The Grand Mazu Temple right across the Chihkan Tower suffers from the typical Taiwan temple problem. It is really difficult to nail the name in English. Google Maps is saying Grand Mazu Temple, Wikipedia prefers Grand Matsu Temple or Great Queen of Heaven Temple so who knows. But we can visit it and that is what is important right now. The entrance is directly into the temple and we are not sure why it is Grand before noticing that it actually continues further in the back.
In fact there is a reason why it is located near the Chihkan tower, it is located in the palace of the Southern Ming prince Zhu Shugui, constructed for him near the Chihkan Tower in 1664. It has become a temple in 1684 after the initial occupant and his five concubines all killed themselves after a defeat and the new owner decided to create a temple instead of the palace.
As we proceed in the back we are surprised at the maze like structure of the main temple with many subtemples, each of them with their own deities and people praying to them.
And then there are the subtemples where there is an overflow of deities, we are not even sure to whom to pray even if we wanted to.
At least there is a central alcove where we assume the major gods are so we have a moment of silence before taking a look at the wall of coins or statues, we are not certain.
There are a few signs that the temple is quite old however it has been renovated multiple times since then, it burned down in 1818, it was almost sold to private investors during the Japanese times but in the end it was renovated to what can be visited now.
And then we assume we finished all subtemples and find our way to the entrance with a bit of difficulty. It is quite hot but we still have some energy left and decide to go towards the Hayashi Department Store where we hope we will have some AC to cool us down.
