Chiayi Guangning Temple

The modern successor to a temple with two centuries of history in Chiayi City. The original Guangning Temple was founded in 1752 by migrants from Guangdong to venerate Sanshan Guowang (三山國王), the Three Mountain Kings. And after the Lin Shuangwen rebellion of 1786 its following grew well beyond the Cantonese community to the general population of the city. The building later housed Chiayi’s first public school in the early Japanese era, was ruined by the Meishan Earthquake of 1906 and rebuilt in 1915, then damaged again by wartime bombing in 1945. Its remains were finally cleared in 1952 to make way for the Sanshan Theater, and the surviving deity statues were rehoused in a corner of the old Mazu shrine, where the present temple gradually took shape.