Snake Temple (Temple of the Azure Clouds), Penang槟城蛇庙（青云岩）

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

Malaysia · Penang (state) · Balik Pulau, George Town · Jalan Tokong Ular, Bayan Lepas

Coordinates

5.3139, 100.2852 Map ↗

First built

1805 · The English name 'Temple of the Azure Clouds' corresponds to the character qing (青, 'azure') in Qingyun Yan; the commonly written form with qing (清, 'clear') is a corruption. A snake breeding center was established in 2005

Overview

Penang's Snake Temple was built in 1805 and is dedicated mainly to Chor Soo Kong (Qingshui Zushi), an eminent Song-dynasty monk of Anxi, Quanzhou, and the ancestral-homeland deity of immigrants from Anxi in southern Fujian. The temple is well known for the green pit vipers (Wagler's pit viper) that gather naturally within it; believers hold them to be reincarnations of Chor Soo Kong's disciples, and the incense smoke that has filled the temple year-round is said to have made them docile — the snakes have had their venom removed but retain their fangs, making this a temple featuring live snakes that is rare anywhere in the world. Every year on the sixth day of the first lunar month, the birthday of Chor Soo Kong, believers from Singapore, Taiwan, and China come to worship. A snake breeding center was established in 2005. The temple is a site where Buddhist and Daoist popular religion have blended together — Chor Soo Kong was originally a Buddhist monk, but in southern Fujian and the Nanyang region he was absorbed into the popular pantheon and is worshipped with Daoist ritual protocols — and it is thus not a purely Daoist temple. Its Chinese name should properly use the character qing (青, 'azure') — matching the English name 'Temple of the Azure Clouds' — whereas the commonly seen written form using the character qing (清, 'clear') instead is a corruption, unsupported by any authoritative inscription.

Highlights

• Known for its green pit vipers
• Dedicated mainly to Chor Soo Kong
• The birthday of Chor Soo Kong on the sixth day of the first lunar month
• A snake breeding center (2005)