Taiwan's Yuelao Map: Before Looking for a Partner, Choose the Temple First, Because This Island Hosts at Least Ten Yuelao with Different Specialties

Seven o'clock in the evening, Dihua Street in Dadaocheng. In front of Xiahai City God Temple, the line bends into the alley. Most of those waiting are women aged 25 to 35; some hold wedding candy, while others are memorizing the partner criteria written on red slips of paper.¹

That same evening, beside Chihkan Tower in Tainan, at the Official God of War Temple. A man stands before the Cane-Holding Yuelao asking to “cut off unwanted romances” — among Tainan's Four Great Yuelao, the Cane-Holding Yuelao is specifically responsible for cases of romantic infidelity.²

Again that same evening, on the eighth floor of No. 50, Jing'an Road, Zhonghe, New Taipei, at Weiming Temple. A gay male couple burns incense before the Rabbit God, because this is one of the few temples in the world explicitly devoted to same-sex relationships, from its founding in 2006 to the present.³

Three people worshipping “Yuelao” at the same time. Three deities. Three completely different sets of rules.

30-second overview: When Taiwanese people say “worshipping Yuelao,” they are talking about a plural concept. In Tainan alone, the so-called “Four Great Yuelao of Fucheng” divide the work among praying for a match, seeking stability, cutting off unwanted romances, and asking for reconciliation; northern Taiwan has Dadaocheng Xiahai, Songshan Xiahai (two temples with the same name but different identities), Monga Longshan Temple, and New Taipei's Weiming Temple Rabbit God for same-sex relationships; central and southern Taiwan have Taichung's Lecheng Temple, Lukang Tianhou Temple, and Kaohsiung's Guandi Temple; eastern Taiwan has Hualien Sheng'an Temple and Taitung Tianhou Temple. Each has its own “area of expertise.” Believers are taught to write their partner criteria in as much detail as possible, because if they leave blanks, Yuelao will have loopholes to exploit. From the red-thread design in the Tang dynasty story “The Betrothal Inn” to today's customized spec sheet, this belief system has quietly become a matchmaking outsourcing contract over more than a thousand years.

Yuelao Is Not One Person: From Tang-Dynasty Red Threads to Taiwan's Division of Labor

The name “Old Man Under the Moon” first appeared in Li Fuyan's Tang-dynasty Xu Xuanguai Lu, in the story “The Betrothal Inn.”⁴ In the story, Wei Gu meets an old man at an inn south of Songcheng. By moonlight, the old man reads a book recording all marriages under heaven; the red cords in his cloth bag are used to tie together the feet of fated men and women. The old man tells Wei Gu that his future wife is a three-year-old girl in the arms of a blind vegetable seller in the market. Wei Gu refuses to accept this and sends someone to kill her, but the attempt fails and only leaves a cut between the girl's eyebrows. Fourteen years later, Wei Gu marries the daughter of the governor of Xiangzhou; his wife often wears a decorative patch between her brows to cover a scar.

This narrative prototype gave Yuelao several fixed symbols: red thread, marriage register, moonlight, and an unchangeable spouse. The setting from before the twelfth century remains today, but in Taiwan believers have already found ways around the premise of “unchangeability.”

The way around it is division of labor. One island hosts more than ten Yuelao, each specializing in different areas from north to east. Believers choose the temple first, which is effectively choosing the question first. Those seeking a new relationship, a stable relationship, reconciliation, the cutting off of unwanted romances, or same-sex affinity report to different divine desks. From the outside this looks like superstition; from the structure of belief, it is extremely pragmatic: believers no longer “entrust” themselves to a single deity, but route their needs to the corresponding specialized window.

Four Yuelao Temples in the North, Four Narrative Tempos

Taipei's Dadaocheng Xiahai City God Temple was built in 1859 and is one of Taipei's best-known Yuelao temples.⁵ Yuelao has an independent space inside. Believers report their name, lunar birthday, address, and partner criteria before casting moon blocks to ask for a red thread. The temple's well-known “hundred years of good union” red slips and wedding candy have made Xiahai famous for its “sense of speed” — many believers describe its Yuelao as “efficient,” and bringing wedding candy back when fulfilling a vow is an understood practice.

Taipei's Songshan Xiahai City God Temple is located at No. 439, Section 4, Bade Road, Songshan District. It has the same name as Dadaocheng Xiahai but is a different temple. The principal deity is the City God, with the Old Man Under the Moon as an accompanying deity. The temple is known for its “marriage affinity lanterns,” which can be installed before the Yuelao Hall; believers think lighting one can hasten the arrival of a good match.⁶ Liberty Times once published a feature comparing the two temples, “Two Xiahai City God Temples in Taipei: Very Different for Seeking Wealth and Marriage.” Dadaocheng Xiahai is known for its “hundred years of good union” red slips and wedding candy, while Songshan Xiahai is characterized by its “marriage affinity lantern” ritual and the joint worship of the Five-Way Gods of Wealth. The coexistence of the two Xiahai temples in Taipei City shows how the same divine system can develop localized ritual vocabularies in different administrative districts.

Monga Longshan Temple was founded in 1738, has 290 years of history, and is a national second-grade historic monument. But its Yuelao Hall was not independently added until 2001.⁷ The temple explicitly states: “Please worship the deities in the temple in order. Do not go directly to the Yuelao Hall to ask for a red thread; this is impolite.” At Longshan Temple, praying to Yuelao has a default rule: first worship Guanyin Bodhisattva, then the other deities, and only then go to the Yuelao Hall. To ask for a red thread, one must receive three consecutive affirmative moon-block answers. Any negative or ambiguous answer means “the time has not yet come.”

New Taipei's Zhonghe Weiming Temple Rabbit God Temple was founded by Lu Weiming in 2006 and is one of the few temples in the world explicitly dedicated to same-sex relationships.⁸⁹ The story of the Rabbit God Hu Tianbao was first recorded in Yuan Mei's Qing-dynasty Zi Bu Yu. In the early Qing, Hu Tianbao fell in love with a young imperial censor, was beaten to death, and was later enshrined in the underworld as the Rabbit God, responsible for mutual same-sex affection in the human world. Weiming Temple is on the eighth floor of a building near Jing'an MRT Station. The temple describes its own position this way: “Most religious groups in the world are unfriendly to gay people, making it difficult for gay friends to find religious comfort.” Although the original text concerned only male same-sex love, the temple states explicitly that “regardless of sexual orientation, the Rabbit God is willing to protect,” and lesbians and other LGBT groups are also welcome to worship.

Four temples, four narrative tempos. Dadaocheng Xiahai has the quick tempo of tourist crowds; Songshan Xiahai has the lingering tempo of lantern ritual; Longshan Temple has the slow tempo of ritual order; Weiming Temple has the special tempo of identity politics.

The “Four Great Yuelao of Fucheng” Were Named: In 1933 There Were Originally Five

When worshipping Yuelao in Tainan, nearly every travel guide lists the “Four Great Yuelao of Fucheng”: the Wide-Mouthed Yuelao of Grand Guanyin Pavilion, the Affinity-Powder Yuelao of Grand Mazu Temple, the Cane-Holding Yuelao of the Official God of War Temple, and the Vinegar-Jar Yuelao of Chongqing Temple.¹⁰

But the scholarly basis for this title of “four great” is actually interesting. The Directory of Temples and Shrines in Tainan Prefecture, published in Shōwa 8 (1933) during Japanese rule, recorded the temples in Fucheng that enshrined Yuelao. There were in fact five: Grand Mazu Temple, Taiwan's First Temple of Heaven, Chongqing Temple, Grand Guanyin Pavilion, and Puji Temple. After the war, Professor Ho Pei-fu of National Cheng Kung University stated directly in ROC year 104 (2015) that the title “Four Great Yuelao of Fucheng” had no historical allusion; he himself first wrote and reported on it, and others later attached the title.¹⁰

In other words: the “four great” label now used consistently by tourism bureaus, temples, and travel guides is a circulating version that grew out of a scholar's reported article after 2015. The title itself was named, but the phenomenon of divided specialties is real.

📝 Curator's note: Folk belief is often imagined as “passed down from the ancestors,” but many details are in fact the result of modern selection, naming, and circulation. What makes the “Four Great Yuelao of Fucheng” case interesting is that the person who named it came out in 2015 and said, “There is no historical allusion; I wrote it first.” The history of belief is transparent here. For those who worship, whether or not they know that the “four great” were named does not affect the felt reality of praying for romantic affinity.

Tainan's Four Great Yuelao: Their Respective Areas of Competence

Grand Guanyin Pavilion's Wide-Mouthed Yuelao is responsible for “praying for romantic affinity.” The Yuelao statue has a thick, wide mouth and large, thick ears; the temple explains that this means he “can listen to believers' needs and speak forth good matches.”¹⁰ Believers must first worship the principal deity, cast moon blocks, ask for a marriage thread and affinity powder, and pass them over the incense burner. The temple recommends writing courtship criteria on red paper and placing it before Yuelao.

Grand Mazu Temple's Affinity-Powder Yuelao is responsible for “seeking stability.” Rouge and face powder are placed before Yuelao's altar; the phrase sounds like “affinity powder.” The affinity powder obtained is applied around the eyebrows, the location of the “spouse palace” in face reading. Women apply the affinity powder to the cheeks, while men apply it behind the ears and on the neck, then pass it clockwise over the incense burner three times. Believers think this can enhance romantic luck.¹¹ Grand Mazu Temple is one of Taiwan's earliest Mazu temples. Yuelao is an accompanying deity there, but media reports count the couples matched each year in the “hundreds.”

The Official God of War Temple's Cane-Holding Yuelao is responsible for “cutting off unwanted romances.” The Yuelao at the martial temple has a stern expression and holds a cane, specifically handling “couples or lovers who abandon family and children, are unfaithful in love, begin in disorder and end in abandonment, and are disloyal and difficult to change.”¹⁰ This division of labor is distinctive: it deals with old problems rather than new partners. Unfaithful partners and entangled third parties all fall under the Cane-Holding Yuelao's jurisdiction.

Chongqing Temple's Vinegar-Jar Yuelao is responsible for “seeking reconciliation.” The vinegar jar is a vessel for holding vinegar; believers stir it three times to pray for the return of someone whose heart has changed. The stirring method is clearly divided into two kinds: stir clockwise three times to pray for a hundred years of good union, and counterclockwise three times to pray that the other person will have a change of heart.¹²¹³ The vinegar-jar custom already existed during the Qing Daoguang and Xianfeng reigns. According to a note by Liu Jiamou, the jar was originally placed under the bodhisattva's seat. To recover a relationship, one had to pray sincerely and wind one's own hair around a bamboo stick before stirring. The process has now been simplified, but the physicality of “stirring vinegar” remains.

Four areas of competence, four concrete objects: mouth, affinity powder, cane, and vinegar jar. They are all Yuelao, but before worshipping you have to think clearly: do you want to find someone new, stabilize someone old, cut off a relationship, or return to the original one?

Other Yuelao in Central, Southern, and Eastern Taiwan: History and the Contemporary Side by Side

Taichung's Lecheng Temple was founded in 1753 (the eighteenth year of the Qing Qianlong reign). Its principal deity is Mazu, specifically Hanxi Mazu, and the building is listed as a third-grade historic monument of Taichung City.¹⁴ But its Yuelao Hall was only added after 2005.¹⁵ Although young, it has circulated widely on social platforms such as PTT and Dcard as “effective for reconciliation.” Lecheng Temple Yuelao's contemporary influence has nothing to do with the temple's age and everything to do with social media: a 270-year-old Mazu temple, because of a Yuelao Hall added within the past twenty years, has been repeatedly recommended among young people in the 2020s.

Lukang Tianhou Temple (a Mazu temple) is another example. Its Yuelao was installed in 2007, so this shrine is less than twenty years old, but its “standing Yuelao” is known for tying red threads quickly, and the temple has a marriage-affinity tree where prayer cards can be tied.¹⁵ In this 400-year-old Mazu temple, believers are actually worshipping a Yuelao branch deity established within the past twenty years. The structure of belief itself keeps adding new windows.

Kaohsiung Guandi Temple (Martial Temple) has a distinctive Yuelao worship procedure: when making an oil-money donation, believers receive a marriage petition, Yuelao incense, two red threads, and candy. The process is to worship the deities in order, place the petition and offerings on Yuelao's table, and after ten minutes burn the petition and one red thread, while taking the other home to place under the pillow. One is burned and one is kept; this is the identifying ritual of Kaohsiung Martial Temple's Yuelao.¹⁶

Crossing the Central Mountain Range to the east, the density of Yuelao temples drops sharply. Hualien Sheng'an Temple is located in Ji'an Township and is dedicated principally to the Queen Mother of the West; the Yuelao enshrined there makes it the only temple in Hualien that worships Yuelao.¹⁷ Taitung Tianhou Temple has 120 years of history, is dedicated principally to Mazu, and its Yuelao worship tradition has circulated orally among eastern Taiwan believers. The structure reflected in these two eastern Yuelao temples is consistent with central and southern Taiwan: the principal deity is the Queen Mother of the West or Mazu, and Yuelao is an accompanying deity. But for eastern Taiwan believers seeking romantic affinity, these are their closest options. Crossing the Central Mountain Range to worship Yuelao in Taipei or Tainan is not an everyday choice.

Across these five Yuelao temples in central, southern, and eastern Taiwan, one common structure emerges: the principal deity is not Yuelao, but Yuelao branch halls were added, promoted, amplified by communities in the twenty-first century, and ultimately came almost to stand alongside the principal deity. Yuelao's contemporary expansion has grown from the existing temple infrastructure of Mazu temples, Guandi temples, and Queen Mother temples.

The Criteria Should Be as Detailed as Possible: Believers Fear Yuelao Will Find Loopholes

If there are so many Yuelao, with such finely divided work, how do believers “place an order” with Yuelao once they reach the temple?

The discipline shared by almost all Yuelao temple guides is: write partner criteria in as much detail as possible. Include height, appearance, personality, job, values, religion, and geographic preferences, and avoid vague adjectives such as “a good person”.¹⁸¹ Temples teach believers to write criteria on red paper; some even provide standardized forms with fields for name, birthday, address, and partner criteria.

Why must the criteria be so detailed? On the surface, it is “to help Yuelao find a partner,” but the underlying logic is more direct: if you leave blanks, Yuelao will have loopholes to exploit. If you only write “I hope to meet a good person,” any kind of “good person” might be sent. The term “good person” is too broad; believers have effectively handed interpretive authority to Yuelao. Fixing the criteria in writing is equivalent to excluding possible “bad matches” in advance.

This logic is almost identical to modern consumers placing orders on a platform. The more precise the order, the closer the delivered product is to expectation. The difference is that the order recipient here is a deity, not an algorithm.

📝 Curator's note: The mainstream folk consensus that “criteria should be written as specifically as possible” looks like a taboo directed at Yuelao, but in fact it reflects contemporary believers' lack of confidence in belief itself. The classical premise that “sincerity brings efficacy” assumes that the deity knows what you truly want, and that believers need only send out a pure intention. The contemporary premise that “the more detailed the criteria, the better” assumes that the deity may misjudge or match casually, so believers must lock the specifications in place. In Taiwan in the 2020s, more than a thousand years of red-thread belief has been refitted into a matchmaking spec sheet.

Temple-Hopping Culture: Treating Multiple Yuelao Temples Like a Market

Choosing a temple by area of competence and writing criteria down to the smallest detail is still not enough. There is another layer: “making the rounds of multiple Yuelao temples.”

On social platforms such as PTT and Dcard, there are large numbers of records such as “which Yuelao temples I visited this month” and “I worshipped all over northern Taiwan, central Taiwan, and Tainan's Four Great Yuelao.” Media such as Klook report that some believers even visit multiple temples two or three times a week, treating Yuelao worship as a regular schedule and even adding Yuelao temples to trips to other counties and cities.¹⁹²⁰

Temple-hopping has three layers of logic. The first is “insurance”: worship more deities to raise the probability that romantic affinity will arrive. The second is “risk diversification”: if this Yuelao does not respond, there is still the next one. The third is “testing”: seeing which temple really “responds,” which is equivalent to using actual outcomes to verify retroactively which Yuelao is most suitable for oneself.

Temples generally do not object to temple-hopping; the spirit of polytheistic belief is already that “worshipping many is not taboo.” But the taboo that one may ask for only one red thread imposes a counterlimit on temple-hoppers: you may worship at many temples, but you cannot bring one red thread home from each.¹⁸ Folk explanation says that too many red threads will attract bad romances, but the actual logic is this: the believer's commitment to “which Yuelao I belong to” must be singular.

One may visit many temples, but keep only one red thread. This tension reflects the balance contemporary believers strike between “how widely to worship” and “singular loyalty.”

From Red Thread to Spec Sheet

More than a thousand years ago in the Tang dynasty, when Wei Gu met the Old Man Under the Moon at the inn south of Songcheng, the book recorded “all marriages under heaven,” and the red threads in the cloth bag were used to tie people's feet. In that version, Yuelao possessed all the information and made the sole decision; all humans could do was accept it.

More than a thousand years later in Taiwan, the Yuelao believers worship is not one deity but more than ten, each with a specialty. Believers write the criteria themselves as a spec sheet; if they are dissatisfied with the matching result, they can go to the next temple. It is the same mythic framework of “Yuelao,” but the power relationship inside it has been completely reversed: from deity deciding for humans, to humans placing orders with deities.

This reversal has no single point in time. It was not that in some year a temple announced a reform of Yuelao belief. It is the result of four things layered together: the addition of specialized halls (Longshan Temple's Yuelao Hall in 2001, Lecheng Temple's Yuelao Hall in 2005, Weiming Temple in 2006, Lukang Tianhou Temple in 2007), social-media recommendations, temple-hopping culture, and increasingly detailed criteria.

Will Yuelao belief continue to split into more specialties in the next decade? Weiming Temple opened a dedicated window for gay people in 2006. Will there next be a “transnational-marriage Yuelao,” a “divorce-and-remarriage Yuelao,” or an “unmarried-partner Yuelao”? The more precise believers' matchmaking demands become, the more deities there may be.

The other end of that red thread, tied from the Tang dynasty to the twenty-first century, is now bound not only to people's feet, but also to a list of conditions that looks increasingly like a contract.

References

Further Reading

• Same-Sex Marriage and Gender Equality in Taiwan — The broader social context of Weiming Temple's Rabbit God as one of the world's few LGBT-dedicated temples
• Taiwan's Volunteer Culture and Civic Engagement — The intertwining of folk belief and community culture