Taiwan Today

In Taiwan, the numerous temples around the country are not only places of worship, but also public spaces for community gatherings. In the history of the island’s inhabitation by Han people, temples were usually among the first facilities that early immigrants from mainland China set up, as the tough life experienced in the new settlements led to a great need for divine blessings. A notable example is Dalongdong Baoan Temple in today’s western Taipei, which has seen a revival of sorts in the past decade following the completion of an extensive restoration project.

Located near the junction of the Keelung and Tamsui rivers, the Dalongdong area derived its name from the Pourompon tribe of the indigenous Ketagalan people. The community was the second earliest development by Han Chinese settlers in the Taipei basin after the Wanhua District in southwest Taipei. In the mid-18th century, mainland Chinese immigrants brought statues of Baosheng, or the God of Medicine, from their hometowns in southern Fujian province across the Taiwan Strait to a simple wooden structure at Dalongdong called Baoan Temple. As the area developed into a center of commercial and cultural activity, more elaborate structures emerged enshrining the venerated Taoist god, with the present temple beginning to take shape in an 1805 reconstruction program, which was followed by more repair and renovation efforts over the years.

Restored to Glory

In 2002, a seven-year restoration project of Baoan Temple, on a scale unseen in the previous eight decades, was completed and has since won praise at home, including awards from the Ministry of the Interior and Taipei City Government, as well as abroad. In 2003, the restored Baoan Temple was recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization when it gained an “honorable mention” in the UN organization’s Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, one of nine award winners from a total of 22 project entries. The award was established in 2000 to recognize achievements in conserving or restoring historical structures, places or properties of more than 50 years old in the region through private or public-private initiatives. Judges on the UN award panel described the Baoan project as “a major technical accomplishment” that features “comprehensive conservation of the structure’s religious and architectural significance.” The project was also praised for having taken a “balanced approach between using modern scientific conservation methods and traditional architectural and decorative crafts in order to recover as much of the historic building fabric as possible.” By falling in line with the global trend of preserving cultural heritage, Baoan Temple has helped expand Taiwan’s presence in the international community and has also provided a model of exemplary conservation work for similar projects in the future.

Baoan Temple was designated a historical structure in 1985 and is now classified as a “monument managed by a special municipality” (in this case Taipei City Government) according to the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, which was extensively revised in 2005 to detail regulations for the nation’s historical sites. As of March this year, Taiwan had designated 767 monuments, which are listed under one of three categories depending on whether they are overseen by the central, local or special municipality government. In addition, there are 1,075 heritage buildings under the jurisdiction of local governments.

The standard procedure for preservation work is for the site’s administrators to seek government assistance. The relevant public agency first nominates particular architects and academics to investigate any damage and draw up a detailed blueprint for repair work. The agency then arranges a budget and public tender to appoint a contractor to carry out the work. More often than not, however, the government-dominated process leads to inefficient or unprofessional results, according to Liao Wu-jyh (廖武治), president of the Taipei Baoan Temple Foundation. This might be due to a superficial investigation of a structure’s condition, for example, or because the strict rules on public funding make it difficult to handle the unexpected problems that often arise during repair work, he says. Liao was the foundation’s vice president when he oversaw the restoration project from its beginning in 1995.

In order to retain full control of the restoration process, Liao decided to forgo funding from the public sector, which usually offers half of the total budget, and rely solely on the temple’s own funds. The eventual expenditure reached around NT$260 million (US$8.7 million). The move avoided the risk of poor quality work, a situation that can result if a successful bidder opts for the least expensive ways to complete a project. “We know and care more about the temple than contractors,” Liao says. “We needed the best traditional craftsmanship and modern technology.” The latter was applied to protect the building against termites and wood rot, among other things. “In the past, decay was detected by hammering or visual surveys, but now ultrasonic detection is available,” Liao says. “Old wood was injected with pesticide while new timber was soaked in it.”

Water pipes and electrical wiring were installed underground, as were new air conditioning and fire alarm systems so as to preserve the traditional aesthetic of the compound. Liao also points to other major features of the restoration effort such as the removal of a big canopy erected some decades ago in front of the main hall, as well as the installation of a lighting system to spotlight the temple at night.

Original Process

With respect to traditional details such as wood and stone carvings, clay figures, ceramics and painted panels, the main goal was to bring decorative elements back to their original state as much as possible. For example, the frescoes in the temple’s main hall were cleaned and restored by a team of conservationists from Australia instead of being recolored or even replaced, as is done in some temples. Most of the other craftsmen employed during the project were from Taiwan as traditional-style temples are still built or renovated throughout the country, so the skills have been retained to some degree. “Except for stone carvers, many of whom have moved to mainland China, craftsmen in other areas such as wood and clay sculpting can still be found here in Taiwan,” Liao notes. The specialists worked closely with Liao and the temple’s management committee to identify original structures and the techniques used to create them, with every effort made to restore original details throughout the temple. The direct communication between the temple and craftsmen, absent third-party contractors, was a move back to earlier cooperation models. “[Originally, temples] used to see close coordination among administrators, craftsmen and feng shui masters,” says Liao, who hired individual craftsmen and then supervised their work directly.

“In the [recent] past, the repair work was mostly done by experienced architecture specialists,” Wang Huey-jiun (王惠君), a professor in the Department of Architecture at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) in Taipei, writes in the preface to a book on the Baoan restoration project published in 2009. Wang led a team of students from the university to handle surveying and mapping for the project. “In the case of the Baoan restoration, the solution to various problems such as the choice of wood and termite control measures required cooperation among specialists from different fields. Meanwhile, it took not only experience, but also mutual trust between the site owner and craftsmen to achieve the best results from traditional techniques of wood carving and pottery making. Such craftsmanship can really be learned and passed on only at a repair site.”

“For me and the graduate students and assistants who participated in this project, it was a painstaking job since we faced a huge amount of very complicated data, but it also offered a rare opportunity for us to grasp all the details of restoration work,” Wang writes. “We came to see the problems for restoration of traditional architecture and held discussions with temple management and experts from various fields to decide on the best methods of restoration. During the restoration process and after the work was completed, people involved in restoration at other temples also came [to Baoan] and joined the discussion, making it a significant model for local restoration work.”

In addition to efforts to restore the temple’s physical structure, Liao envisions a revival of its traditional social role. “While members of the local gentry were usually responsible for the administration of Taiwan’s temples in the past, there’s a lot of involvement by local politicians now,” Liao says. “Actually a temple can function much more positively for the public interest.” For example, in 2009 when devastating Typhoon Morakot landed in southern Taiwan, cutting traffic and communication with the outside world in many places, local temples were among the first to relay messages for television broadcast, he says. Liao currently serves as the head of an association of 183 temples around Taiwan dedicated to Baosheng. Established in 1989, the group was reorganized in 2007 to take on educational, cultural and charity work by “drawing on years of experience from the transformation of Dalongdong Baoan Temple,” Liao said at the time the new group was formed.

In the mid-1990s, the temple started to expand its annual festival for the birthday of the main deity, which is celebrated on the 15th day of the third month on the lunar calendar. Since 2000, the temple’s Baosheng Cultural Festival has included a series of religious, cultural and artistic activities aimed at developing the temple into a “community cultural center” and fostering an “urban” type of temple festival, as Liao puts it. In addition to traditional religious rituals and parades by performance troupes, this year’s event comprised dramatic shows, painting contests and exhibitions, guided tours of heritage buildings, choral performances and forums on religion. Moreover, representatives from other Baosheng temples throughout southeast Asia including Hong Kong, mainland China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore have taken part in the festival. “One belief can be shown differently in different cultures,” Liao says. “Our Taiwanese expression of religious art has great tourism potential and also diplomatic significance.”

The Art of Leadership

If the restoration of Dalongdong Baoan Temple represents a new model for conservation projects in Taiwan, Liao Wu-jyh, who oversaw the work, has been credited as a new kind of leader.

“The biggest difference between the Baoan project and other monument repair projects is temple administrator Liao’s leadership,” NTUST’s Wang says. “This new, highly experimental approach turned out to be a move back to the traditional temple construction model of cooperation between the site owner and craftsmen. We believe that this approach presented a direction and concrete methodology that other local monument restoration projects can learn from in the future.”

In fact, Liao is unique among Taiwan’s temple operators for a number of reasons. The Baoan temple, with its educational facilities including a library and regular classes on religious, historical, cultural and artistic subjects, works quite like a local learning center or community college. Liao offers instruction at the temple and also teaches part time in the Department of Architecture Art Conservation at National Taiwan University of Arts in New Taipei City. Moreover, he is an oil painter, and believes that there is a natural link between religion and art. “Religious beliefs have always been expressed in architecture, music, painting and sculpture,” he says, “and have also inspired many artists to produce masterpieces.”

In 1960, at the age of 18, Liao started to learn painting from Chang Wan-chuan (張萬傳, 1909–2003), who received art training in Japan like many of Taiwan’s first Western-style painters during Japan’s colonial rule (1895–1945) of the island. Liao entered today’s National Taiwan University of Arts in 1966, where he continued his study of Western painting. In February this year, Liao exhibited his paintings, mostly in an impressionist style, including images of Baoan Temple. In a review of the solo show in Taipei, Li Chien-lang (李乾朗), a part-time professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, praised the artist’s powerful brush strokes and subtle use of sharp, warm colors in depicting historical buildings. “After all, an admirer of old temples and monuments would develop a keener sight for color layers on a wall,” Li notes. “Liao’s oil painting accurately reflects the solid visual beauty of local and Western architecture.”

—Pat Gao

Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw