The Temple of the Fortifications Deity

The Xiahai City God Temple is a famous Taoist shrine found at the southern end of Dihua Street, in the culturally and historically rich Dadaocheng area of Taipei. It’s named after the primary deity it was built for, whose name has been translated as “the Xiahai City God.”

“City God” is a translation of the term “chénghuáng,” (城隍), meaning “city walls” and “moats” (or deity thereof), and can refer to any deity that protects a given settlement. Frankly, though, I prefer the more literal translation “fortifications deity,” which I will be using throughout the rest of this article.

According to the temple’s website, this particular deity originated from the Xiadian Township of Tongan County, Quanzhou City, Fujian in China, before later being shipped over the Taiwan Strait in 1821. It’s known as the “Xiahai” Fortifications Deity because Xiadian Township is also called Xiahai.

The God of Matchmaking

If you’ve sought out the Xiahai Fortification Deity’s temple for the same reason most do, though, you might be confused about all of this talk about moats and ramparts. Where’s the romance?

Well, it’s just a little bit to the left.

In the main hall of the temple, stage left of the Fortifications Deity’s throne, there stands another statue, coal-black, of a funny-looking old man sporting four tufts of beard and a staff, with a heart carved into the pillar under his feet. This is the Old Man Under the Moon (月下老人) – the matchmaker from the spirit world – and he’s the main event around town, despite being a guest at the temple he’s made famous.

The Legend of the Man Under the Moon

Who is the Man Under the Moon?

There’s a Tang Dynasty legend (circa 800 AD) — the title of which I’ll translate to The Matchmaker’s Inn (定婚店) — which tells the tale of a learned man named Weigu who once visited a shrine called Longxing Temple in Songcheng (modern day Hangzhou) on courting business.

According to the 9th century account by Li Fuyan: Because Weigu was eager, he set off early, and the moon was still high in the dawn sky when he arrived. Under its silver light, he saw an old man with a cloth bag sitting on the temple’s steps, reading a book of foreign symbols. Despite being versed in all of the historical Chinese writing systems (think Bird-Worm Seal Script) as well as Sanskrit (Devangari), however, Weigu had never seen anything like them; and so curious, he asked the man what they said. The old man explained that he was a being of the Spirit World (幽冥之人), and that this was a tome of all mortals’ marital fates, adding that his bag was filled with red cords which he used to bind newborns to their future spouses at birth.

The story gets a little dark from there, as Weigu tries to put a hit on the infant who’s supposed to grow up to become his future wife because her mother’s ugly and poor – but the point is that the Old Man Under the Moon is a matchmaker, and red cords are a symbol of romantic fate.

Why We Seek the Man Under the Moon at the Fortifications Deity’s Temple

But this is the Fortifications Deity’s temple; who cares about the Man Under the Moon?

All over Taiwan, it’s common knowledge that if you’re having trouble finding your soulmate, the Man Under the Moon at the Fortifications Deity’s Temple in Taipei is the place to go, and young single folks crowd the temple every weekend to tell the matchmaking deity what kind of mate they’re looking for, and get “red cords” (紅線) of their own to carry around.

Why? The temple’s website actually explains the origin of the practice pretty thoroughly, recounting a slightly different variation of the story from the one I summarized above, followed by an anecdote from 1971, of an old lady who regularly visited the Fortifications Deity’s temple to implore good fortune for her husband and children.

The woman reflected on how over the years, she had repeatedly prayed at the temple to help her kids get into their dream schools; get through their mandatory military service safely; get scholarships to study in America and graduate with honors; and to get respectable jobs. But although all of her other prayers had been answered thus far, her children still weren’t having luck with their love lives – until she went back to the temple one last time to implore that they might find their matches. Wouldn’t you know it, in no time, many of her kids (it doesn’t say how many she had) had met the partners of dreams!

After that, the website explains, the woman went to the temple abbot, Chen Guoting, and told him that she wanted to donate an idol of the Man Under the Moon to the temple to assist the Xiahai Fortifications Deity in attending to future pilgrim’s matchmaking needs. The abbot commissioned a woodworker from the Luzhou district named Wang Daorui for a 39cm statue of the deity, and now, the rest is history.

We know from the written testimony of the current administrator of the temple, Chen Wenwen, however, that the practice of coming to the temple to pray to the Man Under the Moon didn’t take off right away, possibly due to the “climate of the era” (this would have been during Taiwan’s martial law period). Gradually, though, more and more women started coming to the temple in search of love – and men too, though they were apparently embarrassed to do so at first. Chen attributes this rise in popularity in particular to the coverage of various media outlets. As for the future, the Man Under the Moon in Dadaocheng doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon.