Tamsui Qingshui Temple

Tamsui Qingshui Temple was built in 1937, the 12th year of the Showa era under Japanese rule, which makes it a latecomer among Taiwan's Zushi temples. But the deity it enshrines, known as Penglai Laozu, has a much longer history in Tamsui than the building does. The legend of the nose falling off as a warning was already going around the neighborhood before there was any temple, and believers took turns enshrining the image in their homes until the temple was finished and gave it a permanent home. Because the faith came first and the temple second, Qingshui Temple is bound especially tightly to the streets of Tamsui: nobody built a temple and then waited for worshippers to come. A community believed for decades, and then built the temple together. Today it stands alongside the Zushi temples of Manka, Sanxia, and Ruifang as one of greater Taipei's four great Zushi temples.