22
JULIAN PAS
side Taichung, especially in Tainan City.
The majority of temples using the B-1 oracle (Matsu) are not dedicated to the goddess Matsu, but to a variety of gods and goddesses of the popular cult. In most cases Matsu has her image in these temples as well, but many deities do not have a particular set of their own and borrow the most commonly used one. Most of these oracle slips are printed in Taichung by a local printing shop, which also publishes the Matsu, Kuan Ti and Kuan Yin oracles in booklet form. (See Appendix I and bibliography).
Besides the above listed temples, duly registered in the city hall of Taichung, I discovered during my marathon walks crisscross through the city, a considerable number of smaller temples, often essentially private family shrines to which the public are allowed access, which also contain temple oracles for the use of worshippers. These temples are not found in the City Hall list since the owners do not wish government interference in their operations. Moreover, there is no strict rule that these semi-private shrines have to be registered. It is also possible that these smaller shrines do not fully satisfy some of the conditions outlined by the government.
Table 2: Non-registered temples or shrines in Taichung City (36 temples: 37 oracles)
B-1 B-2 B-6 B-43 Not Avail. Total Taoist 26 6 1 1 28 Buddhist 7 1 7 1 1 Total 34 3 37The grand total of Tables 1 and 2 combined are as follows:
Table 3: Registered and Non-registered Temples in Taichung City
B-1 B-2 B-6 B-9 B-43 Other Not Avail. Total Confucian 1 1 Taoist 69 21 1 1 11 1 104 Buddhist 16 7 6 18 47 85 28 7 1 1 0 30 152