Recommendations to the temple

After the Wondrous Temple Expedition visited Fude Temple on Dianzai Street numerous times and conducted thorough field studies, we felt like we should give something back to the temple. Hence, we analyzed our findings and formulated a few recommendations that may help the temple to bond closer with the community and enhance its long term sustainability.

Temple Operation:

• Limit the supply of paper money, reduce the quantity per stack. For example, the temple may limit each worshipper to buy one stack of paper money per visit or raise the price of paper money to discourage worshippers from buying paper money.
• Lower the price of offering rice so followers would buy rice instead of paper money.
• Promote the substitution of rice for paper money. This would bring environmental awareness to worshippers, helping them to see the devastating consequences of air pollution brought forth by burning paper money.

Temple Administrative Issues:

• Increase cleaning crew shifts to more than two shifts per day.
• On days with more worshippers, monitor the rubbish bins more regularly to ensure the temple’s cleanliness.
• The stairwell needs more thorough cleaning, dust can be seen accumulating in many corners.
• Pay more attention to spots that might get neglected easily, like the area under the altar, so dust wouldn’t accumulate.
• Dry off the washing area to worshippers can place the offerings with ease.

Inside Temple:

• Instead of limiting non-smoking area to second floor only, the management should ban smoking completely because smoking is detrimental to both the environment and people’s health.
• Even though there is no incense burning on the second floor, more windows are needed to improve ventilation.
• There are some supplies blocking the hallway, remove them as soon as possible.
• The railing next to Tiger God’s altar is partially rusted, proper maintenance is required to avoid possible injuries.
• There are still five incense burners on site, may consider further reducing them to two, leaving the Jade Emperor and Earth God incense burners only.
• The temple may consider improve the ventilation because it gets quite stuffy when a lot of worshippers pray at the same time.
• The passage way to the second floor is a bit narrow, the temple may consider widening it to make it easier for worshippers to pass through when the temple gets crowded.
• The machine that explains the divination poems inside the Hall of Wealth God is in worshippers’ way, the temple may consider moving it to another spot.

Temple Deities:

• The temple may add an introduction sign in front of each deity, or incorporate a voice-guided tour.
• There are some parts of the Maitreya Buddha statue that’s off limit to touching, so the temple may consider adding a warning sign next to the Maitreya Buddha statue.
• The temple may consider providing a guide that explains to worshippers what each deity is responsible for.

Specifics of Praying:

• A lot of worshippers are still not familiar with the specifics of praying, the temple may provide pamphlets to explain the praying process more thoroughly.
• The temple may erect signs outside the temple doors to show the order to praying.
• When the temple gets crowded with worshippers holding incense sticks, accidents may happen. The temple may consider eliminating the use of incense sticks and promote praying with palms together; limit the use of incense sticks to special occasions only.
• The gold nugget in front of the Five-way God of Wealth is blocking off the introduction sign, the temple should remove it and add Chinese phonetics so children may understand.

Related Activities:

• When giving out free charitable meals, ask recipients to sign their names so only those who really needed the free meal would come, conserving resources to those who really needed them.
• Organize drawing and writing competitions on the topic of ‘Replacing Paper Money with Rice'.
• Encourage schools to organize field trips to Fude Temple on Dianzai Street so kids may get to know Taiwanese folk religions better.

Promotion:

• Besides Facebook, the temple may consider setting up a webpage to help people learn more about this historical temple in Yonghe.
• Place more notices about temple related activities on the bulletin board at Yonghe district office so more people can learn about the temple .
• Actively promote the temple by organizing promotional seminars at various local communities.
• Publish books to introduce the temple.

Source Text: The Wondrous Temple Expedition ｜Photos: The Wondrous Temple Expedition