Paul Mozur/The Wall Street Journal

Kuomintang vice-presidential candidate Wu Wu Den-yih (center left) visits a temple in Taichung with local legislator Yen Ching-piao (center right) on January 3, 2011.

Even as Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive Party organized a rally in the southern city of Taichung that would attract roughly 12,000 followers, a senior official of the ruling Kuomintang held his own audience with a much smaller – but perhaps more powerful – nearby constituency.

KMT vice-presidential candidate Wu Den-yih on Tuesday evening visited a local temple and about fifty of its followers. Glued to his side during the visit was Yen Ching-piao, who once served prison sentences for racketeering and weapons but has since become a legislator. Mr. Yen – nicknamed “Dong gua-piao” by the local press, a label that compares his girth to the shape of a melon — is renowned in Taiwan politics for his extensive patronage network in the area. He holds considerable influence over the temple through his leadership of a larger temple outside Taichung.

Arriving in an escorted cavalcade, Mr. Wu met with the followers, who donned yellow vests broadcasting the virtues of their temple, and then went to the altar at the temple where he bowed several times while lifting up symbolic offerings provided to him by helpers. He and Mr. Yen then spoke to the crowd before retiring to a side room in the temple’s office and ate fruit with the followers. In less than an hour Mr. Wu hopped back into his van and speeding off into the night.

Addressing the followers in Taiwanese, Mr. Yen touted the many positions Mr. Wu has held, adding, “Whether you’re in the north of Taiwan, or the center, or the south, Mr. Wu is like your friendly neighbor.”

Mr. Wu is famous for his superstitions, and local media attribute his canny political moves to a fortune teller his wife consults in Hong Kong. Still, it’s unlikely piety brought him to the temple. Mr. Yen controls tens of thousands of votes, and in making appearances with Mr. Wu he is making it clear who his followers should vote for.

The DPP’s rally that same night pushed supporters to jump up and down and wave banners to the speeches of party heavyweights, but Mr. Wu’s 40-minute visit might have been more-effective politics. The KMT often makes use of temple-centered networks to drum up support. The temples act just not as centers for worship, but are also places to hold activities and where community members can gather and shoot the breeze.

With roughly a week until Taiwan’s key presidential elections which pit current president Ma Ying-jeou against opposition DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen, strategists with both parties have said they have more or less abandoned trying to convince independent voters and are now focusing on ensuring their own supporters hit the polls in big numbers. Both parties each use familiar methods of advertisements, rallies and phone banks. But where the DPP excels at throwing rallies, the KMT has remained adept at pulling the strings of these networks.

The relationships between local politicians and temple leaders and their supporters allows the KMT to keep close tabs on how many votes it will receive in each area and distribute resources accordingly to areas where it’s weak, said Ketty Chen, visiting research fellow at National Taiwan University. The networks are built on years of close cultivation of relationships and cooperation with local communities. Inherently based around a patron-client relationship, major figures will attend local weddings and funerals, politicians will distribute pork-barrel type projects, and local temple offices will provide local services as small as allowing community members to use office fax machines, according to Ms. Chen.

Politics may rarely be overtly discussed, Ms. Chen says, but when local community members wander into temple offices, they are given reasons why they should support the KMT. If the community members have been helped in some way, come election time, local temple leaders will remind local followers how certain figures and parties have helped them in the past.

“They don’t talk unification or national policy things that you hear the big politicians in Taipei talk about,” she said. “They deal with very local neighborhood stuff, and if you can help people with that, people will tend to vote for the candidate.”

The DPP is renowned for its ability to throw passionate rallies that would soften the heart of the most cynical political observer. But despite the crowds, many times in the past the KMT’s low-level work pays off when it comes time to count votes. It’s a reminder that as the vote nears and the parties continue to throw resources at massive rallies – the DPP’s Ms. Tsai has roughly 30 more to go in the last eight days – it’s not who throws the biggest party, but who is awake the next morning to vote.

–Paul Mozur and Jenny W. Hsu

News:

* A city in western China seeks to banish the veil to “dilute religious consciousness” (Reuters)

* The first satellite photo of China’s aircraft carrier (MSNBC)

* And the world’s top financial center is… (GlobalPost)

* Strategic candor from a former ambassador (Economist)

* High hopes arrives with China’s new securities regulator (Caixin)

* Guangzhou moves to legalize street hawking (The Nanfang)

Analysis and Commentary:

* Kam Wing Chan on what geography has to say about the China infrastructure bubble (East Asia Forum)

Just Because:

* The challenges of being an olfactory discriminator in China (China Daily)

*  ”Tiger Mother” Amy Chua’s got nothing on China’s “Wolf Dad” (NPR)

Sou Fujimoto Architects

An artists rendering of Sou Fujimoto’s “Taiwan Tower” design.

Even in an era of stadiums shaped like birds nests and skyscrapers that look like sails, Sou Fujimoto’s design for a 300-meter triangular steel structure inspired by the banyan tree manages to surprise.

Just as surprising: the city that plans to build it.

Dubbed “The Taiwan Tower,” Mr. Sou’s building is slated to go up, not in Beijing or Dubai, but in Taichung, Taiwan’s third most populous city.

The $265-million structure is a part of a bid to raise Taichung’s international profile – and, city officials hope, its tourism revenues. It will boast four above-ground floors supported by hundreds of steel beams, allowing in plenty of natural light and creating a semi-transparent plaza-like space. The rooftop will feature a greenery-filled “floating” garden, overlooking the city and the Taiwan Strait. Mr. Fujimoto says the beams were inspired by the prop roots that help support the branches of banyan trees.

In an effort to challenge Paris’ Eiffel Tower — in spectacle if not in height – the Taiwan Tower’s beams will be outfitted with light-emitting diodes that will be lit up at night or serve as a big screen for still or moving projected images.

The building, in which two storeys will be underground, will be home of a museum of the city’s development and an environmental quality monitoring station. It will also have a sightseeing elevator, numerous cafe and shops.

Taichung, famous for the manufacture of shoes and bicycles, has been trying to rival Taipei and Kaohsiung—Taiwan’s two largest cities–under the aggressive leadership of Mayor Jason Hu, who was Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Minister in the 1990s.

In the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis earlier this year, Mr. Hu made headlines by proposing that the island’s capital be moved from Taipei to Taichung. Both Taipei and Kaohsiung were too close to nuclear power plants, he argued. The proposal failed to generate much serious discussion, largely because the concentration of commercial activities and people in Taipei would make relocation unrealistic.

While it remains to be seen whether the Taiwan can rival Taipei’s iconic 101-story Tower 101 as a tourist draw, Mr. Fujimoto’s surreal design has generated plenty of online discussion. Legislators and local councillors have blasted the project as too extravagant – an argument that has gained traction with sputtering demand for exports battering some of the city’s smaller enterprises.

The tower is scheduled to open by 2017, though Taichung’s Urban Development Bureau warns the project could take longer to complete as it could take time to convince the local council to approve the budget.

– Aries Poon