The Mazu goddess, revered by Chinese cultures throughout for generations as a guardian of mariners, is incredibly popular in Taiwan. The Dajia Jenn Lann Temple in the city of Taichung arranges an annual 300-kilometer, nine-day pilgrimage with a deity statue that attracts a large number of devotees.
The pilgrimages and accompanying festivities have created what is regarded as the “Mazu economy,” which refers to contributions and shopping on Mazu-themed items as well as commercial possibilities associated with the faith. The Qing Dynasty-era Dajia Jenn Lann Temple has opted to incorporate Web 3.0 into its operations. It is minting and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing the sea deity that serve as a priority entry for the Spring pilgrimage.
The MazuDAO NFTs went on sale in August for NT$ 18,880 (US$615) via the temple’s MazuBuyBuy e-commerce portal and everywhere else. The temple has coined and sold about 2,800 NFTs to far. The nine-day journey is estimated to produce over NT$5 billion (US$163 million) in expenditure. Mingkun Cheng, deputy chairman of the board of the Dajia Jenn Lann Temple, informed Forkast that around 500,000 individuals participated in the pilgrimage on the day Mazu returned to the home temple.
Cheng said that the MazuDAO NFTs attract to the increasing number of younger pilgrims because the MazuDAO NFTs have a youthful aesthetic. Mao-Hsien Lin, an associate professor at National Taichung University of Education’s Taiwanese languages and literature department, told Forkast that several conventional cultural practises are adapting to digital and technological development.
Lin, who studies the Mazu faith, stated, nevertheless, that many senior adherents are skeptical of the advances. Lin stated, “They favor personal interaction and direct engagement with the statues of the deities.” They are uncertain if the goddesses are accessible to answer their pleas if they pray via web.
Lin indicated, nevertheless, that the pilgrimage priority benefit for NFT holders may not appeal to traditional believers. “When we worship, the space between yourself and the statue is often irrelevant. “It’s not as if you’d get preferential treatment for your proximity,” he continued. It is getting too marketed.
To reach the target audience of conventional believers, the NFT development team prepared offline marketing strategies, a strategy distinct from the majority of NFT initiatives, which focus internet marketing platforms. Jerry Yan, the campaign head for MazuDAO, told Forkast that many senior followers do not even own smartphones and “live in a Web 0.0 world.”
“We had to put up advertising kiosks in front of the temple to promote MazuDAO NFTs to those Web0 believers,” Yan stated, adding that they also required a telephone customer support staff to reach senior temple adherents.
“We frequently asked them over the phone to contact their grandkids for assistance in setting up their bitcoin wallets.” Cheng stated that the temple has enabled a number of online merchants to utilize its Mazu intellectual property to create products for sale on its e-commerce site MazuBuyBuy.
Lin, the investigator, stated that Mazu has become a widely marketed intellectual property in Taiwan, with Mazu-themed items available at convenience shops and leading online retailers. Again, I feel that a substantial portion of the core of religion consists in providing believers with mental consolation. Lin said that excessive commercialization is not always a desirable thing. If we saw the god as a source of revenue, it would lose its divine quality.
Nevertheless, Cheng of the Dajia Jenn Lann Temple stated that the temple’s yearly shrines have drawn a growing number of younger individuals, several of whom broadcast recordings of the celebration and pilgrimage on social networking sites such as Instagram and YouTube. A year before , a Korean YouTuber located in Taiwan (referred to as Korean Kimchengu, meaning “Korean enoki mushroom”) participated on the trip and created a video that has received more than 580,000 views. Logan Beck, an American YouTuber residing in Taiwan, has also published a video on the 2021 journey, which has received over 405,000 visits as of this writing.