Religion and society in Ch\u27ing and Japanese colonial Taipei (1644-1945)

Since the May Fourth Incident in 1919, Chinese scholars have generally considered Chinese religion to be backward and harmful to modernization, and they have wanted to replace it with science and aesthetics. These views have deeply influenced modern education in both Taiwan and mainland China in this century. Nevertheless, native religion has flourished in Taiwan, especially as the island achieved economic prosperity. Many successful businessmen with modern scientific educations take part in religious affairs, many new and expensive temples have been constructed, and old, small temples were rebuilt. This phenomenon is quite contrary to the prediction of early Republican scholars. An intensive study of religion in Taiwan may help explain why. Because Taiwan was less influenced by the May Fourth Incident and its people practiced their traditional way in the Japanese colonial period, the century-old Hsia-hai City-god festival in Ta-tao-ch\u27eng, modern Taipei was selected as a case study. A general survey of Chinese immigration to Taiwan in the 17th and 18th century is given in Chapter 2. Social structure, guilds, and their religious activities are discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 considers how immigrants organized cultivation companies and developed the Taipei basin as a rice and tea export center and why businessmen promoted religious festivals. Chapters 5 and 6 consider how Chinese people in Taipei depended on traditional processions to march around the community in response to social crises, first a wave of epidemics in the early past century, and then economic recession in the 1920s. The processions with medical purposes required the cooperation of villages in northern Taiwan and caused many of them to identify themselves with the larger Taipei community. From the 1910s to 1930s, commercialized processions similarly helped isolated natural and economic zones merge into the large entity of Taiwan. The processions for medical purposes were only temporary; they occurred while the epidemics were spreading. Processions with commercial purposes, by contrast, were held regularly, usually one every year. The integration they promoted was therefore more effective and made Ta-tao-ch\u27eng the number one economic center in Taiwan. Economic and cultural change thus proceeded hand in hand. Sub-ethnic identities of Ch\u27uan-chou, Chang-chou, and Hakka immigrants were reconstructed into a new Taiwanese society. Religion appears to have played an important, positive role in this process