Tudi Gong

Well, I thought this was waaaaay too long for the blog, so I decided I'd just email it to my parents. Parents enjoy things like this... long detailed accounts from their children. They said "this isn't too long for your blog! It's interesting!" So, on the chance somebody else has the attention span my devoted parents have, I'm copying it here. Most of the things described are better illustrated in the slide show...

Tudi Gong

On Sunday evening, the first day of Chinese New Year, Fiona’s cousin calls and says she is going to stop by for a visit. We have just finished our dinner and Joe is preparing tea, so we sit down to share several rounds when she arrives.

She is wearing new clothes as dictated by Chinese New Year tradition and has on a brilliant red scarf. Red is a color associated with prosperity. “I’m wearing this for good luck,” she says indicating the scarf, “I need more money.”

Cousin produces a red envelope from her purse to show Fiona. It is decorated with gold script and illustrations of a deity and contains NT$600 (about twenty US dollars). She says something to Fiona in Taiwanese, and Fiona translates. “She wants to get her car cleaned, but her car is bigger than mine so it will be very expensive,” she says, laughing, “so she borrowed this money from Tudi Gong.” “Who is Tudi Gong?” I ask. Tudi, Fiona replies, is a god.

“Tu” means ground or land, and “Di” means earth. Temples for Tudi exist in small towns and villages all over the place, and some large towns or cities may even have ten or eleven temples for him. Tudi Gong is associated with wealth, so he’s a popular god to petition for money. One particular temple in the area, Zi Nan Gong (“purple south temple”), is home to a particularly powerful Tudi, and his money is especially lucky. So lucky, in fact, that he loans it to people in financial need so they can attract more wealth.

People who want to borrow money must first petition Tudi Gong for a loan. They visit the temple and explain why they need money. Perhaps they have no job, perhaps they are ill, perhaps they need to buy something expensive. Then, they drop two wooden blocks on the ground which will indicate Tudi’s response (yes, no, or maybe). If the stones answer maybe, you may petition for a smaller amount. If the answer is yes, the guards of the temple will send you away with money in a red envelope.

Money borrowed from Tudi Gong isn’t spent: it’s put somewhere special where the borrower wants money to accumulate. A bank account or safety deposit box would be a good place to keep it. Borrowers are allowed to keep the money for one year. Once the year is up, the money must be returned to Zi Nan Gong, along with extra money as a thanks and offering. Fiona tells us that people typically return twice what they borrowed.

“What happens if you keep the money and never bring it back?” we ask. Well, you never really get tracked down, she says. So many people make offerings and return extra money that there’s never really a shortage for new borrowers. Most borrowers are pretty faithful about making their returns, though. If they don’t return it, I imagine, they’ll never enjoy prosperity again.

This temple is near where Joe and I and Fiona are going to go camping in a few days, and Fiona says we can stop by to see Tudi if we’d like. I tell them that I need money and I want to petition to borrow some, but they remind me that I’ll have to fly back to Taiwan in a year to return it. Ah well, I’ll just get a job instead.

We camp for two days in the hills of Nantou. Nantou is the only county in Taiwan without coastline. Instead, it’s cramped with soaring lush green hills, at least one snowy mountain, and deep river valleys.

On our way home Fiona asks us if we still want to stop at Zi Nan Gong, Tudi’s temple. We certainly do.

I had imagined a modest temple with small, calm crowd of visitors or devotees. Not at all. As we near the temple, traffic cops begin to control the intersections, guiding lines of cars into various parking areas. We creep through the lots until finally finding a spot. We lock up and take off toward the festivities, umbrellas held defensively aloft against the persistent dreary sprinkle.

The parking lots are separated from the temple by several long chutes of vendors hawking everything from fried mushrooms to fresh cabbages to golden hens to plastic-wrapped umbrellas. Eventually we reach the small piazza in front of the temple. It is packed to the gills with swarming people holding umbrellas, golden hens, and other belongings high overhead to escape the chest-level jostling. We pass a statue of a broken-antlered stag standing watch over a recumbent doe. Just beyond we come upon a monstrous hen that appears to be woven of basketry. She is probably a dozen feet tall from base to beak, and her pedestal is another five feet high. The pedestal houses a cylindrical tunnel, about six feet long and just large enough for ducking and tucking people to pass through. A steady stream of visitors enter on one side and pop out on the other, collapsing their umbrellas as they enter and popping them open again as they alight. Passing beneath the hen is good luck, apparently, so we close our umbrellas and join in.


On the other side of the piazza is a stage where several dozen people are milling about watching the crowd. In front of the stage is another huge wicker construction. From what I can make out, this one resembles an enormous boat; the bow and stern rise higher than my head. Joe says it is built in the shape of some old style of currency. In the center of the boat form, an enormous wicker sphere is skewered on an axis from bow to stern. The sphere is spinning so quickly, I assume it must be plugged in somewhere. Judging by the people reaching out their hands to touch the contraption, I assume it is another objet d’ luck. Fiona explains later that the sculpture is “jin yuan bao,” or, more literally, “golden money treasure” – an ancient style of currency.

We observe the spinning sphere with fascination until the people onstage begin throwing candy into the crowd and a minor riot breaks out, somewhat hindered by the roof of shifting and snagging umbrellas. The umbrellas, previously hoisted high to deflect the rain, are suddenly maneuvered upside down to serve as huge candy catchment systems. A woman nearby notices I’m too stunned to partake in the scramble, so she hands me some candy she’s gathered from the ground.

Our next stop is the temple. As we approach, Fiona tells me to notify Tudi Gong before taking any pictures. “What should I tell him?” I ask. “Tell him you are here for entertainment and would like to take some pictures because you are very interested.” She put her hands together and bows toward the temple. “Ok,” I say, and follow her lead. The crowd density increases the nearer we draw, until finally we are forced to collapse our own umbrellas and press together to prevent ourselves from begin carried in opposite directions.

We push through the crowd until we reach a stand selling incense and paper money. Fiona buys a bundle of incense and gives us six sticks each. She directs us to hold it with our thumbs in the back and our fingers in the front. We’ve seen several huge, ornate urn-shaped vessels in front of the temple, each full of some combination of sand, fire, and incense offerings, and we squirm our way toward the nearest one so we can light our incense. The crowd is too dense for Fiona and me to penetrate, but lanky Joe is able to get his arm through the final barrier of people and sets our incense smoking.

From there we surrender ourselves to the swarm thronging toward Tudi.

We are carried across the first roofed patio and, finally, up a step and into sight of golden Tudi residing in the inner temple. The hardcore petitioners fill the final chamber, and we don’t press that far. Instead, we plant ourselves in the teaming crowd near the door, and Fiona tells us how to address Tudi Gong and shows us the proper way to wave our incense before offering three sticks each into a nearby vat of sand. As we stand near the door I heard a distant clacking noise.

“Do you hear that?” Joe asks me, and I nod.

“That sound is coming from the petitioners,” he explains, “they’re dropping their tiles.” I stand on my tip-toes trying to see, but the crowd is too dense.

The air is so thick with incense that I begin to sneeze. Visitors teeter past holding huge fistfuls of incense aloft, billowing trails of smoke in their wake; ashes crumble and fall onto the heads and shoulders below. We carry our remaining incense back outside the temple to leave in another vat of sand. The huge urns are prickling with incense sticks stuck upright in the sand; temple workers hurriedly empty handfuls of incense and douse them in water to make space for the new offerings.


After offering the last of our incense, we go to stand by a side door to the temple where we can look into the small chamber where Tudi Gong regales in gold. This is where visitors can petition Tudi for loans. Each petitioner stands praying to Tudi with hands folded around a pair of red wooden tiles that fit together like opposing sides of a cashew nut. Once a petitioner has made her prayer and petition, she drops the wooden pieces onto the floor. Depending on whether both tiles land face up or face down, a petition is granted or not. If one tile lands up and one tile lands down, the answer is “maybe” and the petitioner might try again for a smaller amount. Once the petitioners have their answers, they pick up their wooden blocks and leave the chamber to go to the “bank.” This is an adjoining building on the other side of the temple. We go for a visit.

The inside and entry to the loan office is so crowded we can’t even approach. Through the barred windows the room appears to resemble an old fashioned bank complete with clerks standing behind little windowed counters. Fiona tells us there are six windows inside. A petitioner approved by Tudi Gong must go up to a window, report the amount of money he’s been approved to borrow, and then surrender his citizen I.D. number before receiving the approved amount of money in a red envelope. The loans are good for one year.



Outside the loan office, we see more people jumbling past with golden hens. The hens are identical and are each encased in a small glass box about the size of a bread toaster. We saw many of these hens earlier in the throng around Tudi but weren’t sure exactly what they represented. Each hen has three golden eggs resting behind her tail feathers and each glass box has a little window in front of the cage hen’s face. We stop a young boy and his mother to ask if we can take a picture of their golden hen. They agree and tell us that they have had their hen for two years. The hens can be purchased from the temple and are taken home for good luck and to attract prosperity. Every year, however, the hens are carried back to the temple where their guardians wash them three times in the incense smoke and show them to Tudi. Then they can go home again, refreshed.


On our way out of the temple, we decide to get some food. The long lines of booths are irresistible. Fiona buys an enormously heavy bag of dried noodles for home, and then we focus on dinner. We start with a bag of freshly sliced guava with plum powder, and then buy a baggie of deep fried mushrooms. Next comes a cardboard box of sweet gooey sweet potato, and then a big bag of roasted chestnuts. Our final acquisitions are three skewered slices of stinky tofu.

Stinky tofu is really, really stinky. I mean, this is stinky stinky stuff. It’s not stinky like dead animal stinky, it’s stinky like live animal stinky. It’s rank. Joe explains to me that stinky tofu is tofu that was busy fermenting until somebody decided to fry it up and put it on skewers and sell it to innocent passersby. Like us. Actually, stinky tofu is a bit of a delicacy and, though I don’t find it especially delicious, it does taste a lot better than it smells. Hours later, my clothes still smelled like stinky tofu.