The Summer Temple Fair | Furen Temple — The Promise Two Boys Made in the Forecourt

Two children stand in front of this temple and swear they will carry the god-general together on the twenty-fourth. Hsia Chih-hsun and Lin I-hsin are maybe ten years old. The whole of 神之鄉 exists to find out whether that promise survives the twenty years that come after it.

The forecourt is the reason the scene is set here rather than anywhere else. Taiwan's entire giant-spinning-top culture was invented on this ground in August 1968, when a local carver had a friend turn a five-catty top on a lathe and his apprentice got it spinning. Within a year they were up to fifty catties. Children played here because this is where the game came from — which is why the drama puts its childhood on this pavement.

Then in 2013 the city laid the plaza with stone tiles for a memorial installation, and the tops stopped gripping. The players packed up and moved to Puji Temple. So you are standing on handsome, deliberately smart slabs that killed the thing this plaza was famous for. Nobody will tell you that unless you ask.

Inside, on the tiger side, there is a stone stele from 1911 recording that the Lin Ben-yuan family were talked out of digging up a nearby hollow the locals held to be a dragon's spine. The temple was founded in 1813 and honours the Kaizhang Sage King alongside Lu Ban, patron of carpenters — appropriate in a town that made its money from wood.

Open four in the morning until half past eight at night, every day of the year, free.

Go in the late afternoon and watch who uses the forecourt now: scooters parked at angles, old men on stools, kids cutting across. The promise scene works because this is an ordinary place. It still is.

Location data: Taoyuan City tourism open data and DAXIDAXI Revival.