Tainan Shende Hall

Reportedly the oldest zhaitang (齋堂), or fasting hall, of Zhaijiao (齋教) on record in Taiwan, affiliated with the Cai Wenju (蔡文舉) lineage of the Jintong (金幢) branch before being relocated to the current site in 1893. Badly damaged by Allied bombing in 1944, it lay dormant for decades before the lay adherent Huang Yue (黃月) led a reconstruction completed in 1980; the present two-storey building in palatial northern-Chinese style dates from that work, by which point the hall had effectively been absorbed into mainstream Buddhism. It now venerates Shakyamuni (释迦牟尼), better known in the West as Siddhārtha Gautama, and looks much like any other modern temple in this part of Tainan.

The former temple was the site of the 1954 arrest of the monk Gao Zhide (高執德), seized the same evening he installed the Japanese Taishō Tripiṭaka (大正藏) here. Gao was executed at Machangting (馬場町刑場) in Taipei the following year for crimes including that of not reporting communist sympathizers.