Matsu Back in the News

Original post. Matsu gets around - and travels first class. Hsingkang spruced up with new open plaza in front of Matsu temple Thursday, December 27, 2007 By Dan Bloom, Special to The China Post Every year in the spring, thousands of religious pilgrims make the long trek from Taichung (台中) County to Chiayi (嘉義) County--and back again--in honor of the goddess Matsu (媽祖). But tourists flock to Hsingkang in southern Taiwan every day of the year, especially on weekends. As a result, Hsingkang (新港) has become a popular weekend tourist destination, and with the High Speed Rail now whisking passengers up and down Taiwan's long west coast, Hsingkang has become a lot closer for people living in the Taipei and Kaohsiung regions. The High Speed Rail's well-designed Taibao (太保) station is just five kilometers away from Hsingkang and is a quick and convenient bus or taxi ride from the station. With more and more tourists coming to town on weekends and with the growing popularity of the springtime Matsu pilgrimage, town officials, together with central government planners, have built a new open plaza in front of the Fengtien Temple, complete with a white cobblestone roadway and gracefully-modern red street lamps, designed to look like festival lanterns, that contrast sharply, yet harmoniously, with the adjacent temple area nearby. . . . Maggie Lin, a temple guide and a native of Hsingkang, showed me around when I was visiting recently, and she told me some interesting stories about the goddess Matsu as well. . . . Inside the temple grounds, Lin took me to the fifth floor of a building behind the main temple, where you can see a long panorama of the temple itself and the main street in front of the temple. It makes a great photograph, too, I might add. Lin also told me an interesting story about the Hsingkang Matsu's trip to New York City a few months ago to visit the United Nations. "On the flight from Taoyuan to New Jersey, the statue of Matsu was originally given a ticket for a seat in economy class, but when one of the Taiwanese flight attendants noticed that the famous goddess was aboard, she arranged for Matsu to be moved up to a first-class seat," Lin said. "In addition, the Hsingkang man who was watching over Matsu during the plane ride to New York used some special red fortune dice to ask Matsu what she would like to drink and eat on the airplane. The assistant would ask a simple question that required just a yes or no answer, and when the answer was ascertained, Matsu would be given the coffee or tea drink that she had asked for. "The same went for the meals that were served to Matsu during her flight, which, by the way, marked the first time she had ever visited North America. It was really an interesting trip over and back, and now Matsu is safely back in her resting place here in Hsingkang, with many stories to tell about her trip to the United Nations." . . .