Temple of prosperity! Why religious sites in Taiwan have become unlikely places of celebration | Club culture

WWhen Andrew Dawson brought a sound system to Bujie Temple in Tainan, Taiwan, to celebrate the Lunar New Year, his gods were watching. Behind the stack of plywood speakers is a circular plaque of Caixin, the Chinese god of prosperity. Close to the Dubbing and Reggae Street party, families burn long incense sticks to the site’s patron religious figure, the thousand-year-old Chifu Wangi, a prince who died sampling well water poisoned by the plague gods to save his villagers.

To some, celebrating at such a religious site may seem sacrilegious, or at least insensitive. But Dawson has been doing just that for three years with his Temple Meltdown concert series, inspired by religious sites and their role as vibrant centers of civic life: for him, incorporating underground music into these places seemed like a natural next step. “Every temple in Taiwan is very different because each of their founders has a unique vision or dream,” says Dawson, who is half-American, half-Taiwanese and also known as 陳宣宇, or Chen Chuan-yu. “But the interesting thing is that there is always an outdoor courtyard area where people can gather, cook and hang out with their friends.” The scene is no different at his Lunar New Year party, where people sway, smoke and feed each other skewers of Taiwanese fried chicken on the dance floor.

Such scenes can only be achieved with difficulty in Taiwan, which spent four decades under martial law until 1987. Citizens were subjected to surveillance, curfews, and bans on public cultural events and dance halls, enacted by the previous ruling Kuomintang government. Even after the military rule was lifted, some human rights journals continued to report that “dances in the streets are forbidden” due to updated national security laws with “a large number of restrictions on freedom of assembly and association, and on political rights.” Thereafter, social conservatism remained strong, buoyed by sensationalist headlines about recreational drug use at parties in the early 2000s, and frequent police raids of nightlife establishments continued.

But in temples, “there’s a lot of diversity and creativity, and there aren’t specific roles you have to follow,” says Dawson, who returned to his mother’s hometown to participate in the Buji Lantern Festival at today’s event. There are plenty of other potential places besides: Taiwan has more temples per capita than any other country, and Tainan itself boasts one of the highest densities of temples in the world, where Buddhist, Taoist, and traditional folk customs are so closely fused together that their rituals and architecture are almost indistinguishable.

Archie Tsai, a Tainan local who supplies the speaker stacks, shows me a photo of the handcrafted Formosa sound system in front of the distinctive red slit cornices of a different temple. “What Andrew does is so special because you can only see it here [in Taiwan]”He says to me in a mix of Mandarin Chinese and English. Unlike many religious sites in the West, temples are often left unattended and face the street with their doors wide open, making acts of worship spontaneous, accessible, and deeply connected to everyday life. “When I grew up, that’s exactly what we do. On holidays, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, or New Year, if you want to do well on exams, or when you have a bad day, you should stop and bye bye, Or respect you.”

Cai’s sound system project was sparked by a trip to the Outlook Festival in Croatia in 2014. Before that, Cai had never heard such low-frequency sounds, and suddenly “I became addicted.” When he returned home, Tsai spent years enthusiastically teaching himself about his constructions through YouTube and quirky Internet forums before mustering the courage to create his first subwoofer with the help of his friends Ah Tsui, a woodworker, and Ah Siong, an audio professional. The resulting system is a powerful four-way set with heavy-duty sub-bass, perfect for reggae, dub and bass. It took nearly NT$2 million (£47,000) to build, the equivalent of about seven years of significant contributions from his own salary.

Tsai and Dawson are among those actively working to shift public opinion about social decorum. “In the history of Taiwan, people believed that if you drank alcohol, if you partied, people thought you were immoral and you would be unemployed,” Tsai says. “But we are working to change that kind of mentality from the older generation.”

There is reason to trust. Tainan is known as the Phoenix City due to its geographic shape and its continued prosperity and reinvention under the former Dutch and Japanese colonial forces. The Buji Temple was built at the heart of a network of streets as a feng shui tactic to prevent the blossoming phoenix from flying away. In a location of such legendary significance, Taiwan’s MRT welcomes the new year with the greatest of blessings. “This is our religion, this is our culture,” Tsai says. “So doing this musical event, in front of the temple, is very close to our lives. I love it.”