In old black and white footage we can see the tracks of Mazu belief ’s development in Taiwan.
The sea has always been a “good sea”, providing food and used for transport, but it can also be a sea of misery, full of fear and uncertainty. This dual personality made the people who lived beside it and sailed on it respect and fear the sea. In Asia, Mazu is the most important sea god/goddess in southeast China and Taiwan, Okinawa, Korea and Japan in northeast Asia, and Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Mazu belief originated in southeast China. It became a deeply held belief hundreds of years ago in Taiwan. Even the early 19th century Christian missionaries who came to Taiwan were curious about this sea goddess religion and mentioned it in their teaching books or collected Mazu statues, the meeting between alien cultures in Taiwan becoming a much-told story. For the settlers who made the arduous journey across the “black ditch” to come to Taiwan, facing the threat of being forced from the boat into the sea or onto a sandbank by unscrupulous captains and having to make their own way to shore, Mazu indeed was a source of spiritual comfort. Today, Taiwan has many temples in which Mazu is enshrined and the “March Mazu Craze” parades” are a major event on the calendar for believers, the media and anthropologists.
With traditional “feudal” beliefs discouraged in the period after the liberation in 1949 and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Mazu belief was not able to develop normally in China in the 1950s and 70s.During the same period in Taiwan Mazu belief was developing into the mass folk religion of today. Observing how the people regarded and worshipped Mazu in this period is not just useful for historians and religious anthropologists, it also reopens a page in mass memory long closed. TELDAP has a large amount of information about various religions. Let us now look back at Mazu belief in Taiwan in the early years after WW2 by watching some items from the Chinese Taipei Film Archive.
In this news film “The people of Beigang Township Celebrate Mazu’s Birthday” we can see a grand occasion. Something that really catches the attention is the Western woman who appears in the crowd at the beginning. Is she the relative of a Western government official based in Taiwan? Or an anthropologist doing field work? This tantalizing question remains unanswered.
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