Leaving their native land in Fujian and Guangdong for Taiwan, China, the early immigrants also brought with them the folk cultures from their birthplaces as they traveled all the way to settle down in the foreign land. It was through the same journey that the deities, be it the nationwide gods such as Guan Kong (關公, also known as Guan Yu) and Guan Yin (觀世音, also known as Guanshiyin or bodhisattva) or the local gods in Fujian and Guangdong, were introduced to Taiwan one following another. Throughout the three to four centuries of religious development, the deities and temples map has become what it is today, with the worship of Sheng-Hsian Gods (saints and sages) as the major and the most widely-practiced one in contemporary Taiwan.
Accordingly, most of the deities being worship used to be the living saints and sages in the past dynasties who either made great contribution to the country or great moral models for the people. Generally speaking, apart from the nationwide gods or the local gods from Fujian and Guangdong as mentioned above, the common local worship in Taiwan is not limited to Cheng Cheng-Kong, as an important historical figure in the Cheng Dynasty in Taiwan, but also the General Chen Yung-Hua from the same period who later became another popular deity, while other deities from the Cheng Dynasty are mostly worshipped in the area and the vicinity where they made their names famous, such as Tīnn King (鄭府二千歲鄭經)of Yungkang’s The Second King Temple (二王廟, Lī-ông Temple in Taiwanese or Er-Wang Temple in Mandarin) only worshipped in the Lī-ông (Er-Wang) region as the main deity, and the Ming-Dynasty Prince of Ningching Chu Shu-Kui of Luchu Huashan Temple only in the regions of Luchu and Chuhu. Although the worship of deities belonging to local regions and communities has never become a common religious belief, there are still plenty of stories about the deities related to the local history for us to memorize and pay respect to. This paper thus attempts to provide an introductory survey on the worshipped deities from the Cheng Dynasty other than Cheng Cheng-Kong in Southern Taiwan to look into the history and stories of the deities in their respective regions, their distribution, and the reasons of them being worshipped.