Taiwan, she picked up a title with no counterpart across the strait: Incense Mother (香媽). Legend holds that before becoming an immortal, she was a filial daughter who created medicinal incense to heal her father. Taiwan's incense manufacturers adopted her as their trade patron, praying for product quality and business success. The career pivot from battlefield tactician to incense industry guardian is, by any measure, significant.
The portfolio kept expanding. The Jiutian Xuannu temple in Tainan became famous for matchmaking prayers. The one in Chiayi fills with anxious students during exam season. Other temples offer fertility blessings, feng shui consultations, and spiritual counseling. A goddess who spent millennia teaching military strategy now serves as Taiwan's all-purpose divine consultant.
This pattern — deities accumulating new responsibilities in Taiwan — is not unique to Jiutian Xuannu. Guan Sheng Dijun went from war god to patron of business and police. Mazu went from sea goddess to universal protector. The logic is pragmatic: devotees don't check the classical texts for a deity's original job description. They care about one thing — does she deliver?
📝 Curator's note: A goddess who spent four thousand years teaching military strategy now most frequently gets asked: "Do I still have a chance with them?"
Chaofeng Temple: Nine Goddesses in One
The oldest dedicated Jiutian Xuannu temple in Taiwan may be Chaofeng Temple (朝奉宮) in Longjing, Taichung, founded in 1821. What makes it distinctive is its worship format: the goddess is enshrined as nine separate manifestations — from "First Mother" through "Ninth Mother" — each with distinct responsibilities. This nine-in-one structure, called 連理媽 (liánlǐ mā), is a purely Taiwanese innovation with no equivalent in mainland Chinese practice.
The Troupe: Where Drumsticks Work Better Than Counseling
Hsu's insight was simple. If a dropout teenager is willing to train for eight hours under direct sun, wake up at 3 a.m. for a temple procession, and repeat the same drumming motion a thousand times to get it right — what he lacks is not discipline. What he lacks is one adult who believes in him.
A drumstick in the hand demands precision. A missed beat throws off the entire row. The accountability is physical, immediate, and impossible to fake. It worked better than any counseling program.
But Hsu had larger ambitions. He refused to let 陣頭 remain at the margins of temple courtyards. He took traditional elements — war drums, deity puppets, the beloved youth deity Third Prince — and reconfigured them with professional stage lighting, original music, and dramatic structure. Productions like Pulling the Water Carts (based on a Yunlin funeral ritual), The Beggar Prince (a puppet-and-human fable), and Entering the Stage (confronting the social stigma of temple performance) moved beyond streets and into theaters.
Over nearly 30 years, the troupe has performed more than 1,100 shows across 100+ cities on five continents. In 2012, they performed at Lincoln Center in New York. In 2011, they carried a Third Prince deity figure through the Sahara Desert ultra-marathon.
Today, the troupe has an iron rule: every member must pursue a university degree. The teenagers who were once abandoned by schools now all hold bachelor's degrees. Some have earned master's.
"Things others have done, I absolutely will not redo," Hsu said. (Source: Beyond Foundation interview)
📝 Curator's note: In the myth, Jiutian Xuannu taught the Yellow Emperor how to fight when he was losing. In Taiwan, she teaches dropout kids to drum. Four thousand years later, the core job description hasn't changed: find the people who are about to lose and pull them back.
The Film: NT$40 Million In, NT$320 Million Out
In January 2012, director Feng Kai (馮凱) released Din Tao: Leader of the Parade (《陣頭》), a feature film based on the Chio-Tian troupe's real story. Feng had spent 27 years directing TV dramas; this was his first film. The production budget was under NT$40 million (roughly US$1.3 million). It broke NT$100 million at the box office in 12 days and finished at approximately NT$320 million — a decisive success for a Taiwanese-language film.
Starring Aaron Ko (柯有倫) and Alien Huang (黃鴻升, who died in 2020), the film follows a rebellious young man who returns home to take over his father's temple troupe. The plot is straightforward, but it achieved something rare: for the first time in mainstream Taiwanese culture, the word 陣頭 received genuine respect. Young audiences walked out thinking temple drumming was something worth doing, not just street noise blocking traffic.
After the film's release, enrollment in 陣頭 troupes across Taiwan noticeably increased. More importantly, the at-risk teenagers who had found second lives inside 陣頭 no longer had to apologize for it.
Female Voices for a Female Deity
In Taiwan's folk religion, spirit mediums (乩童, jītóng) serve as channels between deities and humans. Jiutian Xuannu temples stand out for having a higher proportion of female mediums than most other deity traditions.
Lin Fu-shih (林富士) at Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology notes that Taiwan's spirit mediums are "the most controversial type" of religious figure in the country. In a tradition where male mediums are the default, Jiutian Xuannu's representatives are often women. Their trance behavior tends not toward the dramatic self-mortification sometimes associated with male mediums, but toward a composed, authoritative presence — consistent with a goddess defined by intelligence rather than martial display.
The consultation sessions are popular. Devotees arrive with relationship problems, career dead-ends, and family conflicts, speaking to the goddess through her medium in what functions, practically, like one-on-one counseling — except the counselor has been in practice for four millennia.
When the Goddess Became a Meme
In 2022, Taiwanese YouTuber A-Han (阿翰) created a comedic character mimicking a Jiutian Xuannu spirit possession, which went viral. "Jiutian Xuannu" briefly became an internet catchphrase. But another of A-Han's characters — a caricature of a Vietnamese immigrant woman — drew accusations of racial discrimination from the Taiwan Vietnamese Association, forcing a public reckoning: where is the line between comedy about folk religion and mockery of vulnerable communities?
Deeper tensions persist. Some newer spiritual organizations run paid courses under Jiutian Xuannu's name, offering "channeling development" and "past-life regression" at substantial fees. Multiple temples claim the status of "founding shrine." These frictions are evidence that Jiutian Xuannu's faith in Taiwan is not a preserved artifact but a living phenomenon, still being contested and redefined.
In the summer of 2018, Hsu Chen-Jung put on a doctoral robe for his graduation photo. His advisor and his troupe members were all there. After the photo, he changed back into his regular clothes and drove back to the temple on Dadu Mountain. A truck loaded with drums for the next performance was already parked at the entrance.
It took him eleven years to walk into academia. It took him thirty seconds to walk back to the temple gate. In front of the Jiutian Xuannu statue, those two places had always been the same place.
References
- Chio-Tian Folk Drums & Arts Troupe official site (Primary)
- Ministry of the Interior Religious Knowledge: Jiutian Xuannu (Primary, government)
- Chaofeng Temple official site (Primary)
- Liberty Times: Troupe leader spends 11 years earning doctorate
- ETtoday: Hsu Chen-Jung's 11-year doctorate journey
- Beyond Foundation: Troupe arts master Hsu Chen-Jung
- Taipei Times: Snubbed troupe leader pursues doctorate (English)
- TVBS: NT$40M budget breaks NT$100M in 12 days
- Lin Fu-shih, Academia Sinica: Social image of Taiwan's spirit mediums (Academic)
- Wikipedia: Jiutian Xuannü (English)