Let me digress for a moment. We have stepped over raised thresholds on numerous occasions including at the Summer Palace and Forbidden City. The raised threshold is intended to keep out ghosts. The Chinese believe that ghosts have no legs nor can they fly. Ghosts therefore cannot pass over a barrier on the ground. Presumably the raised hatchways here aboard VOYAGER reflect a more utilitarian belief.
Returning to the description of our visit to the Taoist Temple, it was darker and more enclosed than the one we had visited in Zhujiajiao. Inside the air was thick with smoke. The smoke came from incense. Some incense was being burned in front of shrines. The one below was the shrine of the Twelve Judges of Hell.
In Taoism, when a person dies they come before one of the judges who decides whether the person has been so good that they can spin up to Heaven, so bad they remain in Hell, or somewhere in between. If in between, the person is reborn in a new life. The quality of the new life reflects the person's behavior in their previous life. Incense burned at this shrine seeks a favorable judgment for a person.
Other shrines are for other types of requests; some general and some specific. To westerners some of the statues of deities may appear amusing, but they are not intended to be humorous.
In the middle of the temple was a place to hang a coil of incense with a red banner attached to it.
The coil of incense is an offering to the gods to look favorably on the request written on the red banner. The biggest coils burn for three months.
If you look closely at the picture above you can see smoke rising towards an opening tithe ceiling. It is an imperfect system. I rarely think of a city's air as being clean and refreshing, but the first breath of it upon emerging from the temple was great.
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