Temple Festival

Temple festivals are transmitted from generation to generation in accordance with people's everyday life, emotions, and beliefs. In addition, they are the customs with Taiwan's idiosyncrasy shaped by the regional or environmental changes to become the folklore saturated with regional characters. From northern to southern Taiwan, temple fairs are held ceaselessly elsewhere, playing a significant role in historical inheritance and people's spiritual life. In Taiwan, there are temples and religious rituals everywhere, such as the birthday of the gods or Buddha, the ceremonies of Taoist festivals, or the request for peace and prosperity, in which vivid temple fairs will be held. Meanwhile, "Wangyeh " and Matsu are the most common gods in folk belief in Taiwan. The rituals of worshipping these gods differ in accordance to the differences in the background, the Origin of the gods, or the people's hometowns, etc, demonstrating the characters of finding consensus among differences and making differences among sameness. The major events are the invitation of the gods, the inspection tour, prayer for blessing, feast for the gods, temple parades, array pageant, passing over fire , burning the king boat, etc.

Worth mentioning, in addition to the functions of knowledge, art, and entertainment, these prolific temple fairs also posses the purposes of instructing and consolidating the people, and protecting the hometown and the people. In addition, it also helps the temple fairs develop towards the direction of folk drama and traditional performing arts. From the temple fairs, we can see the diverse characters of Taiwanese beliefs, art, and humanity, communicating the values of Taiwan's folk religion loyally.

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