Madou Daitian Temple

Madou Daitian Temple is a substantial Wangye temple, but what brings visitors from across Taiwan is what was built behind it: an enormous concrete dragon, some seventy metres long, that you enter through the mouth and walk through, with dioramas inside showing the eighteen levels of hell in vivid and unsparing detail, and a separate heaven section above. The figures move and the commentary is relentless. Children are brought here deliberately.

What's there

• The dragon passage - a seventy-metre concrete dragon walked through from the mouth.
• The eighteen hells - moving dioramas of punishments, in explicit detail.
• The heaven section - the counterpart above, calmer and less visited.
• The main temple - the Wangye halls the complex is built around.

When to go

Year round; the temple and dragon keep daily hours. Weekends bring families. Summer inside the dragon is hot and airless.

Before you go

The hell dioramas are graphic and genuinely upset some children and adults; that is their purpose. The figures are dated and several no longer move. The commentary is in Mandarin only.

Nearby

Yanshui is north, and Tainan city is south.

Key facts