Category: Taoist Temple

Taiwan Travel: Art, Ritual & the Everyday (Visiting the Sea Goddess, Part 3 of 3)

12/31/2025

Welcome to the last part of this photo blog series, Taiwan Travel: Art, Ritual & the Everyday. If you are just starting here, I recommend scrolling below & starting at part 1!

And as promised, here is a map roundup of all the places I visited in Taiwan during this trip. I also included some places I visited during my last trip in 2018, but didn't get to visit them again this time. Make sure to check my notes for each location! :)

Nanfang’ao Jin’an Temple

Before the end of my trip, my friends asked me if there was anything else I wanted to do before I left. I asked them if they knew of any temples for the goddess Mazu. They asked how I knew about her, & I told them a good friend of mine told me she always wanted to visit a temple for Mazu & asked if I could go see one during my trip.

So we took a short road trip to the coastal town of Su’ao Township in Yilan County, Taiwan to visit the Nanfang’ao Jin’an Temple. By chance, I happened to be there during an annual event that’s scheduled according to the Lunar calendar, making the timing of my visit feel incredibly lucky.

From what one of my friends explained to me, this event is essentially folks bringing deities from their local temples to come pay their respects to the goddess Mazu, with some of the statues portrayed even being split incarnations from a Mazu incarnate. Usually, followers will take the split incarnation to a temple that offers the main Mazu shrine to pay their respects. Followers believe that the divine spirits live in these statues, but since the statues cannot move themselves physically, their followers will travel with them to visit Mazu.

I couldn't find the exact name of this event. Most of the events I read about online with a similar description say they usually take place in March/April, but this event I experience occurred in November. However, if you are interested in learning more, you can read about the various pilgrimages to Mazu that take place in Taiwan.

Who is Mazu & why is is she so special to the Taiwanese people? Mazu was a historical figure who was devoted to her coastal community & died trying to help save fishermen from a shipwreck. After her passing, she was deified. In Taiwan and across the diaspora, people venerate her as a sea goddess and ask for her protection and guidance, especially for those who live or work by the ocean.

With Su’ao Township home to the third-largest fishing community in Taiwan, it’s only natural that there are places of worship dedicated to Mazu. The Mazu shrines inside the temple were remarkable and really something to experience in person. There were three floors of shrines in total: one floor featuring a massive jade statue of Mazu, and the top floor showcasing a breathtaking golden Mazu.

Here are some photos from the ceremony below. Out of respect, I did not photograph the temple interior since there were people praying, but there are plenty of photos online at the links I provided above!

Images were photographed using my Nikon ZF & 24-70mm lens.

Click on an image below to enlarge. I recommend viewing from a computer for the full experience.

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If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments.

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Walks in San Fernando (Part 5, Ilocanos Norte)

5/2/2025

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Hey all, this is the last week of my Balay da Judge artist residency, as it ends on May 3... This will be one of my last few updates on the work-in-progress I've created for this project, so I hope you enjoy.

While this is more of another side quest & not really related to the residency project, my mom & I paid a visit to Ma-Cho Temple in San Fernando. Ma-Cho Temple is located in the barangay of Ilocanos Norte, where my mom & dad had their first house together. My mom said the temple has been there for many years & it's a place she'd always wanted to go, but never did. She said back in the day supposedly it was never open to the public. Before I leave San Fernando, I wanted to visit this place together with her since she said she'd always wanted to see what it was like. After visiting, my mom also got to show me a bit of Ilocanos Norte.

All photos below are from my Nikon ZF using a Pocket Dispo lens.

View from a computer for the full experience. Click any image to enlarge.

Loved that all the parked cars happened to be red.

Ma-Cho temple was built in San Fernando, La Union in 1978 by Filipino-Chinese devotees. It is the first Taoist temple in the Philippines. Sat on top of a hill & overlooking the China Sea, this temple is located within the middle of the hustle & bustle of San Fernando city life. The temple is filled with gardens, pagodas, sculptures & an interior temple with the most intricate carved ceiling art I've ever seen. While I'm not a follower myself, my interest in culture extends to religion & spirituality, & I love visiting places like these. Last autumn, I recently came back from visiting an epic Taoist temple for the sea goddess Mazu in Taiwan. Naturally, stopping by this type of location would interest me. (I'll eventually share photos from that trip, but it's not a priority at the moment.)

After spending some time at the temple, we went around Ilocanos Norte to find the first house her & my dad lived in together as a couple.

Here, you can see the entrance to the small street leading up to my parents' old house. Since it's not an actual street, there is no street name, but it is off of Ortega Street.

We walked down the small corridor & came across someone staying near the house. The lady told my mom that the original owner (who owned the house when my mom & dad were renting from them) sold the house some time ago & the former owner's nephew is currently the caretaker for the house. My mom explained that she used to live there many years ago with my late dad. She told me she had not been back to that house since the 1970s, & that back in the day it was still dirt roads around there with not as many other houses around.

After we visited her & my dad's first house off of Ortega Street, we went to visit one more house of theirs', which is actually also located just within Tanqui, behind the church at the town plaza in San Fernando.

Located behind this house on Zamora Street, just up the alley on the right (which also has no name) is the last house my mom lived in before immigrating to the United States. She said it is also the house she was living in when she brought my brother home from the hospital. He was born in 1975 & she immigrated to the States in 1980. She lived in this house for about 5 years.

During the photo walk portion of my photography workshop this past weekend, we walked up this street to get to the capital grounds on top of the hill, where students would practice their photography skills & create photos using the prompts in their scavenger hunt list. I made sure to make a little pit stop by this house (just on the road, we didn't go through the alley), where I shared a bit of my family history & why this project is so personal to me.

I also forgot to update you all on which house my mom & dad formerly lived in on Zandueta Street, the street that crosses the library. Here is a photo again (which I already featured in part 2), as well as its placement on the map. You can see that Puón Books/Alfredo F. Tadiar Library is just at the end of the street.

I hate all the political tarps. LOL

On a final [side] note — I'd also like to point out that some of you may have noticed I added something new to this post, which are the interactive maps. Since a lot of my work really is a visual diary of place, I wanted to further help viewers visualise these locations by sharing maps of where they're actually at & what is surrounding them. This inclusion was inspired by the comic series Windmills: Bearings by Filipino komik artist, Josel Nicolas. I recently got to purchase this graphic novel at Puón & read it during breaks from my residency work. An autobiographical graphic novel, I was inspired by Josel's juxtapositions of his unique illustration style with photography & maps, to further give readers an understanding of place. Not only was this an art style I have not yet encountered in comics (although I can't say it's like I've read millions of them), his writing style was poetic, & his narratives on personal traumas & mortality were deeply heavy, yet oddly relatable. I also really appreciated his humor & very generational-specific references ranging from WWF (F, not E, because us millenials grew up during the WWF era still!), to music references like Oasis (my fav!) & Slade, to random illustrations of Gael Garcia Bernal for no real reason (maybe other than the fact that we grew up watching so many of his films in the early 2000s). Anyways, please consider this my modest book review & get your hands on this inspirational graphic novel if you don't already own it! But bear in mind (hehe), it does contain some very heavy topics.

I have one more post before I time out of my residency tomorrow, 3 May! Make sure to keep checking this space, follow me on Instagram or subscribe to my YouTube channel for updates on my posts. All updates on my residency will be tagged under Balay da Judge.

If you've read this far, thank you! Please feel free to share your thoughts or any questions in the comments.

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Taiwan Travel: Art, Ritual & the Everyday (Visiting the Sea Goddess, Part 3 of 3)

Nanfang’ao Jin’an Temple

Walks in San Fernando (Part 5, Ilocanos Norte)

NICA AQUINO

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