Wuji Fude Temple

A small temple to Tudigong (土地公), the Earth God, in rural Xihu, founded late in the Qing dynasty and known for displaying a pair of granite geese. They were unearthed from a nearby mound when a railway was built for Xihu Sugar Factory in the Japanese colonial era, and lay discarded beside the temple until a later rebuilding. The origin of these unusual monuments is shrouded in myth. Competing legends explain them as fengshui charms buried by one settler community to spoil the fortunes of another, as wards against snakes, or as a memorial to geese whose honking foiled a night raid.