ABSTRACT
The god of the first local cult set up in the settlement of Mountainstreet as a small town is generally called Ang Gong. A dictionary definition of Ang Gong is almost anonymous: 'the old god', 'the figure' or 'idol' as the missionary definition has it. This is not a division of the cult into several cults, nor of a single god into two, but of three men who brought to Taiwan from the mainland a figure of Ang Gong, another of his wife and a single incense pot. One of the local school-children who re-told this story made no connection between it and Ang Gong in the temple. Another, older graduate of the school did associate it with Ang Gong but she also insisted that the main statue in the temple which others called Ang Gong was a more China-wide and official cult deity, Shen Nong, patron deity of agriculture popularly known as the Five Crops King.
