While I am drawing illustrations for the story, these are the research I have done/reference in the story:
How to open a temple
When I was writing the story, I was not sure about what the host needs to do before opening a temple. Therefore, in order to make the plot more realistic, I was researching was there any way to know how to open a temple. Luckily I found a post in Taiwanese forum asking how to open a temple to earn money at last. The post was interesting as there is someone told him the way to open and estimated the cost. (link (written in Chinese) : https://disp.cc/b/72-5nO5 )
Basically, the person says it is a large amount of money to open a temple (eg: to buy a sculpture, clothes for the sculpture, oblation such as table and joss stick burner, rent/buy land and decoration of the temple.etc). And there is one thing I can sure is they need a ceremony by Shaman is needed to “invite” the spirit into the sculpture before opening the temple.
Smiling Buddha
The reason to chose “Smiling Buddha” in the story is there is also a Smiling Buddha in reality. His real name is Budai and his sculptures always have a big smile. So there are many people called him as Smiling Buddha. However, his smiling face is irrelevant with blessing people to be happy. And none of the buddhas will bless people to be happy. As the mind of want to be happy is also a kind of desire. It violates the concept of Buddhism. So I decided to use Asian culture as the background and misinterpreted the smiling Buddha in the story on purpose to emphasise the ridiculousness of the temple and the ignorance of the host.
For the look of the Smiling Buddha, I have referenced the exact smiling buddha (彌勒佛) at first.
Buddha
the Host
Shaman
Inside the temple
Joss stick burner in temple （香爐）
Wong Chui Yin, Iris 