Pung Thao Kong Shrine, Chiang Mai清迈本头公庙

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Thailand · Chiang Mai Province · Chiang Mai City · Praisani Road, near Warorot Market and the riverside

Coordinates

18.7898, 99.0019 Map ↗

First built

1876 · Built collectively by Chiang Mai's Chinese community; rebuilt in 1995 on the occasion of Chiang Mai's 700th anniversary

Overview

Pung Thao Kong Shrine was founded in 1876, is the oldest surviving Chinese temple in Chiang Mai, and is the central landmark of Chiang Mai's Chinatown, around the Warorot Market. It is dedicated chiefly to Bentou Gong (also called Tua Pek Kong in Hokkien communities), a pioneer-and-land-guardian deity unique to the Chinese of Southeast Asia and unknown in China itself — a cult newly arisen among immigrant communities in the "Southern Ocean" (Nanyang), and one generally classed by scholars as Chinese folk religion rather than institutional Daoism. After Chiang Mai's Chinese population declined, the shrine fell for a time into disrepair; it was rebuilt through community fundraising in 1995, on the occasion of the seven-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Chiang Mai, when a tower and dragon ornaments were added and two shophouses in front of the shrine were demolished to "let the air pass through."

Highlights

• The oldest surviving Chinese temple in Chiang Mai
• Dedicated to Bentou Gong, a cult unique to Southeast Asian Chinese communities
• Rebuilt in 1995 for Chiang Mai's 700th anniversary
• The central landmark of Chiang Mai's Chinatown