Baishatun’s Gong Tian Temple was already packed with pilgrims late afternoon when we arrived. The pilgrimage was due to start at half past midnight. We were waiting in the space between the main altar and the stationary palanquin in which Matsu would soon set off for Beigang.
An hour’s wait. Then, pilgrims poured over to see her newly seated in the sedan chair. Some prayed, some snapped away. Suddenly, the bearers hoisted the palanquin on their shoulders, and we were thrust through the main temple entrance, carried on an eager pilgrim wave behind the moving palanquin, out into the cold night air, our senses bombarded by firecrackers and cheers and palpable excitement and the rows of red lanterns lining the length of the temple approach.
Unlike other Matsu pilgrimages in Taiwan, Baishatun has no fixed route. Matsu herself decides the direction she will take at intersections, whom she will visit and where she will stay. This year, the Baishatun Matsu pilgrimage covered 200km in 11 days, from Baishatun to Chaotian Temple in Beigang. The pilgrimage started over 200 years ago, with perhaps 20 pilgrims. This year there were 15,000.
There are no historical documents that explain why the Baishatun Matsu made the pilgrimage to Chaotian Temple of all the other Matsu temples in Taiwan, or whether Baishatun was a “branch temple” of Chaotian Temple.
On the temple director’s office wall is an official Japanese colonial period Bureau of Transport and Communication map of Taiwan from 1929. It showed only major cities, but also the small town of Beigang, with the Matsu temple marked. It was called “the island’s most important (or perhaps first) Matsu temple” (本島第一的媽祖廟).
There are also photos of early Japanese colonial period inscribed biane plaques. Some say that during the Japanese Kominka Movement (皇民化運動) to assimilate Taiwanese to Japanese ways, local deity statues — alien to Japanese religious beliefs — were burned. Chaotian Temple had a biane presented by the Japanese governor of the time, indicating that it was officially recognized as an important temple, and largely untouched by the Kominka policy. At this time, apparently, the Baishatun Matsu statue was temporarily housed in Chaotian Temple.
The photos here were taken in Gong Tian Temple on the first day, and then in Chaotian Temple on the day of the pilgrimage’s arrival. Not all of the activities pictured are related to the pilgrimage itself. Various ceremonies were being carried out on behalf of other groups on the day the pilgrims arrived.
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