Taiwan Religious Culture Map

Located in Changhua County's Dacheng Township, Xian'an Temple is dedicated to Baosheng Dadi (god of medicine), serving as the center of faith for the township's Dachengcuo area (present-day Dacheng, Xicheng, and Dongcheng Villages). Xian'an Temple was originally built in the 1st year of Daoguang Emperor's reign (1821 CE), but the temple building we see today is a reconstruction completed in the 3rd year of the Shōwa era (Japanese colonial period; 1928 CE). The temple underwent numerous renovations afterward, but still retains features from the Japanese colonial period. A stone slab engraved to commemorate the completion of the temple also remains. Xian'an Temple is a three-bay-wide Hokkien temple consisting of roughly two main structures. From the outside in, the temple's worship space includes the front gate, a patio with shuilang (covered passageways) on either side, the baiting (worship hall), the main hall, and the rear hall. The sloping ridges of the front gate's roof are adorned with jiannian (artistic figures created from gluing together broken pieces of ceramics and glass) of auspicious beasts, flowers, and plants. The main hall is built with the intersection of three wooden beams and five gourd-shaped rafters. The front porch has a pair of stone-carved dragon columns featuring the Eight Immortals. On the back porch, there are hexagonal stone columns set on hexagonal bases and carved with bas reliefs of flowers and plants. Because the temple was rebuilt during the Japanese colonial period, the stone columns inside the temple feature a lot of Western designs that were often used in the era.