Visit Yungu Temple

#MarchGoodPlaces2025 Yungu Temple (locally known as Guanyin Temple) is a century-old temple (112 years old) on Feifeng Mountain in Xionglin. It was founded in 1909 (the first year of the Xuantong reign), which was also the Japanese era (the 42nd year of the Meiji era), and its founder was Yang Fulai. Yungu Temple is a Buddhist temple that deifies Guanyin Bodhisattva. It is a famous place for promoting Buddhism and a center of faith for local residents. It suffered a sudden fire in 1982 and has undergone many reconstructions to become what it is today. In the late 19th century, a new religious model that used "Fu Luan (also known as Fu Ji, a ritual of asking questions to the gods through a sand tray and a wooden pen)" to educate the people and change customs was introduced to Taiwan from China. This new folk belief quickly became popular after being introduced to Taiwan, and was combined with the promotion of opium addiction prevention to form the so-called "Jiangbihui Movement." The area where the entire Jiangbihui movement first became popular was Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli, and Feifeng Mountain in Qionglin was one of the core bases of the activity. Believers in Fu Luan in the Hsinchu and Miaoli areas often go to Feifeng Mountain to worship, hoping to predict good or bad luck through the power of the gods. At that time, the Fu Luan and Jiang Pen Society of Feifeng Mountain mainly worshipped two gods, namely Guandi and Guanyin Buddha, and they were also the main deities worshipped in Daiquan Hall and Yungu Temple. Perhaps these two century-old temples also had some connection with the writing and spirit-telling activities of that time. According to statistics from the Taiwan Governor's Office at the time, in the first three quarters of 1901, more than 30,000 people quit opium due to participating in the Jiangbi Society's Fu Luan rituals, and nearly 20,000 of them never smoked opium again since then. This kind of result would have been hard to imagine for the Japanese who were trying to eradicate the opium addiction of the Taiwanese people but felt helpless at the time. 📍Address: No. 18, Xionglin Township, Hsinchu County 307 🕰️Business hours: 06:00–18:00 #March2025