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In addition to the Cultural Chests project commissioned by the National Museum of History, Master Wang Dang-Bai’s studio was seeing growing business. These days, visitors came frequently, and Chen Jin-Jieh found himself assigned difficult tasks he could not refuse. Finally, Master Wang explained the latest challenge—they needed to reproduce the nine celestial beasts that adorned the roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City.

What? Chen Jin-Jieh, who had grown up in rural Taiwan and dropped out of high school, knew almost nothing about China. He had only heard of the city of Beijing. “Forbidden City” was a new term to him, let alone the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and certainly not the celestial beasts on its roof.

The blank look on Chen Jin-Jieh’s face told Master Wang that the challenge was greater than he had anticipated. “I’ve asked architect Hou Chung-Mu to collect as many images as possible,” Master Wang said. The Nationalist Party was planning to remodel the Taiwan Gokoku Shrine, originally built by the Japanese colonial government, into a shrine for revolutionaries.

“Revolutionaries?” Chen Jin-Jieh asked, bewildered. A couple of years earlier, he had been seized by military police during their takeover of Al’apawan Prison after a failed escape attempt, accused of betraying the nation. He had overheard that many men arrested before him were to be executed. Privately, these men were also called revolutionaries. Chen Jin-Jieh wondered why some revolutionaries were condemned and killed, while others were worshipped after death. But he knew better than to speak his thoughts aloud.

“Anyway, the National Leader wanted a shrine for the revolutionaries who followed Dr. Sun Yat-sen and sacrificed their lives to establish the Republic of China. He instructed the architect to replicate the style of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City.”

But after Master Wang explained what the Forbidden City and the Hall of Supreme Harmony were, Chen Jin-Jieh grew even more confused:

The Republic of China overthrew the imperial court, and now it is building something exactly like the emperor’s palace—for the people who died opposing the emperor?

Master Wang shrugged. After a pause, he added, “There were also martyrs who died in the Sino-Pacific War against the Japanese military, and soldiers who fell during the Chinese Civil War.”

“That’s why the government demolished the Gokoku Shrine on the site? Because it was a place where the enemy had been worshipped. What happened to their spirit tablets?”

“Some were taken back to Japan after the war, and some were relocated to Buddhist temples that agreed to adopt them,” Master Wang explained.

“The ghosts of those who died in China are brought here, and the ghosts of those who died in Taiwan remain. That’s a lot of ghosts on this island.”

Master Wang frowned and chided, “Show some respect!”

Several days later, architect Hou Chung-Mu called to inform them that he had collected some images of the Forbidden City’s architecture.

“That’s good news. Bring them over and we can discuss them,” Master Wang said over the telephone.

But when he arrived and laid out the pictures he had found, Master Wang and Chen Jin-Jieh exchanged a bewildered glance.

One of the photographs was black-and-white, taken in 1918, when diplomats in China gathered in front of the Forbidden City with their national flags to celebrate the end of the Great War. The eaves of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, with its celestial beasts, appeared in the upper right corner—merely part of the background. The shapes were so blurred that, without explanation, no one could have recognized them as animals; they might have been anything at all.

The second photograph was also black-and-white: a man in a black robe and black hat stood alone before the palace, his head turned to the left, a mask covering his mouth. Clearly, the mask was meant to protect him from foul air, for the buildings behind him were lost in a thick haze. This picture was even worse—the entire complex was shrouded in smoke, making it impossible to tell it was the Forbidden City. Master Wang could not understand why architect Hou Chung-Mu had brought such a useless image. Yet Hou Chung-Mu seemed to admire it greatly.

“What a masterpiece of photographic art!” he exclaimed.

Master Wang looked at Chen Jin-Jieh, his expression saying what was on his mind: “What nonsense!”

He began to think he might have to give up the project. There was no way he could determine the features of the celestial beasts from such useless images. After the two vague photographs, Hou Chung-Mu produced a painting—Spring Morning in the Han Palace—a partial copy of a horizontal scroll dating back to the Qing Dynasty. On the roofs of the buildings in the painting, animals stood along the ridges. Compared to the black-and-white photos, these figures were clearer, but still not clear enough for craftsmen like Master Wang and Chen Jin-Jieh to create three-dimensional sculptures from a two-dimensional painting.

Master Wang kept shaking his head and sighing. Seeing this, architect Hou Chung-Mu grew nervous.

“The National Leader has visited the construction site many times. He insists the style must be exactly the same as the palace in Beijing.”

But ever since the Civil War, people had been strictly banned from traveling across the strait. No one on this side could examine the details on the roofs of the Forbidden City.

As Master Wang was about to reject architect Hou Chung-Mu’s commission, Chen Jin-Jieh suddenly intervened. “No problem, we’ll take care of it. Come back next month to see the models—we will produce models of each of these animals.”

“Thanks! Thanks! I knew your studio could do everything! A million thanks!” Hou Chung-Mu shook Chen Jin-Jieh’s hand eagerly, then reached for Master Wang’s hand and bowed, though Master Wang did not extend his own. After Hou Chung-Mu left, Master Wang folded his arms across his chest and fixed his gaze on Chen Jin-Jieh, waiting for an explanation.

“A fairy riding a beast, followed by a dragon, a phoenix, a lion, a sea horse, a sky horse, a… how do you read this? Suan ni? And… what? Hsia fish? Then what is this? A hsieh zhi? After that a dou niu, and a hsin shi…”

“Han shi,” Master Wang corrected him. “It is a monkey-like being.” He sighed. This young man had just promised to reproduce these animals without even knowing what they were.

“Whatever. Have you ever seen a dragon? Have you ever seen a phoenix? A sea horse or a sky horse? Or those… what… suan ni and hsieh zhi, whose names are barely pronounceable?”

“Nope,” Master Wang admitted.

“And had the client—the much-revered National Leader—ever seen these animals?”

“I suppose not.” Master Wang was beginning to understand what Chen Jin-Jieh had in mind.

In the following weeks, they visited the National Museum of History and the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which housed treasures relocated from the Forbidden City in Beijing, searching for images of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. From the very old and distant photographs, they tried to sketch out the possible features of each of the nine auspicious animals.

These animals symbolized the guardians of the emperor, who was said to be the son of the highest deity, dispatched from heaven. The dragon represented the emperor himself, while the phoenix ensured harmony in the court. The lion strengthened the emperor’s bravery, and the sea horse and sky horse signified that imperial power extended as far as the seas and the skies. Suan ni, related to but distinct from the lion, was associated with wisdom. The hsia fish, believed to control clouds and smoke, protected the palace from fire. The dou niu was considered a son of the dragon, and the hsien zhi helped the emperor distinguish right from wrong. Finally, the han shih served as a lightning rod, preventing the building from being struck during storms.

As they sculpted these figures, the most entertaining moments came from Chen Jin-Jieh’s sarcastic remarks. “Obviously the court was not very harmonious. Wasn’t Emperor Guangxu’s favorite concubine forced to jump into a well by Empress Dowager Cixi?” he quipped. Chen Jin-Jieh knew this story from television dramas; the tragedy had been dramatized more than once by TV producers.

“And if the emperors were truly able to practice justice by distinguishing right from wrong, why did their dynasties collapse? If their powers were said to reach the seas and the skies, why were invading forces from the West able to inflict such tremendous damage? If they were granted wisdom, why were their courtiers so often weak or corrupt?” The weeks they spent studying these animals became profound lessons in history, and Chen Jin-Jieh proved himself a quick learner.

What neither Master Wang nor Chen Jin-Jieh said aloud was that if these celestial beasts had failed to protect the emperors from downfall, they would hardly guarantee the survival of the current regime. The arbitrary arrests of those accused of aiding the Al’apawan prison break—which had nearly cost Chen Jin-Jieh his life two years earlier—were the clearest example. Law enforcement was not pursuing justice; it was consumed with serving its superiors, blindly carrying out orders regardless of whether they made sense. With unchecked power and arrogance, the authorities were incapable of accessing real information. Chen Jin-Jieh also realized that if the prison insurgency had succeeded and a new Republic of Taiwan had been established, the revolutionaries honored and worshipped would have been those executed without due process, while those who died for the Republic of China would have been forgotten.

When architect Hou Chung-Mu returned, they presented the clay models of the nine beasts and the immortal riding a rooster, which was meant to be placed at the front tip of the palace eaves. From certain angles, the figures did resemble those on the roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Hou Chung-Mu, clearly an art lover with refined taste, was delighted—his eyes shone as he admired the marvelous clay figurines, and he was not shy in offering praise. Once the design was agreed upon, whether the figures were authentic or inventive no longer mattered. He instructed that some of the legs be repositioned to secure them to the roof ridge as structural stabilizers, and that certain postures be adjusted to prevent rain leakage. They then sat down to discuss details of dimensions, coloring, firing, coating, and glazing.

“Are they green?” Chen Jin-Jieh asked, recalling the ancient painting Hou Chung-Mu had shown them the previous month.

“Yellow, definitely yellow! Yellow represents the royal court.”

Chen Jin-Jieh and Master Wang exchanged a glance, silently mocking the obsession of a republic that had overthrown the monarchy yet still clung to its symbols.

When Hou Chung-Mu left in high spirits, Chen Jin-Jieh said, “I knew he had good taste.” Master Wang tried to suppress his laughter, but he remained worried that Hou Chung-Mu might fail to convince the National Leader of their invented celestial beasts.

Fortunately, everything went well. Today, visitors can pay their respects to those who sacrificed for the establishment of the Republic of China or who defended it during the Sino-Pacific War and the Chinese Civil War. In the Shrine for Revolutionaries, new honorees have also been added: medical caregivers who died during the raging pandemic, firefighters who lost their lives in the line of duty, and people killed while trying to save others in rescue missions.

Master Wang is now in his nineties, and Chen Jin-Jieh in his seventies. They never spoke again about the imaginative work they had carried out under the commission of architect Hou Chung-Mu—who passed away several years ago—for the Shrine for Revolutionaries.