You could hear the drums before you even pulled into town.
For the second time in six years, I stepped off the bus in Donggang for the opening day of the triennial King Boat Festival. A makeshift night market strung with halogen lights and blinking LEDs had been slapped together around Donglong Gong, the town’s main temple. An ornate golden gate fronted Donglong Gong, showing how much money flowed through this fishing town in southern Taiwan.
King Boat is held in celebration of Wen Hong, also known as Wufudadi, the Thousand Years Grandfather, Dai Tian Xun Shou, or Wang Ye (Chinese immortals tend to have a lot of names), a god known for driving away pestilence and disease. He’s the main deity worshipped in Donglong Temple. Legend has it that he attained godly status after he—a 7th century man named Wen Hong—was killed when his ship sank on an ocean patrol.
Every three years, his spirit is called in from the sea, implored to come inland by the myriad cries of a thousand other gods, and is paraded and feted around Donggang and its ancillary villages for the next week. Wang Ye is supposed to drive out sickness and disease during this time, as well as bring good fortune.
We had attended King Boat for the first time three years ago, and had decided to return to see the opening ceremony one more time.
Delegations from temples around Taiwan, carrying idols on carved palanquins, held up traffic. Many of these sedan chairs were dotted with LEDs, and some blasted their own music: traditional temple music, local pop hits from the ‘70s in the Taiwanese language, or occasional Western hits. One went by thumping "Empire State of Mind.” Another proudly filled the streets with "Gangnam Style.” The gods, apparently, have very eclectic taste in music. Drummers followed and firecrackers snapped underfoot. The three of us elbowed through the crowds to drop off our bags.
Tonight, my husband Brendan, our friend Joseph, and I would see the King Boat itself, sheltered in the temple complex, and make wishes on the little wooden plaques that would hang on a fence around the perimeter of the boat for the next week. We would then feast on the freshest seafood at a row of restaurants in the harbor’s famous market.
Tomorrow, we would head to the beach and watch as gods, spirits, and immortals rushed in from the ocean to a gruesome display of blood, incense, and pierced skin. They would possess the bodies of hundreds of trained spirit mediums. We’d look them in the eyes. We’d see what they could do with spiked clubs and balls, swords, pins, and burning incense. Tomorrow, there would be blood.
I wasn’t quite sure why I’d come back. I’d ostensibly seen everything there was to see three years before. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure why I was still in Taiwan. I had spent a semester in Madurai, India and loved it—from climbing a rock escarpment over neon-green rice paddies to a Jain monument at the summit to running into a puja to the goddess who watched over the local market, as well as the everyday joy of living with a host family. I swore I’d move back. I’ve visited many times since, but never returned for good. I’d lived in China for a year after college as a travel-happy, pseudo-ambitious young graduate. I had countless adventures—including being on a bus that drove up a flight of stairs—and announced I wanted to move back in order to continue studying Chinese. I never did.
Taiwan was different. I had just put in my application for permanent residency, wishing to stay but not fully understanding why.
I approached the King Boat. It was bedecked with lanterns, ornately painted in traditional Chinese patterns of dragons and clouds, and surrounded by a wall of wishes. For a small fee, you could buy a wooden plaque about the size of a smartphone. On it, you would write your name and address, followed by your wish. Most people wished for personal fortune: I want two children, a son and a daughter, and a promotion at work. I want to study in Australia. Please help me find a good and handsome husband. I want a perfect score on my college entrance exam! I want my in-laws to move out. I want to get a job in Singapore. I want my girlfriend to say yes when I propose to her. I want a bigger apartment, and I want my boss to notice my hard work. Predictable but moving wishes. Everyone’s common struggle on little pieces of wood, destined to reach the sky in a cloud of smoke.
You can put more than one wish on one plaque, so I made two. One was for my permanent residency application to go through without any more problems, of which there had already been many. The other was simple but political: I made a wish for Taiwan – for its recognition and sovereignty.
Why did I care so much? This wasn’t my homeland. I had no ancestral or cultural connection here. I could have wished for a continued happy marriage, or for a career break, or more money. Everyone else had. In America, my country of birth, I probably would have. It wouldn’t have even crossed my mind to wish anything "for America.” Although I was an expat, I wasn’t wishing as one. Taiwan’s unique history has brought Chinese, Japanese, and aboriginal influences to its shores. This mix has created a unique culture, but sadly one that attracts little international interest. A culture that, due to the nature of Chinese folk belief—indigenous and multifaceted, grounded more in tradition and ceremony than concerns about the spiritual health of its followers—is quite accepting of the vagaries of individual belief. As a skeptic who has clashed with and felt judged by people in the United States who question my personal beliefs, this was an important facet of life in Taiwan for me. I would make a wish to Wen Hong precisely because it didn’t matter whether I believed in his power in order to make that wish. That may sound odd from a Western perspective, but in Taiwan it is perfectly normal. The ability to hold these two ideas in your head—doing the rite, yet believing as you please—is considered a measure of the most basic intelligence.
And so, I circled the boat three times and tied my wish to the fence with red cord.
One week later, the King Boat would be loaded with ghost money, wishing plaques, and other offerings, and brought to the beach, where it would be engulfed at dawn in a spectacular bonfire that would burn for up to three days. Wen Hong would be sent back out to sea laden with gifts and money and take all of Donggang’s illness and bad luck with him.
We barely slept that night – the processions wound their way through the darkest hours; firecrackers abided no time restrictions. Puffs of music floated past the window of our bathroom-tiled hotel room near the harbor until dawn. We woke into a muggy heat, took ineffective showers, and sought a breakfast shop before heading to the beach.
"I can’t wait to get a traditional Taiwanese breakfast!” Brendan said.
"What, you mean a sandwich with some corn in it?”
"Exactly!”
A true "traditional” breakfast in Taiwan would be rice congee with cabbage, egg, and preserved tofu, but white-bread sandwiches with improbable fillings, chased down with soy milk, were now a far more typical way to break one’s fast in Taiwan.
We could still hear the drums. They had now left the temple area and beaten their way down to the beach. More temple delegations arrived from the corners of Taiwan bearing idols of Matsu, goddess of the sea, the Baosheng Emperor, god of herbal and Chinese medicine, Wenchang Dijun, god of literature, and more. We followed the noise and light over the bridge and onto the sand.
Troupes of Eight Generals began to appear – men and boys in elaborate face paint who participate in temple processionals around Taiwan. Each painting style was different depending on the general being portrayed. The Eight Generals act as the protectors of gods and people, and may not talk or smile when in their roles. At certain points in a processional—generally in front of important temples—they do martial demonstrations accompanied by ominous trumpets and deep drums. The weapons (pitchforks, tridents, swords, and spears made with real metal), the concentration, the unique makeup, and the powerful gazes of the performers make the Eight Generals seem terrifying despite their role as protectors. Although they originated in a temple in Fujian, China, they are now associated exclusively with Taiwan.
I snapped photos. Such festivals were all but gone in most of China, and difficult to track down in India. I felt closer to the common practices of local folk culture in Taiwan than I had in any other country, in part because they were closer to me. We had traversed most of Taiwan to see this procession, but when you live here, one may very well pass right by your front door. I often run into the Eight Generals, tall gods (people wearing tall bamboo casings topped with ten-foot-high costumes depicting various immortal beings), dragon dancers, and lion dancers on my regular ramblings around Taipei. I’ve been stuck on a bus trapped behind a tall god, forced to move out of the way for a group of lion dancers, and been made to dance around unexpected fireworks.
The beach had turned into an encampment under the rising haze. Entire temple delegations parked themselves on small dunes, sticking incense into the sand. There was no water, no toilets. Some troupes of Eight Generals (there were many, and not all numbered eight) were idling about, holding their fans to their faces to chat quietly, answer phones or smoke, all things prohibited when in costume. The fans hid their sacrilegious pleasures from the eyes of the gods. Palanquins with their own generators to keep the lights flashing and music pumping were carried dangerously close to the sea. Some were dragged into the water, held aloft by enthusiastic—and I imagine not very risk-averse—devotees.
We wandered a bit. We sat in wet sand. We drank down our water supply. I clipped off a few more photos. We asked when it was all going to begin. "Soon,” everyone said. "It’ll happen soon.”
"Any idea just when?”
"Three, maybe.”
"It’ll start right after lunch.”
"Four, I think. Later.”
"Now, I think. Just wait.”
"I don’t know.”
Finally, someone answered us straight: "It’ll start when the gods say it’ll start.”
I noticed one woman, fortyish, apple-shaped with a wide-face, standing alone and staring at the ocean.
Gods don’t wait for human thirst, so we didn’t trek back to the market for fear that it would begin without us. A second slapdash congregation of food vendors had popped up at the entrance to the beach.
You could hear the drums, and now some of them had entwined their previously disjointed cacophony and beat out a steady, entrancing rhythm.
It was then that I noticed the man next to me was shaking.
His hand rose and fell. It looked as if he was doing musical kung fu, conducting a martial-arts orchestra. He lifted his head toward the glowering sun. His lips shook and his knees wobbled, but he did not fall.
I heard a moan, quite distinct, from the bubbling of the waves at my back. It wasn’t coming from the shaking man, though. It was coming from the water. The woman I’d seen before was now standing knee deep. Someone had tied a red sash around her waist, and she was moving her arms in circles as she cried.
The man had a red sash now, as well. His movements grew more elaborate and he was holding a bundle of burning incense. He uttered a long, deliberate "OooooooOOOoooh” and slowly put the incense, burning end first, into his mouth.
It was starting.
An old man I had seen three years before ran up to my left. He was compact and grey-haired, with teddy-bear features. He dangled a spiked ball from a cord and shouted at the sea, talking to the waves.
Two men—one older, with grey hair and heavy-lidded eyes; one younger, with smooth, tan skin and a buzz cut—stood near each other. They were gazing serenely across the mayhem erupting down the shoreline. Both had pins the thickness of drinking straws in their cheeks. One turned; he also had flags of the kind often found on the back of Chinese folk gods piercing his back, his skin folded to hold them in place. A man near them was beating his back bloody with a spiked club wound with red thread. A woman in a long white robe was grunting and doing tai chi-like moves with her hands. A man holding an aluminum sword cut his own shoulder blade in one fluid motion. Another, holding an idol, got a wild look in his eyes and began to dance slowly, one leg in the air, knees bent, hopping and twisting. He danced with the man with the sword, the idol hoisted into the air and waved about as though its thick wooden weight were nothing.
A man sat in the surf, his yellow silk robe covered in artfully arranged colorful patches swirling in the foam. He wore an oddly peaked yellow hat embroidered with the sign of the Buddha and drank deeply from a medicine-gourd-shaped bottle. Then he laughed, spraying spittle and liquor high into the air. He was possessed with the spirit of Ji Gong, an eccentric, wandering 10th century Chinese monk.
These were jitong, called dang-ki in Taiwanese, who were falling into trances and, so the story goes, allowing their bodies to be taken over by the spirits of gods and immortals. They started shaking, they fell, they screamed incomprehensible words, they sang and moaned, they ran into the ocean, and they mutilated themselves as the drums beat louder. They are a common sight at temple festivals in southern Taiwan, and those versed in the local folk religion will often listen closely to what they say for clues about the future and the deity’s will.
There were hundreds of them: the whole arc of the beach was overrun with people who were not people, but bleeding, screaming gods. Each one wore a bright red sash. They had attendants, people who sprayed antiseptic and pressed ghost money into wounds, who kept them from drowning in the ocean, who kept onlookers like me from getting too close, and who found them whatever tools they asked for.
Why now, why here, and why so many? Because they, by allowing themselves to act as the earthly vessels of these motley spirits, called in Wen Hong.
All for the Thousand Years Grandfather, you could hear the drums.
What struck me was that not everyone on the beach believed. Certainly the dang-ki believe. What is claimed to be spiritual possession requires some degree of faith to work, especially if that possession entails shrieking, singing, and self-mutilation. It’s also claimed that, when possessed, the dang-ki don’t feel any pain and their wounds heal quickly. Those directly involved with the temples must believe as well. Others, though—onlookers, photographers, locals who come out to see the show, visitors like us—generally don’t.
I am an avowed atheist. I feel comfortable in Taiwan because nobody cares whether you believe or not. Often, even if you are Taiwanese, as long as you do the rites, nobody minds whether you actually peg your faith on them. In the West this idea is often met with contempt. Why would you perform a ritual you didn’t believe in? I found it freeing: you could meet your family and cultural obligations, but there was still space for you, as an individual, to believe as you liked. It was eye-opening to observe such an outpouring of tradition and belief and feel completely welcome, with nobody breathing down my back about my own faith. While I do believe the dang-ki are entranced (I view it as more of a garden-variety hypnotism with the weight of belief behind it) nobody cared that I saw no gods in their eyes. I was still welcome. A local who had come to see the gods rushing in, whether he believed in the gods’ existence or not, would be treated no differently.
I appreciated the history of most of these gods. They were, more often than not, based on real people. The human origin of so many folk gods means that, at the very least, they have some foothold in verifiable history. Gods are often created when those who pray to a deceased person of note enjoy enduring good luck. More people come to pray, and that newly minted god grows in popularity. Such gods are being created even now: in the Taiwanese city of Hsinchu, there is a temple to Chiang Kai-shek who is worshipped in much the same way, often by those who hold him in living memory.
I can easily imagine a King Boat Festival in 500 years that includes a dang-ki possessed by the spirit of, say, Sun Yat-sen. The gods dancing on the beach in our time, however, are of an older vintage.
A woman threw a red spiked ball wound with red cord and caked with blood into the air and caught it on her back. She was wearing an embroidered yellow smock and blowing raspberries in a distinct rhythm. Another had a similar spiked ball stuck into the skin on the crown of his head, tied in place with one of the ubiquitous red sashes.
A man sank into the sand in a ballerina’s split, grabbed some incense and held it aloft. He stared straight at me, and I wondered what he could see. Me? Nothing? Ghosts? Whatever a god sees?
The woman removed the spiked ball from her back; an attendant took it. She danced in jerky motions up to two more women, also wearing smocks. One had devil horn-like ears fashioned out of ghost money stuck in a headband. All three waded waist-deep into the sea, unconcerned with the tumult of the surf. They began to sing and moan in a weird melody, at once harmonic and dissonant. I waded a little further out, lifting my camera above the waves, happy that I’d worn my quick-dry hiking pants but aware that my shirt was also soaked. I took a few pictures, even a short video.
I could hear the drums, and feel the waves. Firecrackers erupted into tufts of smoke, clouds of incense wafted out to sea. The women moaned and sang, and I tried to keep my balance. The unrelenting sun beat down, waves of heat following the rhythm of the drums. I had long since run out of water.
One woman held incense, another brandished a sword. The third held nothing in her open hands, her arms outstretched, begging the sea to grant her incomprehensible, raspberry-blown wishes.
I don’t know when I stopped taking photos. I was barely aware of my camera in my hands, and yet it remained dry. It was hot and bright. I was thirsty. I was engulfed by heat, smoke and noise. There was no end to it: dang-ki raged and pleaded at the ocean all around me, saltwater in their wounds. It’s a good thing that they feel no pain.
The women started moaning in crescendo, following the steady swell of the waves. They came more roughly now; the tide was coming in. I could hear the women but the sun was so bright that it was difficult to see. My back was to the ocean.
"Aaaaaaaahhhh!” they cried, on the crest of a wave. "AAAAhhhhhh!”
I felt lightheaded.
"AAAAAHHHH!”
At their third cry, there was a gust of wind as a large wave pummeled my back, and I was forced closer to shore. I could hear the drums. Everything went white. I could smell smoke. I couldn’t see.
"Jenna, are you okay?” Joseph’s voice pierced the din, and my vision came back. I was still holding my camera, and it was still dry. The women had ridden in to shore on the wave.
I was very dizzy, hot, and quite disoriented.
"I’m okay, but what the hell was that?” I asked in Joseph’s general direction. I don’t think he heard me.
I stood in the wet sand, holding my forehead and surveying the crowd as my dizziness abated. The women had congregated around their idol, and their temple delegation seemed pleased. Joseph wandered off, and a chair appeared under me. I sat for a few moments. A bottle of water was handed to me and I took a swig. A few people around me were very solicitous; I noticed one was holding one of those spray bottles of antiseptic used on the dang-ki.
My rational brain knew this: it was hot, and the drums, smoke, and chanting had gotten the better of me. Now, others were making sure I was okay. I wondered if I’d just acquired a few dang-ki attendants of my own, and how long I’d been in that trance. It couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, maybe a minute, counting the time when I stopped taking photos. Not more than ten seconds of blindness.
It didn’t matter that I don’t believe in spirit mediums and possession. It didn’t matter that I was a woman, or even that I was a foreigner. Those around me interpreted what they saw as possession; I viewed it as earthly entrancement—after all, what is more earthly than having your head scrambled by heat, sun, sand, and smoke? There was room on that beach for both interpretations.
I was fine, though, and after a few minutes the attendants dispersed. When my dizziness abated fully, I wandered off to take more photos.
There were both male and female dang-ki, although other aspects of King Boat are the provenance of men. Only men may build the boat and carry ghost money and offerings to it on the beach. Depending on which family oversees the festival, some years women are not allowed to join in the communal firewalking (yes, I have firewalked. No, it’s not as scary as it sounds, but then for communal firewalking they don’t make the coals very hot).
On Earth as it is in heaven: there are aspects to traditional festivals that women may not participate in, even in 2013, but nobody questions a god’s right to call upon a woman to act as the conduit of its spirit. If the gods do not discriminate, it is not for men to say that women cannot act.
This is the final insight that King Boat afforded me: the three dang-ki in the surf with me were women, and despite the gender discrimination that local and expat women rail against across Asia, they were treated no differently than the men.
I considered this in the days and weeks following the festival. Although things are not perfect, I have been able to live in Taiwan, as a woman, without experiencing severe gender discrimination. I felt the weight of sexism in India and China, and although I could not articulate it then, an inability to accept that level of sexism in daily life is one of the reasons why I did not stay in those countries. In both countries, I was admonished at times for my feminist outlook. In Taiwan, certain ideas regarding how women should act and look persist, but there is more space in the culture for women who can’t or won’t meet those expectations. Of course, these expectations are somewhat fluid in all three countries and Taiwan is far from being a feminist utopia: I am aware of the fact that the personal decisions of Taiwanese women often face their families’ friendly fire, and that as an expat I am exempt from this. Compared to the rest of Asia, however, I have felt more accepted here as a woman and a feminist.
All those adjectives-turned-pejoratives one hears the United States—feminist, liberal, atheist—are just descriptors here. Labels you can wear or not. Others may disagree with you, but won’t use your own labels against you.
On a quiet corner of the beach, a man and a woman were dancing. They were both possessed; they were both wearing red sashes and each held a fistful of incense. They were moving their arms in a coordinated motion. Both had scars, now clotting, running down their backs. The man held his incense out over the woman’s head, and she pulled hers back. Then he retracted his arm and she stretched hers forward, holding her incense over his head.
A swath of fireworks exploded—thousands, all at once. The drums began banging together, joined by gongs and cymbals. A thousand balloons were suddenly released from a spot on the southern end of the beach as people clapped. Those still possessed began to come out of their trances, all at once, and reverted to being humans. Red sashes were shed. The Thousand Years Grandfather had arrived.
Jenna Lynn Cody grew up in upstate New York, but has lived abroad for most of her adult life. After a semester in India and a year in China, she attempted to settle down in the USA. Unable to sit still, however, she took off again for Taipei, Taiwan, where she has lived for the past seven years with her husband, Brendan. She works as a corporate trainer and blogs at Lao Ren Cha.