Cultural Heritage
Discover Taiwan's traditional temple arts, crafts, and cultural preservation efforts.
Handmade Incense Craft
Dip the bamboo stick in water, coat it in incense powder, and roll it again and again — in that wrapping and rolling lies a mellow fragrance no machine can copy, and a craft passed down in Taiwan for a hundred years.
Temple Jiannian Art
Smash colored porcelain bowls, snip the shards into dragon scales and robe folds, and paste them on one by one along the roof ridge — this is how the most dazzling skyline of a Taiwanese temple is pieced together from fragments.
Temple Restoration
"Repair the old as old" — not to make an old temple gleam like new, but to let its century-old timber, stone carvings, and paintings go on living in the very form they have always had.
Temple Architecture
The two ends of the ridge sweep upward like a swallow's tail — the higher they rise and the deeper they curve, the loftier the temple's standing. Every line of a Taiwanese temple is a language of its own.
Koji Pottery
From the same lump of clay, koji pottery is fired slowly at a low heat of only about 800°C — a temperature just right to draw a jewel-like luster from the glaze, rouge red and emerald blue, each piece a one-of-a-kind work shaped by an artisan's bare hands.
Temple Painting
No matter where you stand, the door god's eyes seem to be looking right at you — this is called "making the gaze come alive," the hardest test a temple painter faces and the skill they are proudest of.
Temple Procession Performance Troupes (Zhentou Culture)
Faces painted in five colors, ritual implements in hand, the Eight Generals clear the way for the gods with a solemn, measured tread — and these seemingly fearsome figures are in fact officials of the underworld's court of judgment, driving off evil and guarding the deity's passage.