Yanshui Octagonal Pavilion

The third and only surviving hall of a mansion built in 1847 by sugar merchant Ye Kaihong (葉開鴻). This rare two-storey gentry residence in Yanshui took a decade to build with Tangshan craftsmen and Fuzhou cedar shipped across the Taiwan Strait, and is one of the more elaborate surviving works of Qing dynasty era domestic architecture in Taiwan. In October 1895 Imperial Prince Fushimi Sadanaru (伏見宮貞愛親王) made the pavilion his command post for eight days during the Japanese pacification of southern Taiwan, and in 1942 the colonial authorities evicted the Ye family, demolished the second hall, and reframed the building as an imperial monument. It was returned to the Ye family after the war and recognized as a municipal monument in 2009.