Magong Chengyuan Hall

A zhaitang (齋堂), or fasting hall, of the Xiantian (先天) branch of the Zhaijiao (齋教) folk religion. It was founded in 1879 on land donated by the Penghu official Huang Butie (黃步梯) and completed the following year. Together with its women-only neighbour Taihe Hall (太和堂), it served for decades as Magong’s principal center of Buddhist teaching, however unorthodox, until the 1960s. The hall’s best-known custodian was Cai Zhichan (蔡旨禪, 1900–1958), the so-called “foremost female talent of Penghu”, who became Magong’s first female Chinese classics tutor when she set up a school here in 1924 and, after reclaiming the building from military squatters through the court system, personally funded its restoration in 1956.