Qualla: Kaiyuan Temple https://qualla.com/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:37 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/w/s/j/6/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Kaiyuan Temple https://qualla.com/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan Kaiyuan Temple: Introduction https://qualla.com/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan/ Photo credit Author, Public domain. Three people died in this villa within a single year, and the place has been trying to find peace ever since. In 1680, Zheng Jing — ruler of the Kingdom of Tungning and son of the legendary Koxinga — retreated to Tainan from a failed military campaign on the Chinese mainland. He built Beiyuan Villa, the Northern Garden Retreat, for himself and his aging mother, Queen Dong. He died there the following March. His son Zheng Kezang was killed in a coup in the same compound shortly afterward. Queen Dong died in August. By 1683, the Qing dynasty had conquered the kingdom entirely, and the villa stood abandoned. Seven years later, it was reborn as a Buddhist temple. That transformation — from a place of political ruin to a place of spiritual practice — defines Kaiyuan Temple to this day.

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]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/s/j/6/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan-wp/wsj6-kaiyuan-temple-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kaiyuan Temple: The Villa That Became a Temple https://qualla.com/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan/ Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Qing officials converted Beiyuan Villa into a Buddhist institution in 1690, they justified the decision on practical grounds: there were no Buddhist temples in Tainan at the time. They named it Haihui Temple. It was a reasonable administrative solution to a spiritual gap, bu...

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]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/s/j/6/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan-wp/wsj6-kaiyuan-temple-the-villa-that-became-a-temple.mp3 0:06 2 full Kaiyuan Temple: A Bell from 1695 https://qualla.com/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan/ Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inside the Daxiongbao Hall — the main worship space dedicated to Gautama Buddha, Samantabhadra, and Manjushri — hangs a bronze bell cast in 1695. It is the oldest bronze bell in Taiwan. The hall itself was rebuilt in 1972 with a slightly reduced footprint, but the bell survived t...

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]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/s/j/6/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan-wp/wsj6-kaiyuan-temple-a-bell-from-1695.mp3 0:06 3 full Kaiyuan Temple: Poetry in the Face of Erasure https://qualla.com/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan/ Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. During the Japanese colonial period, a group of Tainan academics gathered at Kaiyuan Temple under the name Nanshe — the South Society — to write and recite classical Chinese poetry. It was a form of cultural resistance, an insistence on maintaining a literary tradition that the c...

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]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/s/j/6/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan-wp/wsj6-kaiyuan-temple-poetry-in-the-face-of-erasure.mp3 0:06 4 full Kaiyuan Temple: Halls, Gates, and Guardian Figures https://qualla.com/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan/ Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walking into Kaiyuan Temple today means passing through an outer shanmen — the mountain gate — built in 1960 to face the street, before reaching the older inner gate that marks the actual entrance to the compound. The inner gate is five kaijian wide, meaning it spans six columns,...

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]]> Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/s/j/6/kaiyuan-temple-taiwan-wp/wsj6-kaiyuan-temple-halls-gates-and-guardian-figures.mp3 0:06 5 full