Taichung Chenghuang Temple

This city god temple traces its history back to 1889, when a temple was built in this area as part of the Qing effort to construct Taiwan City, a future capital for the newly-minted province. This effort never amounted to much and the original structure was demolished as part of Japanese colonial urban planning. Starting in the 1920s a shrine was reconstructed by local residents, and it has since grown to become the top-ranking temple of its kind in Taichung. It is certainly one of the more graphic city god temples in the country, with gory murals and impressive statues of the many figures in the underworld bureaucracy on display inside.