Taoyuan West Temple

This small temple stands beside the former site of the west gate of Taoyuan Old City, from which its common name is derived. According to local tradition, two accounts of the origins of the temple exist. In one, Lin Xinyuan (林心元) brought an image of Guanyin back from Putuoshan and built a rammed earth temple beside his house. In the other, village headman Yao Gaiyou (姚蓋友) uncovered unclaimed graves while building the city wall in 1820 and local residents founded the temple to placate the dead. A stele of 1829 records reconstruction after a typhoon, and another of 1875 confirms Guanyin at the central altar. Taoyuan had no city god temple under the Qing dynasty, so around 1951 devotees acquired an image of Chenghuang (城隍), the City God, from Hsinchu Chenghuang Temple. The two deities have been venerated together ever since, and the temple is widely known as Taoyuan Chenghuang Temple (桃園城隍廟). Preservationists campaigned for its protection from 2015, and the city granted provisional monument status in January 2018, but the heritage review committee declined designation that December. A larger reinforced concrete building has since replaced the old temple.