Beigang Chaotian Temple

In 1694, the 33rd year of the Qing Kangxi reign, the Chan monk Shubi carried a Mazu statue across the sea from the Chaotian Pavilion on Meizhou and built a temple for it in Beigang. So began one of the oldest Mazu temples in Taiwan. During the Qing dynasty, Chaotian Temple repeatedly received imperial titles and plaques bestowed by the court, which raised it to great prominence. Over the centuries the temple was restored and expanded again and again, its cut-porcelain and koji pottery decoration growing ever more exquisite, until it became a national historic monument. Every year from the fifteenth day of the first lunar month through the third month, Mazu temples from all over Taiwan come here on pilgrimage, and the town is wrapped in incense smoke and the roar of drums and gongs. Then there is the 'palanquin bombing,' in which devotees set off huge quantities of firecrackers beneath the deity palanquins, one of the fiercest and most spectacular temple-festival scenes anywhere in Taiwan.