Zhaijiao in Taiwan

Zhaijiao (齋教), literally “the vegetarian teaching”, is a loose family of folk religious movements that emerged in southeastern China as offshoots of Luoism (羅教), a syncretic salvationist faith founded by Luo Qing (1442–1527). Adherents maintained varying degrees of strict vegetarianism, blended Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, and folk elements, and worshipped in ordinary halls (堂) rather than monasteries, remaining entirely independent of the Buddhist monastic establishment. Three main branches, Longhuadao (龍華道), Jintongdao (金幢道), and Xiantian (先天道), arrived in Taiwan during the Qing dynasty era and built up a network of fasting halls across the island, particularly in the south. Indeed, the grouping of these otherwise distinct sects under a single “zhaijiao” banner is largely an exonym imposed by Japanese colonial officials who, noting the shared vegetarian diet, chose to treat them collectively for statistical and policy-making purposes.

Early colonial relations were tense, and after the 1915 Tapani Incident (噍吧哖事件), an anti-Japanese uprising whose ringleaders had used a zhaijiao meeting hall as their base, these religions fell under deep official suspicion. To avoid persecution, many halls across Taiwan hastily affiliated themselves with the Sōtō Zen school (曹洞宗) of Japanese Buddhism, beginning with the Tainan Vegetarian Mind Society (齋心社) of 1912 and culminating in island-wide bodies such as the Patriotic Buddhist Association (愛國佛教會). The Kōminka movement (皇民化運動) of the late 1930s and the temple “renovation” campaigns of 1938–1939 accelerated this absorption, forcing still more halls to take shelter under Japanese Buddhist administration at the cost of their own scriptures, liturgies, and independence. By war’s end the surviving halls were widely regarded by ordinary Taiwanese as collaborators, and the tradition never recovered its pre-war vitality; many halls were subsequently absorbed by orthodox Buddhist monastics or drifted toward folk and Daoist practice, and while a fair number of the historic buildings still stand, some enjoying heritage protection, zhaijiao today is generally regarded as another variety of Buddhism.