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Of every Mazu temple in the world, only this one has — just a few steps before the shrine in the main hall — the 'spirit cave' where Mazu's own body is said to lie. Matsu Tianhou Temple stands beside Matsu Harbor in Nangan, facing the open sea, the single most important center of faith in the Matsu Islands, dedicated to Mazu (the Empress of Heaven). Legend tells that when Mazu's father and brother failed to return from a fishing voyage, Lin Moniang threw herself into the sea to save her father and drowned; her body drifted to the Magang inlet of Nangan, and the villagers, moved by her filial love, buried her there and raised a temple over the spot. Even the name of the Matsu archipelago comes from 'Mazu' — as early as 1894 a British naval chart marked this island as 'Matsu,' the earliest documentary appearance of the name. The annual 'Mazu Ascension Festival' on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month is the grandest religious celebration in Matsu.

History

The exact founding date is lost, but the story of this land runs very deep. People were living around the Matsu inlet of Nangan as far back as the Song dynasty — Song-era ceramic shards have been unearthed here — and the old gazetteer 'Sanshan Zhi' called Nangan 'Shanggantang,' a name changed to Nangantang only in Ming and Qing times. The temple has been rebuilt many times; among the documented records are Zhang Yizhou's 1943 'Account of the Rebuilding of the Matsu Island Tianhou Temple' and an inscription by General Peng Qichao in 1963. In 2001 the old temple was pulled down and rebuilt, with designers from the Puxian region brought in to raise a palace-style temple modeled on the Meizhou Mazu ancestral temple — the grand form it holds today.

Matsu Tianhou Temple

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