A centuries-old imperial masterpiece at Taiwan's National Palace Museum has ignited a social media frenzy, drawing record weekend crowds and reigniting debate over a legend promising seven lifetimes of good fortune to anyone who lays eyes on it.
The object commanding all the attention is the Tibetan Dragon Canon — formally, the Imperial Gold-Ink Tibetan Kangyur — a 108-volume Buddhist scripture completed in 1669 at the Qing imperial court. Written in gold ink on indigo-dyed paper and adorned with thousands of pearls, coral, and turquoise, the work consumed more than 5,000 taels of gold in its creation. It is, by any measure, one of the most opulent Buddhist manuscripts ever produced.
How a Rinpoche Brought the Canon to a President's Attention
The Dragon Canon's current public prominence owes an unexpected debt to former Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. On February 9, 2008, just weeks before he left office, Chen made a private visit to the National Palace Museum specifically to view the Kangyur. The trip had a backstory: a high-ranking Rinpoche from a Tibetan Buddhist sect had arranged a meeting with Chen and used the occasion to tell him about the scripture sitting in the museum's vaults.
"The Rinpoche expressed that if this canon could be printed and made available for more people to see, it would be a very good thing," Liu Guowei told Storm Media in an interview. Liu is the researcher and section chief at the museum's Department of Calligraphy and Painting Documents and curated the current exhibition. Chen subsequently raised the idea with then-museum director Lin Man-li, setting in motion a licensing arrangement with Longgang Publishing for a facsimile edition. The complete published set carries a price tag of NT$1.88 million (approximately $59,000) per copy.
Grand Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang's Devotional and Political Gambit
The Canon's creation was itself a calculated act of imperial statecraft. In the sixth year of the Kangxi reign, Grand Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang (1613–1688) — the emperor's grandmother and de facto power behind the throne — issued the decree to produce the Kangyur on August 7, 1667, just days after Kangxi formally assumed personal rule at age 14. The project took two years to complete.
Xiaozhuang was of Mongolian descent, and Tibetan Buddhism was the dominant faith of both the Qing imperial court and the Mongolian nobility. Sponsoring a Kangyur of unrivaled scale and craftsmanship served multiple purposes simultaneously: it was a devotional act to pray for the young emperor's wellbeing and the stability of imperial rule, and it reinforced the political and religious alliance between Manchu and Mongol elites. The Gelug sect, which held religious and political authority in Tibet, had consolidated its position with Mongolian military support in the first half of the 17th century; Kangxi's father, Emperor Shunzhi, had hosted the Fifth Dalai Lama in Beijing. The Dragon Canon sat at the intersection of all these loyalties.
Kangxi went on to reign for 61 years and 10 months — the longest of any emperor in Chinese history.
Social Media Turned a Rare Manuscript into a Pilgrimage Site
The Dragon Canon is not new to exhibition. The National Palace Museum first displayed it publicly in 2011 and has featured it in several subsequent special exhibitions. Since the opening of the museum's southern branch in Chiayi on December 28, 2015, one volume has remained on permanent display there.
The current exhibition — "Dragon Canon: Imperial Power, Faith, and the Arts of a Golden Age" — marks the first time the Northern Branch has presented the Kangyur in its entirety together with its complete set of mounting components, including scripture-protecting boards, yellow satin sutra wrappers, and five-hued sutra curtains. The show opened its first phase on May 9 and entered a second phase running from August 8 to November 8, requiring advance reservations.
For its first two months, visitor numbers were strong by the standards of rare manuscript exhibitions, but nothing unusual. That changed around mid-July, when users of the social media platform Threads began posting accounts of peculiar physical sensations after viewing the Canon — including dizziness — claiming spiritual or mystical reactions. The posts spread rapidly. Young visitors began pairing trips to the Canon with black sugar bubble tea from the museum's first-floor restaurant, turning the outing into a packaged social media itinerary. Weekend visitor counts surpassed 10,000 — a level the museum typically reaches only on free-admission national holidays — with more than 80% of those visitors coming specifically for the Dragon Canon.
"The scale of the crowd really surprised us internally," Liu said. "The Dragon Canon has never drawn this kind of attention before."
The "Seven Lifetimes of Merit" Legend Cannot Be Traced to Imperial Records
The claim that a single glance at the Dragon Canon bestows seven lifetimes of good fortune has circulated widely since the current exhibition opened, but Liu said it cannot be verified in any Qing imperial archive. The phrase most likely originated in news coverage surrounding the museum's 2011 licensing deal with the publisher — though Liu, who was not at the museum at the time, said pinpointing its exact source remains difficult.
"Whether it functions as an advertising slogan or a form of promotion, it has been extraordinarily effective," he said. Liu added that from a doctrinal Buddhist standpoint, all sutras carry equivalent merit — the act of reading and disseminating any Buddhist scripture is cited in canonical texts as a source of merit across lifetimes. The Dragon Canon holds no special doctrinal claim over others.
Some museum staff have reported sensing the fragrance of sandalwood while handling the Canon. Liu acknowledged the accounts without endorsing them. "Religious experience is a very personal matter, and it cannot be verified," he said. Despite daily professional contact with the manuscript, Liu — himself a practicing Buddhist — said he has not personally experienced any such sensations.
The exhibition's three main highlights, per Liu: the complete unfolding of the Canon's wrapping and protective boards alongside the text; a side-by-side pairing of Tibetan scripture pages with Ming Dynasty gold-ink Chinese manuscript equivalents to help visitors follow the content; and 18 painted scripture-protecting boards — 10 upper and 8 lower — bearing images of Buddhist deities rendered in pigment and inlaid with jewels. These boards, Liu noted, represent the earliest, most numerous, and most technically accomplished surviving examples of Tibetan Buddhist painted imagery of their kind. （Related： Move Over, Jiufen: Sun Moon Lake Is Taiwan's Most Loved Destination ｜ Latest ）
