Xianling (Sheeyan Ling 先靈廟) Temple wasn’t meant to be a hip hop temple, but it was destined. It’s a small space, but through the power of the culture and the web, its vibrations will be felt around the world.
The Foundation
Xianling Temple started as a place to house “unknown bones” found during construction. This is customary in Taiwan—a way to pay respect to the unknown ancestors who laid the ground we walk on. For more than 40 years, since 1976, this temple did that. Locals kept the incense lit for the gods and the nameless ancestors.
In a temple this small, the work usually rests on the shoulders of one person: the miaogong (meyow gong 廟公). We’ll call him the Abbot for fun. Sometime in the last ten years, this little temple lost its Abbot. With no one to take care of it, the space fell into total abandonment. Junk covered the inside and outside. The spirits were left in the dark.
The Lightning Strikes
This is where I entered the temple chat. I walked by this temple weekly for years and never thought much about it. Then, in 2022, I was struck by spiritual lightning.
Western medicine calls them “manic episodes.” I’ve had many over the years, and they always have a spiritual component—a high-voltage frequency that demands action. This time, the spirits directed my attention toward that abandoned temple. The most important thing I did that year was install Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. People all over Asia love Guanyin, and so do I—I have her tattooed on my back.
Planted in the middle of that abandonment, Guanyin was a spiritual flag the locals could connect with. I bought a large incense burner for the table outside; incense burning makes it alive and real to visitors. But eventually, that initial surge of energy was used up. I had to go “underground” (depression) to recover. Even though I’ve been getting struck with spiritual lightning like this for decades, I still hadn’t built up the capacity to fully receive the energy without spiralling out of control.
While I was away, someone else unhoused moved into the space. When they left, the junk piled up again. The temple just collected more and more junk until lightning struck me again in November 2025.
The Harlem Sidequest
To understand what happened next, we have to go back to 2021—a year before I even thought about the temple.
While I was in Harlem, New York, I picked up a Black Panther Party medallion. It traveled with me as I visited the Wu-Tang “holy sites,” and eventually made its way to Taiwan. Because of this medallion, a friend gifted me a Black Panther Marvel toy. This toy became the Black Panther Bodhisattva (黑豹菩薩), the second god I added to the temple.
We’re back in 2025. My relationship with that medallion was intense. At one point, it felt too powerful, so I left it at the temple as an offering. I walked by one day, saw it was gone, and thought: “Good. Someone else needs it more than I do.” Months passed. I ended up helping a friend move to an apartment just a minute away from the temple. Once they were moved in, I walked past and was stunned: my medallion was back. Someone wrapped it around the incense burner. It was like someone had put up the “Black Panther Signal” to summon me back.
It worked.
Storming the Gates
Between October and November 11th, I moved slowly. I posted the progress on social media. I eventually bought bolt cutters to deal with the five rusted locks on the gate.
When a friend’s wife saw the bolt cutters, she suggested I check in with the local official (the Li-Zhang 里長, neighborhood boss). She thought they’d be happy someone wanted to clean it up. When I arrived at the office, three a-mas (grandmothers 阿媽) were sitting at a table. When I told them I wanted to clean the place out and install Tudi Gong (the God of the Earth, Earth Unc 土地公), they were hyped!
But the excitement was short-lived. Later that day, I got a phone call telling me not to do anything because it was private property. Damn son! That almost killed the project. But the next day, I started digging for the truth. I found police boxes that proved a public/private agreement existed. I saw signs about public land access. And the plaque inside clearly stated the temple’s mandate for community use.
With deep thinking (and some strategy sessions with Gemini), I decided to stop asking for permission and start taking action. It was a new moon. I was hit with that spiritual lightning again, and this time, I was ready for the voltage.
I went straight to the temple with the bolt cutters.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. The locks were gone. The temple was open.
The cops came while I was hauling out the junk. They tried to talk me out of clearing out the temple, but I was ready for every argument they threw at me. They left defeated. Then the Neighborhood Boss showed up. When I explained the vision, I finally got the green light. A government official was officially on board.
The Installation: Earth Unc & Ol’ Dirty Immortal
Once the space was clear, it was time to bring the heavy hitters home.
Earth Unc (Tudi Gong) had been hanging out at a friend’s house. Ol’ Dirty Immortal (the spirit of ODB) was hanging out at a local record shop. I consulted a digital Chinese farmers’ almanac, found an auspicious day to move them, and realized it fell on the Saturday I was celebrating my birthday.
Normally, you cover a god’s eyes when moving them so bad spirits can’t get in. Not Earth Unc. He’s Hip Hop. He wanted to see the streets. We left his eyes open so he could take in the city before settling in.
Earth Unc and ODB met up at the 23 Public anniversary celebration. Earth Unc was hanging out right by the DJ booth while the records spun.
By the end of the night, both gods were installed on the altar. The Xianling Hip Hop Temple was live. After having ODB as a Hip Hop Folk God, the next biggest remix for this temple is shifting it from paying respect to nameless ancestors to paying respect to all ancestors.
Remember…
The best are like [DIRT]
Daodejing, Chapter 8 [DIRTY VERSION]
bringing help to all
without competing
choosing what others avoid
they thus approach the Tao
