Beimen Dong’an Temple

A small temple in Beimen, behind the district farmers’ association, dedicated to Qiu Erye (邱二爺), the deified spirit of Hagiwara Yoshiaki (萩原義明, 1844–1901). A native of Chiba, Hagiwara served as director of the Beimenyu Salt Affairs Bureau (北門嶼鹽務局), forerunner of the administration that ran Beimen Saltworks, from 1899 until his death in 1901, and was remembered for treating Taiwanese and Japanese workers with equal fairness. After his death his restless spirit was said to trouble the village until residents enshrined him as a local guardian deity, first with a statue and simple shrine in 1961, then in a formal temple built in 1971 and rebuilt in its present form in 2006. Due to rising anti-Japanese sentiment in the post-war period his surname was disguised as the homophonous Qiu (邱).