Keelung Shengji Temple (基隆聖濟宮)

The temple exterior on a gloomy afternoon in 2016. Shengji Temple stands below the modest Yunlong Mountain (雲龍山) in Zhongzheng District, Keelung, and primarily venerates a red-faced incarnation of Sun Wukong (孫悟空), the Monkey King from the Chinese classic Journey to the West (西遊記). The temple was founded in 1959 by Guo Yushui (郭玉水), a practitioner of Chinese medicine whose family had kept the Sun Wukong image as an heirloom for generations. In the early post-war years fires regularly swept through the surrounding neighbourhood and the deity was said to have instructed that his own image be carried through the flames to absorb the calamity; no further fires followed, and the newly-built temple became a center of devotion in the district. The main altar of Shengji Temple in 2016. Sun Wukong occupies the center of the main altar.One of the few temples where I’ve seen bananas as offerings. The temple prospered in the 1960s and became a regular place of pilgrimage for families and their…