Taiwan's Religious Faith: An Empire of Belief Grown from Fear

30-second overview: Taiwan has approximately 15,000 registered religious buildings — more than the island's convenience stores. The most numerous are not the Mazu temples (about 672) that the public assumes, but Wangye temples (about 1,330) — a fear-born deity originating from "plague king boat burning" that specializes in epidemics. In a single temple you may find Buddhism's Guanyin, Taoism's Jade Emperor, and the folk deity Tudigong sharing incense. Every lunar March, over a million people follow Dajia Mazu on a nine-day, eight-night, 340-kilometer pilgrimage. In 2014, Longshan Temple, which draws six million visitors annually, removed all its incense burners, becoming Taiwan's first major "incense-free" temple. The 2025 Freedom House Global Freedom Report ranks Taiwan as Asia's second freest country. This island's faith has never been a cloud-dwelling affair — it lives in your neighborhood alley, begun the moment seventeenth-century military immigrants stepped ashore.

In 1995, a man named Liao Wu-chih stood on the roof of Taipei's Dalongdong Bao'an Temple, watching a jiannian (cut-and-paste porcelain) master embed colored glass shards back into their two-hundred-year-old positions¹. Built in 1804, Bao'an Temple was a shrine brought by Tong'an immigrants worshipping Baosheng Dadi. It survived the Japanese colonial era, the postwar period, and urban expansion, but by the 1990s had fallen into severe disrepair. The Taiwan government designated it a Grade 2 historic site in 1985, but designation brought no restoration.

Liao Wu-chih decided to raise the funds himself. Seven years, not a single dollar from the government, insisting on original techniques and materials². He recruited master craftsmen of jiannian, stone carving, wood carving, and polychrome painting from across Taiwan — some techniques already near extinction. "Restoring an old temple with new materials is easy," he later told an interviewer, "but that's not restoration, it's renovation."

In 2003, Bao'an Temple received the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation, the first in Taiwan³. The citation read: "A model for community-based restoration."

This story is actually a microcosm of the island's entire religious history: the government steps back, the people step forward; skills nearly vanish, but someone insists on passing them down; a temple is not just a temple, it is a container of urban memory. To understand why this island sprouted the world's highest density of temples, we must go back over three centuries: to those who strapped deity statues to their bodies and gambled their lives crossing the Black Ditch.

Why This Island Has 15,000 Temples

According to Ministry of the Interior statistics, Taiwan had approximately 15,000 registered religious buildings in 2024⁴: more than the roughly 13,000 convenience stores across the island⁵. Tainan is the city with the highest temple density in Taiwan, with 1,641 recorded in 2015⁶.

But beneath this number lies a contrast most people don't realize: the largest category is not Mazu temples, but Wangye temples.

Academia Sinica's "Taiwan Temple Database" cross-referenced Ministry of the Interior religious registrations and found approximately 1,330 Wangye faith temples versus about 672 Mazu temples — Wangye temples outnumber Mazu temples by nearly double⁷. "Wangye faith is especially prevalent in southern Taiwan, paralleling Mazu faith in central Taiwan, commonly called: 'South Wangye, Central Mazu,' also 'Third Month Crazy for Mazu, Fourth Month Wangye's Birthday.'"⁸

What are Wangye? Their original function was plague gods. "Wangye faith originated from the plague king boat burning of early southeastern coastal China, drifting from the Xiamen and Quanzhou areas to various southwestern coastal regions of Taiwan."⁹ Coastal residents would personify the plague as a wooden ship loaded with offerings, push it into the sea, and hope the plague would depart with the vessel. Wangye boats drifting to Taiwan were recovered by locals, enshrined, and worshipped — thus plague gods became guardian deities.

📝 Curator's Note: An island's most numerous deity originates from fear of plague. This was not a compassionate choice, but a survival reflex of an immigrant society with primitive medicine — personifying the uncontrollable into an imaginable personality. When disease later became controllable, Wangye did not disappear; their function simply shifted to exorcism, peace, and protection. Gods don't die, they just change jobs.

Mazu followed the same logic. Mazu was originally a Song dynasty sea goddess from Meizhou, Fujian, whose function was protecting fishermen at sea. Seventeenth-century military immigrants crossing the Black Ditch (Taiwan Strait) strapped Mazu statues to their masts. The ships arrived, and the gods arrived with them. But on the island, Mazu's functions rapidly expanded: from sea goddess to healing, exorcism, granting children, protecting crops, aiding examinations, prospering business — she managed everything. A single-function sea goddess became an all-function island mother goddess.

Tudigong walked the same path. Originally an agrarian society's field-head god governing one acre's harvest; after urbanization the function shifted to commerce. Some Tudigong shrines in Taipei's Xinyi District are believed to be "especially good at helping people make money" and enjoy flourishing incense¹⁰. Deities' functions evolve with social structure.

340 Kilometers, Nine Days and Eight Nights

Every lunar March, the entire island is taken over by a religious march.

Dajia Zhenlan Temple's Mazu pilgrimage and incense-offering procession began at 10:45 p.m. on April 4, 2025, and returned on April 13 — nine days and eight nights, spanning twenty-one townships across four cities and counties (Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin, Chiayi), circling nearly a hundred temples, total route 340 kilometers¹¹. Discovery Channel listed it as one of the world's three major religious events in 2004¹². In 2009, UNESCO inscribed Mazu belief and customs on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity¹³.

One thing about the journey is special: the supply stations along the route. Not arranged by the temple, but spontaneously organized by residents along the way. Free rice noodles, sesame oil chicken, massage, painkillers, razors, sanitary pads, sports drinks. "Mazu walks, everyone helps."¹⁴ An elderly woman might save all year just to cook a pot of soup sufficient for hundreds during these few days. She doesn't know these pilgrims, they don't know her, but Mazu knows them all.

Even more remarkable is the tradition of the palanquin turning on its own. The palanquin is not carried by people walking; rather "people follow Mazu" — when the palanquin suddenly swerves, sprints, or reverses, the bearers can only follow, never resist¹⁵. This is folk belief's most physical moment: the god is not in heaven, the god is in the wood, and the wood moves itself.

In recent years the pilgrimage has grown increasingly complex. In 2016, "Mazu culture" was written into China's "13th Five-Year Plan" and "Belt and Road Initiative"; in 2018 a Fujian delegation proposed establishing a national-level leadership body composed of the United Front Work Department, Taiwan Affairs Office, Ministry of Culture, and Fujian Provincial Committee to promote Mazu culture development¹⁶. The CCP packages Mazu as the "Goddess of Peace Across the Strait" and sponsors cross-strait pilgrimage groups. The problem is that Taiwan's Mazu devotees mostly just want to worship Mazu, not be represented by anyone. "Is Mazu a united front weapon?" — the pilgrimage procession has no consensus on this question.

📝 Curator's Note: In Taiwan Mazu is simultaneously religion, culture, tourism, and politics. China wants to make her a symbol of "both sides belong to one China"; Taiwanese devotees use a million people walking on foot each year to make her "our island's own god." A god can be several things at once — in Taiwan this isn't contradiction, it's tacit understanding.

Three Teachings Sharing One Roof

Step into Taipei's Mengjia Longshan Temple and you'll see a scene outsiders struggle to comprehend: the main hall enshrines Guanyin Bodhisattva (Buddhism), the rear hall has Tianhou Shengmu Mazu (Taoism/folk belief) on one side and Wenchang Dijun (Taoism, governing examination luck) on the other, side halls hold Yuexia Laoren (folk belief, governing marriage), Zhusheng Niangniang (granting children), and Guansheng Dijun (martial god of wealth)¹⁷. One temple, at least seven deities, belonging to three religious systems. Taiwanese don't see conflict.

This is the most distinctive feature of Taiwan's faith: the unity of three teachings is not philosophy, it is spatial arrangement. Buddhists, Taoists, and folk believers enter the same temple, each worshipping their own deities, none looking askance at the others. Academia Sinica's 2019 survey reflects this mixture: 49.3% of the populace professes traditional folk religion, 14% Buddhism, 12.4% Taoism, 5.5% Protestantism, 2.1% Yiguandao, 1.3% Catholicism¹⁸. But in practice, a person may simultaneously worship Mazu, pray to Guanyin, and visit Tudigong on holidays — this isn't apostasy, it's daily life.

How did this mixture arise? Historical context: post-seventeenth-century immigrants brought their hometown deities across the sea; island space was limited, too many independent temples couldn't be built, so deities were placed together. Over time, functional division rather than sectarian separation became the governing logic: examinations → Wenchang, marriage → Yuexia Laoren, business → Guangong, peace → Mazu, children → Zhusheng Niangniang — each deity has a specialty, worshippers pray by need, not by denomination.

One postwar event made this mixture more explicit. On May 31, 1945, U.S. forces bombed Taipei; Longshan Temple's main hall was destroyed, but the Guanyin statue inside remained unscathed amid the rubble¹⁹. At the time, folk believers, Buddhists, and Taoists who had prayed to this Guanyin all regarded it as a miracle. The statue didn't distinguish religions; the miracle didn't either.

📝 Curator's Note: Westerners often ask "what religion do Taiwanese actually believe in" — the question itself is wrong, presupposing "a person can only believe in one religion." But for Taiwanese, "what you believe" and "what you worship" are two different things. You can say you're a Buddhist your whole life, yet still worship Tudigong on the second day of the lunar new year when visiting your maternal home, pray to Wenchang before exams, and worship Guangong for business. This isn't disloyalty, it's division of labor.

From Suppression to Legality: Yiguandao Walked 34 Years

In 1953, the Nationalist government ordered the suppression of Yiguandao on grounds of "involving superstition and undermining local public order"²⁰. This religion originating in Shandong, China, combining Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, went underground in Taiwan, maintained by oral transmission — for thirty-four years its adherents only grew.

1987: the same year Taiwan lifted martial law: forty legislators jointly petitioned the government to legalize Yiguandao. In March 1988, the "Republic of China Yiguandao General Association" was established²¹. Yiguandao became the first religion in postwar Taiwan to transition from illegal to legal: the lobbying began months before martial law was actually lifted (July 15, 1987). As of March 2018, Taiwan had approximately 800,000 registered Yiguandao adherents²².

Yiguandao's characteristics are strict vegetarianism + unity of three teachings + global expansion. It has temples in over 80 countries²³, advocating unique eschatological views like "Three Periods of Final Kalpa" and "Three Buddhas Appearing." But to outsiders the most understandable trait is: Yiguandao temples serve excellent food, all vegetarian, free, and they don't pressure you to convert.

📝 Curator's Note: Yiguandao's history is a microcosm of Taiwan's religious liberalization. A religion suppressed by the state for thirty-four years didn't disappear; it accumulated grassroots mobilization energy underground. On the eve of lifting martial law it became a test stone for political reform — "can this underground religion be legalized" became a metric for testing the government's openness. Today Yiguandao is a mainstream religion, but what it taught Taiwan wasn't just religion — it was that "political suppression cannot kill faith."

Postwar New Rise: Buddhism's Four Great Mountains

If Wangye and Mazu represent the fears of cross-strait immigrants, the new Buddhism represents another kind of need in postwar Taiwanese society: after urbanization, economic growth, and universal education, people needed not just peace and fortune, but meaning.

Four great Buddhist mountains arose in this context:

• Tzu Chi Foundation (1966, Hualien): Master Cheng Yen started with thirty housewives "saving fifty cents daily"²⁴. Today Tzu Chi has volunteers in 68 countries and provides aid in 136 countries²⁵. "For Buddhism, for all beings" is Tzu Chi's core spirit.
• Fo Guang Shan (1967, Dashu, Kaohsiung): Master Hsing Yun broke ground at Mazu Garden in Dashu, advocating "Humanistic Buddhism" — the Dharma is not in the mountains, it is in the human world. Subsequently established over 300 temples and centers worldwide, 16 Buddhist colleges, founded Nan Hua University, Fo Guang University, and the Buddha Museum²⁶. Master Hsing Yun passed away at Fo Guang Shan's Chuan Deng Lou Kai Shan Liao on February 5, 2023 at 5:00 p.m., aged 97²⁷.
• Dharma Drum Mountain (1989, Jinshan): Founded by Master Sheng Yen. 1990 unveiled "Uplifting the Character of Humanity, Building a Pure Land on Earth"; 1992 proposed the concept of "Spiritual Environmental Protection"²⁸: extending environmental protection from the material to the spiritual realm, one of the important cultural terms of postwar Taiwan.
• Chung Tai Chan Monastery (Puli): Elder Master Wei Jue founded Lingquan Temple on the basis of Wei Jue Chan Temple in 1987²⁹. Chung Tai Chan Monastery was formally completed on September 1, 2001: "three years of planning from 1992, seven years of construction"³⁰ — over thirty years later than the other three mountains. This generational gap also shaped its very different Chan-meditation-centered approach from the first three. Elder Master Wei Jue passed away on April 8, 2016, aged 90.

The four mountains each have different church-state relation strategies: Tzu Chi "doesn't discuss politics, only does charity"; the Presbyterian Church "actively participated in democratic transition"; Fo Guang Shan "moderate participation, maintains dialogue with both sides of the strait." Same category of religious organizations, but the spectrum stretches wide.

Dr. Maxwell's Medical Kit: 160 Years of Christianity in Taiwan

On May 28, 1865, Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland landed at Takow (now Kaohsiung) in southern Taiwan, and on June 16 began preaching and practicing medicine at Kansai Street outside the West Gate of Taiwan-fu³¹. This was the starting point of Protestant Christianity in Taiwan.

Seven years later, on March 7, 1872, George Leslie Mackay of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission landed at Tamsui, opening northern missionary work³². Mackay's Oxford College (1882) in Tamsui was one of the prototypes of modern education in Taiwan. Mackay Memorial Hospital, Chang Jung High School, Tamkang High School, Aletheia University — these institutions still operating today were all foundations laid by the Presbyterian Church in the late nineteenth century.

The Presbyterian Church differs from other religions in one key respect: it directly intervenes in politics. On August 16, 1977, the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan issued a "Human Rights Declaration," publicly urging the government to "take effective measures to make Taiwan a new and independent country"³³. At the time Taiwan was still under martial law; publicly advocating independence risked imprisonment. The Presbyterian Church became one of the few domestic civil society groups able to speak openly before the lifting of martial law.

Catholicism also left its mark: Fu Jen Catholic University, Mackay Memorial Hospital (early cooperation), the Bethlehem Mission Society's long-term service in indigenous tribes in Taitung³⁴. These institutions are smaller in scale than the four great Buddhist mountains, but their contributions to remote-area medical care, education, and social welfare are profound.

📝 Curator's Note: Christianity in Taiwan for 160 years has never been a major denomination (population share ~5-6%), but its influence far exceeds its numbers. It brought modern education, modern medicine, women's education, indigenous language romanization, the Pe̍h-ōe-jī movement, human rights discourse — none of these are main-hall matters, they are the infrastructure of the whole society. A religion's influence lies not in how many worship its god, but in how many things it did that this society originally lacked.

Hsing Tian Kong Removes Incense Burners: When Piety Meets PM2.5

At 3 a.m. on August 26, 2014, Hsing Tian Kong dispatched workers to remove the two large incense burners and fifteen offering tables from the main hall³⁵. Taiwan's first major temple with six million annual visitors — enshrining Guansheng Dijun — announced an incense ban. The largest temple reform in half a century³⁶.

The decision's background: the Environmental Protection Administration estimated 90,000–220,000 metric tons of ghost money burned annually (Source B writes 240,000 metric tons); PM2.5 around temples reached 45 micrograms per cubic meter, three times the national standard³⁷. Dharma Drum Mountain went further: directly replacing ghost money burning with large-screen videos of burning³⁸.

But reactions were polarized³⁹. Traditionalists argued "no incense means no efficacy," "gods can't smell incense so how do they know you're worshipping." Younger devotees and environmentalists felt "finally someone changed it." The numbers a year later were interesting: Hsing Tian Kong's visitor numbers did not decline, they rose — more families bringing children, more non-smoking young people, more allergy-prone middle-aged and elderly.

This incident exposed a fundamental issue: religious ritual's form and substance can be separated. Incense is not religion itself, it is religion's physical manifestation. The manifestation can change, the god remains. Once everyone accepts this, space opens for temple reform.

Divination Poems, Temple Management Committees, and an Island's Democratic Practice

Finally, two things relatively few people notice.

First is divination poems. Taiwan's temple divination poem system is actually one of the world's earliest "free psychological counseling systems." A heartbroken youth, an unemployed middle-aged person, a sick elder can enter a temple, shake the cylinder, draw a four-line poem, and chat with a volunteer interpreter. The poem itself may be ambiguous, but the interpretation process is listening, being listened to, being advised. No registration fee, no appointment⁴⁰.

The second is the temple management committee. Taiwan's temple management committee system—one person, one vote to elect the chairperson, vice chairperson, and secretary-general—is actually a grassroots democratic practice that existed in Qing-era Taiwan⁴¹. Earlier than parliaments, earlier than political parties, earlier than household registration systems. A small temple might manage tens of millions in incense money, a piece of land, a group of devotees—all of these must operate through democratic mechanisms. Of course, this also means temple politics can be very dark—factional struggles, vote-buying, tied to local politics⁴². But it at least leaves one fact: Taiwanese people didn't start voting only in 1996; they learned this centuries ago in that small temple at the alley corner.

From Fear to Freedom

Returning to the contrast at the beginning: the island with the world's highest temple density and Asia's second-highest religious freedom ranking, its two largest faiths' historical origins are both related to plague and death.

The 2025 Freedom House Global Freedom Report ranks Taiwan second in Asia (only behind Japan) with 94 points⁴³. This ranking includes religious freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and other dimensions. Contrasted with three hundred years ago—those military migrants who tied deity statues to ships and gambled their lives crossing the sea—they probably couldn't imagine their descendants would live on such an island: free to believe in any religion, free to believe in no religion, free to worship all three teachings or none at all.

The Bao'an Temple restored by Liao Wu-chih today holds the Baosheng Cultural Festival every year, combining art exhibitions, concerts, and academic lectures⁴⁴. A temple built two hundred years ago by Tong'an immigrants bringing the Baosheng Dadi faith has today become one of Taipei's cultural centers. The deity statues remain, but next to them there's now a jazz band.

This island's history of faith, from the moment seventeenth-century military migrants stepped off their boats, has walked all the way to 2025's incense-ban temples, spiritual environmentalism, Humanistic Buddhism, and Freedom House's second place. There was no break in between; every era added new things on top of the original foundation. Wang Ye transformed from plague gods to peace gods, Mazu from sea goddess to all-powerful goddess, Tudigong from field god to business god. Gods don't die, gods change jobs.

Those seventeenth-century fears of crossing the sea—fear of the Black Ditch, fear of plague, fear of armed clashes, fear of natural disasters—never truly disappeared. They were transformed into fifteen thousand temples, a million people walking nine days in pilgrimage, four major organizations with volunteers worldwide, the Presbyterian Church's persistent human rights declarations, Yiguandao's thirty-four years from underground to legalization.

Fear never disappeared; it just grew into the shape of faith.

And this faith ultimately made the island free.

Further Reading

• Taiwanese Overseas and Diaspora Communities — How Mazu, Wang Ye, and Tudigong Went Overseas Again with Migrants to the World
• Hakka Culture and Language — Yimin Ye Faith Is the Hakka People's Most Unique Religious Practice in Taiwan
• Social Movements During Japanese Rule in Taiwan — How the Colonial Government Controlled Religion, and How Religion Resisted
• The 228 Incident — The Role of the Religious Community (Especially the Presbyterian Church) in Political Transition After the War
• Chiang Wei-shui — Physician Revolutionary, His Dialogue with Religious Leaders of the Same Era
• Taiwanese Sensibility: Do We Need Koreans to Like It First Before We Dare Say Our Old Houses Are Beautiful? — Terrazzo, Iron Window Grilles, These Taiwanese Everyday Aesthetics, One of the Places Most Often Preserved Is Temples

References