Longshan Temple

Today was a national holiday, celebrating the Moon Festival. The Moon Festival is a day where families celebrate togetherness and people have barbecues and eat mooncakes (cakes with a salted egg yolk cooked inside-it sounds a little weird, but we got given one at school which also had pineapple in it and it was surprisingly tasty!) People also worship the Moon Goddess, Chang'e (you can read about the story of Chang'e online-we did a skit for the kids at school for this during assembly on Friday). 

The Moon Festival is typically a more intimate holiday and not widely celebrated publicly. However, I read that many people go to pray at temples and bring offerings and burn incense, so I thought I'd check out Longshan Temple, which is arguably the most famous in Taipei. It was originally built in 1739, but the temple has had to be rebuilt numerous times because of bombings, earthquakes and fires. The temple itself is dedicated to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy but also has dedications for other Buddhist Deities as well as Taoist deities inside and is shared by both religions.

I got a little snap-happy, but there really was a lot to look at!

The front of the temple

Inside the temple itself.

The roof was decorated with loads of ornately carved dragons, animals and people.

The temple was filled with people carrying around incense and walking around bowing to the various depictions of deities. About ten minutes into my visit, everyone also broke out into song and this, along with the smell of incense, flowers and fruits which filled the temple really gave the whole place an amazing atmosphere!

People brought flowers, fruits and cakes as offerings to leave at the temple. The big green fruits are pomellos which are typically associated with the moon festival.

People brought flowers, fruits and cakes as offerings to leave at the temple. The big green fruits are pomellos which are typically associated with the moon festival.

At the front there were fountains filled with koi and covered in greenery.

This depicts the Fool Holding Up the Sky. Apparently the 'fool' is meant to represent the Dutch settlers who occupied the island in the 1700s.

At the back of the temple, there were lots of chambers which had statues of gods, where people would go with their incense sticks to pay their respects. I couldn't get a great look at these and didn't want to linger too long trying to get a picture since the temple was pretty busy and I didn't want to disturb the people worshipping, but here's one I managed to take.

I took a video as well to capture the singing, but it won't let me upload it at the moment! Hopefully I'll get it up at some point...

Happy Moon Festival!