Haidong Academy

Founded in 1720 by circuit official Liang Wenxuan (梁文煊), Haidong was for much of the eighteenth century the most prestigious academy on the island, holding quasi-government status and the epithet “educational leader of all Taiwan” (全臺文教領袖). The academy was relocated repeatedly before settling onto a site adjacent to the Tainan Confucian Temple in 1765, where a substantial new compound of more than a hundred study rooms became the largest academy ever built in Qing Taiwan. The site had fallen into ruin by the time of the Japanese arrival in 1895 and was demolished in the early colonial period; the original footprint is now part of the Zhongyi Elementary School (忠義國小) campus.