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A zhaitang (齋堂), or fasting hall, of the Xiantian (先天) branch of the Zhaijiao (齋教) folk religion, founded in 1879 by a small group of adherents said to have split off from the nearby Bao’en Hall. It takes its present form from a 1928 rebuild under the third hall master Gu Changrui (古昌瑞). The hall has since been fully absorbed into mainstream Buddhism, overseen today by a Buddhist monk, and its distinctive Xiantian altar fittings have long since disappeared, leaving Guanyin as the principal deity.
Map
Heritage Status
- Municipal Monument (直轄市定古蹟)
Recorded On
Links
- Wikipedia in Chinese (中文維基百科)
- Cultural Assets Bureau (文化部文化資產局)
- Taiwan Religious Cultural Map (臺灣宗教文化地圖)
- Center For GIS, Academia Sinica (文化資源地理資訊系統)
Themes
- Temple Culture in Taiwan (台灣的寺廟文化)
- Zhaijiao in Taiwan (台灣齋教)
Nearby Locations
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Author
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I am a web application developer, photojournalist, urban explorer, and history enthusiast passionate about the open web and documenting my experiences on this planet. This project was founded in the early 2010s and has evolved into a sort of personal Wikipedia of places that interest me (and often the photographs I’ve taken there). I’m originally from Toronto, Canada, but spend most of my time residing in Taiwan.