Temple festival performers in Taiwan

Temple festivals are among the liveliest events in Taiwanese life. On a deity's birthday or during a pilgrimage, a temple may send out a procession with drums, firecrackers, palanquins carrying the deity's statue and troupes of performers who escort it through the streets.

Some of the most striking of these performers wear painted faces and elaborate costumes. The makeup and headdresses are not decoration for its own sake: they mark the performers as guardians or attendants of the gods, and for the length of the procession they act in that role. The first photograph shows performers like this at a temple festival, faces painted in bold patterns, headdresses heavy with ornament.

The rest of the gallery shows the setting these processions move through. Rows of red lanterns strung overhead in Kaohsiung; carved and gilded eaves; a colourful dragon on a temple roof, one of the many figures that crowd the ridges of Taiwanese temples. Inside, flowers and offerings are laid in front of the altar.

Together they give a sense of how much colour is packed into these occasions, and how closely the performers belong to the temples they serve.

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Photos: travelmonkeytaiwan, aiworldexplore, stevenstung, tillahrens, viarami on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.