At the end of a hanging lantern, a multi-armed Goddess of Mercy was enshrined

Cundi in Wanxing Temple
Cundi in Wanxing Temple
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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.

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Aug 2024 STILL LIFE TAIWAN

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

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