Following the Ming to Qing dynastic transition, a large wave of Han Chinese settlers from Fujian province began arriving in Taiwan in the 1660s, bringing with them the traditional religious practice of their homeland, Taoism among it, alongside Buddhism and folk religion. This settlement wave founded the temple culture that has continued on the island ever since, well before the twentieth century events that would later make Taiwan the faith's principal refuge.
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Disputed
Start YearSourced to the subject's own accountThe source states the influx of Fujian and Guangdong settlers began in the 1660s, a decade rather than a single year, and 1660 marks this event's atom for the decade's start; but the same source is explicit that there is little evidence the doctrinal, initiatory religion of Taoism itself, as against the folk worship of deities such as Mazu the settlers carried with them, was active in this early frontier period, since Taiwan held little draw for ordained Buddhist or Taoist religious leaders. Hoklo and Hakka Taoist masters transmitting institutional Taoism from Fujian and Guangdong are attested only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a reading the scholarly literature on Taiwanese Taoist ritual transmission (Kenneth Dean's study of Taoist ritual and popular cults in southeast China) corroborates. What is genuinely debated, then, is not which year in the 1660s settlers arrived, but whether "arrival" names the settlers' own folk practice at that date or the institutionally transmitted Taoism attested only two centuries later. Dates
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How Taoism Arrived in Taiwan with Fujian Settlers
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
In the 1660s, following the collapse of the Ming dynasty and the rise of the Qing, a large wave of Han Chinese settlers from Fujian province crossed the strait to Taiwan and began building new lives on an island that had, until then, held only a much smaller Chinese presence. They carried their homeland's religious practice with them, Taoism prominent among it, alongside Buddhism and the folk religion that had long run alongside both in Fujian itself.
The settlers built temples as they established themselves, founding a temple culture on Taiwan that continued unbroken from that first wave of migration onward rather than arriving as a later import. This was religious practice carried by ordinary settlers making a new home rather than installed by any ruling authority or missionary effort, taking root through the everyday business of building farms, villages and community life in unfamiliar territory.
What this changed for Taoism's spread was the planting of roots on Taiwan nearly three centuries before the island would become the tradition's principal refuge anywhere in the world. The temple culture the Fujian settlers founded in the 1660s was already well established, generations deep, long before the twentieth century upheavals that would later make Taiwan the largest home Taoism had anywhere outside mainland China itself.
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This source names Han Chinese directly: "dynastic transition, a large wave of Han Chinese settlers from Fujian province began arriving in Taiwan in the 1660s, bringing with them the traditional religious practice of their homeland, Taoism..."
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