During a quiet mid-week afternoon on the eighth floor of an office building, A-wei is meditatively separating flower petals to make an offering to Tu’er Shen the rabbit god, a spiritual guardian of LGBTQI people.
The small Taoist temple where 24-year-old A-wei sits is a humble room with views across New Taipei city, made cosy by the smell of incense and the mews of two noisy cats.
At one end of the room is the main altar, with three cushions for prayer and gold prints of deities on the wall. To the left is the secondary, but more famous, “side altar”, devoted to Tu’er Shen. A pink banner welcomes worshippers to the “LGBTQI patron saint” with a cartoon picture of the Taoist master wearing rabbit ears and holding a rainbow paintbrush. The bench top is crowded with offerings to the rabbit god, but rather than the typical fruit, cigarettes and liquor, there are bottles of Jo Malone perfume and other cosmetics.
The temple is well known for its dedication to serving the LGBTQI community, but the Taoist master and founder of the temple, Lu Wei-ming, says it’s a space for all people, especially those who wish to pray for love, friendship, and academic success.
A-wei comes here frequently, often spending hours with the masters there, talking through his problems.
“In other temples a common thing is the master will tell you what to do, but this place is different. They listen to me like a friend, without religious pressure.”
A place to seek comfort
The temple opened in 2006, and when the lunar calendar ticked over into the Year of the Rabbit, there was renewed attention and celebration of the site and its purpose. As well as being one of the 12 animals of the lunar calendar, “rabbit” has often been a derogatory or slang term for homosexual people throughout Chinese history, but through cultural storytelling and efforts like those of Lu to elevate Tu’er Shen, it has become a significant symbol for the queer community in Taiwan and China.
There are many stories about rabbits in Chinese literature, linked to gender and sexuality. In the Ballad of Mulan, the folk heroine disguises herself as a man to join the army in her father’s place. The poem – composed around the 5th or 6th century - concludes with her comrades’ discovery that she is a woman, prompting her reply: “When a pair of rabbits run side by side, who can distinguish male from female?” Scholars have linked the text with continued literary references of rabbits with androgyny and same-sex attraction. Other explanations include the shared initialisms of the pinyin tu zi (rabbit) and tong zhi (literally “like-minded people” but a common name for the gay community).
Reverence of Tu’er Shen as a deity – which is believed to occur formally only at this temple – is based on the 17th century Fujian folk tale of Hu Tianbao, an intellectual who fell in love with a visiting provincial official, Lu says. Hu spied on the official but was caught and the official killed him. A villager later said Hu came to him in a dream, saying that the underworld made fun of him and called him “rabbit”, but were not actually angry at him and had appointed him as Tu’er Shen, to manage romantic relationships between men.
The provenance of the story is disputed, with Harvard professor Michael Szonyi telling the China Story that it was entirely invented by the 18th century poet and artist Yuan Mei, but its legacy has persisted, and inspired Lu to shape his work as a Taoist priest around protecting a marginalised community.
Raised by a Catholic mother, Lu, a quietly spoken and deeply devout man in his 30s, tells the Guardian he founded the temple on the basis of providing a space for people abandoned by family and religion.
“When they want to seek religious comfort, the major religions say that their behaviour is wrong,” he says.
“Love brings a lot of happiness, but it can also bring a lot of suffering.”
‘Exiled from the world’
Taiwan is one of the most progressive environments in Asia, but society and religion on the island can still be deeply conservative. Lu, however uses the yin-yang symbol to argue that Taoism contains an acceptance of the spectrum of sexualities.
“In Taoism, women and men are also a yin and yang phenomenon. This shows that the same-sex culture in Taoism is natural.”
The temple has attracted some hostility over the years, but the staff say there is broad acceptance, and a sizeable visiting congregation. Visits have been fewer during the pandemic, but they expect it to pick up again, especially with the renewed attention in the Year of the Rabbit.
Today, the temple’s scope is broader than its initial purpose, and is a place for anyone to pray for love, friendship, and academic success – concerns which Lu notes are heightened for the young.
“At the time I created this temple, LGBTQI culture was not tolerated by the world’s major religions. Everyone needs to love and be loved,” Lu says. “These people are exiled from the whole world. We will take care of this group of people who have no one to take care of them.”
