Penghu Folk Culture

30-second overview: On the night of Lantern Festival 2025, in front of the Guanyin Temple at Longmen, Huxi Township, Penghu, a rice turtle weighing 47,000 jin occupied half the temple courtyard. Businessman Lu Jui-chin threw eight pairs of divination blocks — a winning score — and for the fifth consecutive year took home this colossal turtle. Next year he will have to return 48,500 jin. On the same night when the Taiwanese mainland was setting sky lanterns and firecracker ceremonies were underway in Tainan, more than two hundred temples across Penghu simultaneously opened their offering tables and began casting divination blocks — praying not for luck, but for "gui" (龜, turtle) — pronounced "ku" in Taiwanese, the same sound as "kuei" (歸, return). The safe return of those who go out to sea: this is the oldest wish of an island shaped by wind.

On the afternoon of February 15, 2025 — the sixteenth day of the first lunar month — a 430-tael golden diamond turtle sat on the offering table of the Shanshui Shangdi Temple in Magong. Members of the "Manfu Craftsman Mercedes Tour Group" knelt before the deity's altar, threw eight successive winning pairs of divination blocks, and took home this golden turtle worth over NT$2 million.¹ At the neighboring Suogan Beiji Temple, Tseng Han-chin-kuei won a 260-tael golden spirit turtle with six winning pairs. The entertainer Jiang Yong-qi, for the fourth consecutive year, won a 120-tael flower-in-full-bloom golden turtle from the Shanshui Shangdi Temple and on the same night also won NT$12,000 in cash from the Magong Lingang Temple.¹

This is not gambling. This is a contract — a person borrows a turtle from a deity, takes it home for a year of blessing, then returns it with interest the following year. A 47,000-jin rice turtle becomes 48,500 jin next year; a 430-tael golden turtle gains an extra tael. Year after year, the turtles grow larger and the temple courtyard fills more densely, yet this spiral has been turning for more than two hundred and fifty years.

Curator's Note:
The "return-with-interest" mechanism of the turtle offering causes every turtle to expand across time. This is not inflation — it is the compound interest of faith. In the deity's ledger, people are always just a little bit in debt.

The First Written Record: Qianlong's Era

In 1767, the eighteenth Penghu Tongpan (regional administrator) Hu Jian-wei recorded a scene of the turtle offering in his Brief Notes on Penghu (澎湖紀略).² The turtles of that era were made from rice flour and sugar water — soft white pastry turtles, weighing a few dozen jin, arranged in rows across the temple courtyard, with worshippers casting divination blocks to determine who would take them home.

Two hundred and fifty years later, the specifications have entirely changed. In 2025, the Chihhkan Houbigong Wenheng Shengdi Temple stacked a rice-sack turtle weighing 38,000 jin.³ Penghu once challenged a super rice turtle of 360,000 jin, attempting to set a Guinness World Record.⁴ Beyond pastry turtles, there are now gold turtles, lobster turtles, cabbage turtles, and beer turtles — Ukam uses cabbage piled into turtle form, and Shing-jen Maolin Temple lets worshippers cast divination blocks to win live lobsters. The form has multiplied dozens of times over, but the core logic remains unchanged: you borrow something from the deity, and next year you return more.

In June 2025, "Penghu Shangyuan Qi Gui" (上元乞龜, the Lantern Festival Turtle Offering) was officially registered as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Penghu County.⁵ This is not a tourism marketing label — it is official recognition that this system of human-deity contract deserves to be preserved.

Wind Shaped Everything

To understand Penghu folk culture, you must first understand the wind.

From October through the following March, the northeast monsoon channels through the Taiwan Strait and intensifies. Penghu's monthly average wind speed reaches 8.4 meters per second in November and December.⁶ Winter days with wind speeds exceeding 10 meters per second account for 56% of the total.⁶ This is not a breeze — this is wind that bends people sideways, kills crops, and drives waves three stories high.

Wind determines the Penghu calendar. Winter forecloses fishing and farming; most of the year's earnings depend on the few summer months. Wind also determined the shape of faith: Penghu temples have the highest density of any place in Taiwan, because every voyage out to sea might be the last, and every village needs its own deity.

Wind lion statues (風獅爺) crouch at village entrances, facing northeast. Stone inscriptions to ward off evil (石敢當) are carved at lane corners. Temples are built from old coral limestone (咾咕石) — coral reef rock resistant to wind and salt. These are not decoration; they are survival equipment. Penghu people do not worship wind, but all their beliefs are the wind's byproducts.

The Taiwanese word for turtle is "ku" — which sounds exactly like "kuei" (歸), meaning "to return." On an island where men going out to sea might never come home, "return" is the heaviest word there is. The turtle offering prays not merely for wealth — the Penghu saying goes "rub the turtle's head, build a mansion; rub the turtle's tail, save the household; rub the turtle's shell, business stable and sound; rub the turtle's feet, gold and silver fill the floor" — but the first wish listed is "build a mansion," meaning "have a home to return to."

Four Hundred Years of Temple and Stele

In 1604, Dutch East India Company commander Wybrand van Warwijck landed in Penghu with troops. The Wuyu Regional Defense Commander Shen You-rong rushed to Magong (then called Mama Palace) — today's Tianhou Temple — and met with the Dutch, persuading them to withdraw. Afterward, a stele was erected: "Shen You-rong's Expulsion of the Red-Haired Barbarian Van Warwijck and Others."⁷

This stele is still embedded in the right wall of the Qingfeng Pavilion of the Tianhou Temple today — 198 centimeters tall, 28.7 centimeters wide.⁷ It is one of the earliest records of foreign diplomacy preserved in Taiwan, and confirms that the Tianhou Temple already existed before 1604 — making it Taiwan's oldest Mazu temple.

In 1722, after Shi Lang captured Penghu, he memorialized the Kangxi Emperor to grant Mazu the title of "Heavenly Empress" (天后), and the "Mama Palace" (娘媽宮) was formally renamed "Tianhou Temple."⁷ In 1734, Penghu Tongpan Zhou Yu-ren recorded the "four ancient temples" of Magong in his Brief Account of Penghu (澎湖志略): the Guandi Temple, Tianhou Temple, Zhenwu Temple, and Shuixian Temple.² In 1922, during the Taisho era, the Taiwan-Fujian merchant guild in Magong pooled funds to invite Guangdong Chaozhou master carpenter Lan Mu to renovate the Tianhou Temple, transforming it from Minnan-style to Chaozhou style — which explains why today's Tianhou Temple looks different from most other Mazu temples in Taiwan.⁷

Did you know?
The place name "Magong" (馬公) itself comes from "Mama Palace" (媽宮). The Mazu temple was called "Niang Ma Gong" (娘媽宮), abbreviated "Ma Gong" (媽宮), and was renamed "Magong" during the Japanese colonial period. In Taiwan, a city named after a temple is not rare (Xingang, Beigang), but Penghu's example is probably the earliest.

Stone Weirs: Traps at Low Tide

Penghu folk culture lives not only in temples, but in the sea.

There are at least 574 stone weirs (石滬, shíhù) still preserved across Penghu; counting those recorded in oral tradition but now gone, the total may exceed 600.⁸ Of these, 109 surround Jibei Island alone — the highest density of intertidal fishing methods anywhere in the world.⁸ The principle is simple: stone walls are piled in an arc across the intertidal zone; when the tide rises, fish are carried in by the water, and when it ebbs, the fish are trapped. No fuel, no boat, no risk of going out to sea.

The double-heart stone weir at Qimei (七美) is a must-photograph tourist attraction, but it wasn't originally called that. It was first built by brothers Yan Chong and Yan Yu-chi of Donghu Village, and because it was located north of "Ding Chia" (頂隙), it was called the "Ding Chia Weir." Later, second-generation inheritor Yan Gong invited a master from Jibei to redesign it into the "one-room two-hollow" form, which produced the double-heart shape.⁸ In 2006, the Penghu County Government registered the double-heart stone weir as a Cultural Landscape. In 2008, the Jibei Stone Weir Group was also registered as a County-Level Cultural Landscape.⁹ The entire Penghu stone weir group is one of the eighteen potential Taiwan World Heritage sites selected by the Ministry of Culture.⁹

Curator's Note:
A stone weir is a way to catch fish without going out to sea. On an island where going out to sea might mean never returning, this invention's significance is not only economic — it is a solution to fear.

Baoge Songs: Literature That Illiterates Could Perform

Winter forecloses fishing and farming, so Penghu people sing.

Baoge (褒歌, pó-kua in Taiwanese) is improvised call-and-response singing in seven-syllable verses — two verses per couplet, two couplets per song. No instruments needed, no literacy needed, but good memory, quick wit, and a deep foundation in Taiwanese are required.¹⁰ Content ranges from romantic songs to complaints about farm work to satire of current events — everything is fair game. In the community of Erkan (二崁), Siyu Township (西嶼), West Penghu, baoge four-line verses are still carved onto settlement walls, becoming backdrops for tourist photographs.¹⁰

But baoge is disappearing. After the 1970s, only elderly people retained the ability to sing it. Young people can't understand the archaic Taiwanese in the lyrics, let alone improvise responses. This is a culture that cannot be preserved on YouTube — the heart of baoge is "improvisation" and "call-and-response"; recorded, it dies. Only living people can transmit it.¹⁰

Fireworks and Air Disaster

On May 25, 2002, China Airlines Flight 611, en route from Taoyuan to Hong Kong, disintegrated in mid-air off the coast of Penghu, killing all 225 people aboard.¹¹ This was one of the worst aviation disasters in Taiwan's history, and it devastated Penghu's tourism industry.

The following year, Penghu County Government launched "A Million Charms in Chrysanthemum Island" (千萬風情在菊島) to revitalize tourism. This festival — born from disaster — later became the Penghu International Ocean Fireworks Festival. In 2024, it attracted 530,000 visitors, generating over NT$3.7 billion in tourism revenue, with 97% visitor satisfaction.¹² In 2026, the festival collaborated with Dragon Ball Z, running from May through August.

Curator's Note:
From air disaster to fireworks festival, only one year separated them. Penghu transformed its deepest wound into its brightest calling card. But the festival's success also brings contradictions: summer swarms with tourists, while winter sees population outmigration continue, and Penghu's age structure keeps aging — people aged 65 and over account for nearly 19% of the population, with an aging index of 194%.⁶ The fireworks illuminate the summer; the wind blows through the winter.

Lantern Festival 2026: Two Hundred Temples Casting Divination Blocks Simultaneously

On Lantern Festival 2026, the Penghu County Government for the first time linked thirty-six temples in a stamp-collection activity — collect seven stamps and be eligible for a prize draw.³ But thirty-six was only the number of officially linked temples — more than two hundred temples across the county opened their offering tables on that same night, each setting out its own turtles, each holding its own divination casting. No unified organizing body, no standardized procedures; what each turtle looked like was each village's own decision.

This is precisely why the Penghu turtle offering has not died in two hundred and fifty years: it is not an "event" — it is more than two hundred independent nodes of faith simultaneously breathing. No one can cancel it, because no one owns it.

The scene that Hu Jian-wei recorded in 1767 — worshippers kneeling before the temple, casting divination blocks, waiting for the deity to nod — is almost identical to the scene in 2026. The only difference is that the turtles grew from a few dozen jin to 47,000 jin, from rice-flour pastry to gold. But the posture of kneeling has not changed, and the question asked of the deity has not changed:

Next year — let those who went out to sea come home.

References

Further reading:

• Taiwan Religion and Temple Culture — The social functions of Taiwan's temple density and folk faith
• Taiwan Temple Festivals and Performance Troupes — From performance troupes to electric-sound Third Prince, how temple festivals transform in modern society
• Traditional Festivals and Celebrations — A panorama of Taiwan's festivals including Lantern Festival, Ghost Festival, and Mazu pilgrimage
• Jiutian Xuannu Belief — Female deities and local protector gods in Taiwan's folk faith