Temple festivals and painted faces in Taiwan

If the quiet side of religion in Taiwan is a bunch of flowers on an altar, the loud side is the temple festival. On a deity's birthday or during a pilgrimage, the god's statue is carried out of the temple and through the streets in a procession, with drums, gongs, firecrackers and crowds following along. For a few hours, the whole neighbourhood becomes part of the temple.

Painted faces

The cover photograph shows one of the most striking elements of these processions: performers with painted faces and ornate headdresses. Troupes such as the Ba Jia Jiang, often translated as the Eight Generals, represent spirit guardians who escort the deity and drive away evil. Their faces are painted in bold patterns and colours, and they move with a slow, heavy, ritual step. Traditionally performers follow rules and taboos while in costume, because in that role they are not simply themselves.

To an outsider the faces can look fierce or theatrical. Within the festival they are protective. The point is to look frightening to whatever might harm the community.

The temple as stage

The rest of the set shows the setting these processions start from. Dragons and figures in bright ceramic crowd temple roofs. Carved and gilded eaves catch the light. Flowers sit on altars, coils of incense burn overhead, and some temples spread across mountain tops with layers of red roofs.

Temple architecture across the region is designed to be busy. Every surface tells a story, and during a festival the noise and colour outside finally match the decoration on the building.

A reflection

Having grown up with village festivals in Vietnam, I find much of Taiwan's temple festival culture both strange and familiar: the drums, the smell of incense, the whole neighbourhood out in the street. What strikes me most is how public it is. Faith here is not only private belief. It is something a neighbourhood does together, loudly, in the street, and that shared effort is part of what holds the community together.

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Photos: travelmonkeytaiwan, tillahrens, stevenstung, viarami, zhong-chong-jun, michoff on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.