Dong Yue Mio - Daoist Temple

Layout of the (still active) temple.

This is a temple devoted to the worship of Taishan, the Great Mountain, and was intended for all the people. Taishan is a deity that presides over all the other daoist gods (see below).


You see this giant abacus when you walk in. Its about 4 feet tall. It is suppose to "warn those who enter that they would be judged."


These cool beasties are water dragons and usually found on the roof of buildings. All the old buildings were made from very flammable materials (go figure, rice paper and woods burns waaay easy) and prone to fires on a pretty regular basis. In addition to lots of big water containers (we're talking 4 person hot-tub size), water dragons were put on building roofs to ward off fires.

He he
This one is for Molly and Kristi.

As much as these may look like large turtles, they are in fact very squat, round, and shelled dragons. They would have made some really cool looking turtles. Aw well.

But the real meat of this stop are all the little temples and 72(!) cubicles with plaster figurines representing the 73 Chiefs of Departments (all of which are gods) and at least 5 or more figurines of some of the folks they control, rule, watch, reward, or punish. There were also rooms for the 18 Layers of Hell. The figurines go from 2 stories high to slightly smaller than real life. I'm sorry there are no pictures of the figures themselves, but they are still being used as active religious artifacts and there are signs requesting no photographs be taken. They were pretty wild though, and the monsters were downright scary.

Here are just a few of the departments
Department of Flying Birds
Department of Opposing Obscene Acts
Department of Controlling Bullying
Department of Resurrection
Department of Accumulation of Justifiable Wealth
Department of Raising Descendants
Department of Petty-Officials
Department of Monsters, of Hell, for Implementing Fifteen Kinds of Violent Death.

Just to give you an idea, this is a picture of the plaque from the Department of Promotion of 15 Kinds of Decent Life Style.