The Summer Temple Fair | Sanhe Wood Art Workshop — The Hall That Burns in Episode Eight

Sheng-en is Hsia Tien-lung's association — the hall, the god-generals, the men who carry them, the thing he has given his life to instead of to his son. In episode eight, Wang Ta-yi knocks over a spirit lamp in his sleep, dreams he has drawn the worst possible fortune stick, and wakes to find the place on fire. Lin I-hsin does not recover from it for the rest of the series.

The building that plays Sheng-en is a furniture workshop on a lane off Kangzhuang Road, and the casting is almost too neat. Lin Ching-ho founded it in the early 1960s making temple altar tables and formal armchairs. It has been building furniture for temples for sixty years. A production looking for somewhere that felt like a temple association did not have to dress it much.

Inside it is a working shop, not a museum. Offcuts too small for an altar table become coasters, chopsticks, butter spreaders, phone stands and tofu moulds, and the range is chalked up on a green board on the wall. There is a corner given over to stills and location panels from the drama, and more production photographs hung at the back among the machines.

Phone before you go. It is a private business with reservation-based courses, and the published hours contradict each other across three official pages — one says nine to six daily, another nine to five, another says closed at weekends and on national holidays. Assume you need to arrange it.

Book the two-hour morning class and make something small. You will be cutting scraps in the room where the association hall burned down, using the same wood the altar tables are made from, in a shop that was doing this before the story existed.

Location data: Daxi Wood Art Ecomuseum, Taoyuan City. Sources confirm the building as Sheng-en; none states the fire itself was shot on site. Photo courtesy of Taoyuan City Government.