Taipei Xiahai City God Temple

The City God of Xiahai came to Taiwan with settlers from Tong'an County in Fujian. The temple's history says they first kept him in Bangka, and its English pages give the year of the crossing as 1821. After a feud in 1853 drove the Tong'an people out of Bangka, they carried the statue north to Dadaocheng and housed it in a cake shop run by Chen Haoran. The temple honors 38 volunteers who died guarding the statue and its followers on that journey as the Yi Yong Gong, the Brave Guards. Construction of the temple began in 1856 and finished in March 1859.

The size

The temple sits on 46 ping, roughly 1,640 square feet, and has never been expanded. The temple's own account allows that money was short at first, then notes that Dadaocheng's merchants later led Taiwan's economy and the building still stayed the same size. The reason it gives is the site itself, a "hen's nest" where the City God shelters the district the way a hen shelters her chicks. The temple's phrase for it is that the smaller the temple, the more it prospers.

The Old Man under the Moon

The Old Man under the Moon, Yue Lao, is the god who keeps the register of marriages and ties fated couples together with red silk cord. The temple tells his story through Wei Gu, a man in the Tang dynasty who met an old man reading a register by moonlight and was told his future wife was a vegetable seller's 3-year-old daughter. More than 10 years later, Wei Gu married her without recognizing her.

Yue Lao arrived at Xiahai in 1971. An elderly woman came to thank the City God for her husband's business and her children's schooling, military service, scholarships to universities in the United States, and good jobs. Their love lives had stayed empty, so she prayed for that as well, and the temple records that the children soon found partners. She offered to donate a statue of Yue Lao to help the City God with the marriages of the unmarried. The temple's head at the time, Chen Guoting, had Wang Daorui of Luzhou carve a figure 43 centimeters tall. The statue has a white beard and red cheeks, holds the marriage register in his left hand and a cane in his right, and wears red thread over his shoulders.

The red thread

The temple publishes the sequence in 12 steps. A first-time visitor buys paper money and incense, then collects a packet from the office holding wedding candy, a lead coin, and a red thread. Facing outward to the Jade Emperor, the visitor gives a name and asks for peace. Facing the City God, Yue Lao, and the other gods, the visitor gives the same introduction, asks for a match, and promises to bring wedding cakes back if one comes. The temple's Yue Lao page lists what the introduction covers: name, age, address, and the kind of person the visitor hopes to meet. The incense goes into the single censer in the forecourt, and the lead coin and red thread are passed clockwise over it three times before going into a wallet.

Only one red thread may be taken; the temple writes that a worshiper who took several by mistake ended up in romantic complications nobody wanted. The temple discourages tying the thread around a wrist, where it snaps and gets lost, and says a lost thread only needs reporting to Yue Lao on the next visit. Parents may pray for their children and siblings for each other, but a friend may not pray for a friend. Couples may pray together, each with a set of offerings, and thank Yue Lao with a single box. In 2025, the temple's publicity head, Wu Meng-huan, told NOWnews that the gods do not divide love into straight and gay.

The cakes and the tea

A couple whose match came through brings a box of engagement cakes to the office and registers it, which is how the temple counts marriages. Wu put the average at more than 6,000 couples a year. The figure is the temple's own tally of returned boxes. The cakes are shared with visitors, and when the Taipei Times visited in June 2024, gift boxes of confectionery sat on the altar among multipacks of Kinder Bueno.

The wedding candy that first-time visitors leave behind is boiled with red dates, goji berries, roselle, chrysanthemum, and sour plums from the street's herb shops into what the temple calls peace tea. The temple began pouring it in 1996 for the Lunar New Year market on Dihua Street and says the market now goes through more than 200,000 cups each year. A smaller daily supply is poured for visitors. Wu's advice in 2025 was that the tea is served very hot, and that blowing on it will not blow the match away.

The temple is open every day from 7am to 7pm, closing only for announced typhoons and natural disasters. Entry is free. In June 2024, the Taipei Times reported a first-time visitor paying NT$400 for paper money, incense, and the matchmaking packet. A return visit needs only paper money and incense, and a red thread from another temple can be brought along and passed over the censer here without buying a new packet.

The office keeps printed guides in English and Japanese, and staff can walk foreign visitors through the sequence in either language. Paper money is not burned on site: under Taiwan's air pollution rules, the temple collects it in a box, and the city burns it at a designated site. The lead coin sits inside the red paper wrapped around the thread, and the temple asks that the packet stay unopened, since the coin is thin and easy to lose.

The temple names February 14, Qixi on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, and Yue Lao's birthday on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month as the days when worshipers come in the greatest numbers. The City God's birthday procession runs on the 13th day of the 5th lunar month, which has fallen between early June and early July in recent years, with a night procession through the old streets 2 days earlier.

Visitors who want to add to the tea can buy red dates and goji berries from the Dihua Street shops and leave them with the temple after praying. This is an active place of worship with a small hall, so it's best practice to ask before photographing people at prayer. The temple suggests Daqiaotou MRT station, about 20 minutes away on foot, or buses to the Nanjing West Road stop, a few minutes' walk away.