At the end of a hanging lantern, a multi-armed Goddess of Mercy was enshrined
After landing at Taoyuan Airport, I quickly moved to the Taiwan High Speed Rail station and headed south. The island of Taiwan is slightly smaller than Kyushu Island. If I took the THSR from Taoyuan, it would only take about one and a half hours to Kaohsiung, the central city in the south. Kaohsiung, the third largest city in Taiwan, was much closer than I had expected.
Like Taipei and Tainan, which I have visited, Kaohsiung has many temples in the city. Unlike in Japan, many temples do not have a shrine grove or a long approach, and they stand in the city center mixed with other buildings. When strolling in Kaohsiung, one unexpectedly stumbles upon a temple. Such was the case with the Wanxing Temple that I visited on this occasion. I had no intention of visiting this temple, but I happened to pass by it.
In Taiwan, it is often difficult to tell whether a temple is a Taoist temple or a Buddhist temple (even the locals don't seem to pay much attention). I wondered which one this Wanxing Temple was, so I looked it up and found that the main deity was Qingshui. This is a deity unfamiliar to us in Japan. Qingshui was a Zen monk in the Northern Song Dynasty who became the object of folk belief as the person who brought rain to a drought-stricken town. It is a Taoist temple. With this in mind, I went up the stairs and found Cundi (Goddess of Mercy) with many hands enshrined there. This is a Buddhist Bodhisattva. As I thought, temples in Taiwan are very deep.
| Aug 2024 STILL LIFE TAIWAN | |
| ALTAR BUDDHA STATUE KAOSHIUNG LANTERN TEMPLE |
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PHOTO DATA
No
12632
Shooting Date
Mar 2024
Posted On
August 17, 2024
Modified On
August 18, 2024
Place
Kaoshiung, Taiwan
Genre
Still Life Photography
Camera
SONY ALPHA 7R V
Lens
ZEISS BATIS 2/40 CF
