Guting Difu Yingong Temple

A tiny shrine to Yingong (陰公), a female yin spirit, jutting into the pavement at the corner of Roosevelt Road and Tong’an Street outside Guting Station in Taipei. A geographer at National Taiwan Normal University dates it to the late Qing dynasty, when it stood among fields on the outskirts of a village, a placement consistent with the belief that fierce yin spirits guard a settlement against threats from outside. A local story, never properly documented, holds that it began with the body of an unidentified woman washed up after a flood. The modern street grid later wrapped around it, and a 2000 plan to demolish it for road widening was shelved after residents protested.