On September 5th, 2014, the English Village joined the Syuejia Elementary School drumming team for an outing to the Ren-An temple in an area quite close to the school.
The occasion was a visit by the god from the parent temple in China to the temple here. Syuejia Elementary School went o join in the festivities and add the ruckus of their drumming team to the rest of the liveliness.
The English village went along for good show and we were treated to both a local procession and a tour of the temple by the local leader.
We arrived quite a bit before the main event, so we got to go on our tour first. The local guy was very hospitable and was very keen to share with us about the tradition of the temple. As I was curious he also told me how much it cost to build… NT$210,000,000, yes, 210 million dollars, excluding the cost of the plot of land that it’s on. It was very ornate.
I won’t cover the whole tour, but we got a detailed look at the temple and what goes on there. After the tour, we headed outside for the main event.
The children got ready to start their bit and were coming to man their drums.
You can see from the look on the kids’ faces above that it was about show time. The ensuing din of masses of fireworks filled the air.
I’ll leave the explanation of the video for another time.
The big puppets were placed in their spots and the idol was placed at the front of the temple.
After this point there was a ceremony with some words for the idols and some offerings from the visitors. There was an offering of rice wine, flowers and other stuff.
The students had moved inside and were sitting at one side watching the goings on.
Once all was done, it was time to go home. The visitors who had come went about their business and we packed up and went back to work. It was an interesting experience and a nice chance to get to be tourists on the job.
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