The Cheng Family Ancestral Temple

The Cheng Family Ancestral Temple is a third-grade historic site, built in the third year of the Xianfeng reign during the Qing Dynasty (1853) by Zheng Yongxi. Its architecture follows a three-courtyard, two-hall layout, featuring a single-eave swallowtail roof ridge. The brick carvings on the walls of the front hall corridor are exquisitely refined. In the Qing Dynasty, families with members who passed the imperial examinations at the county level or higher were permitted to erect flagpoles as symbols of academic achievement and honor. The four stone flagpole bases in front of the Cheng Family Ancestral Temple…

The Cheng Family Ancestral Temple

The Cheng Family Ancestral Temple is a cultural tourism attraction.

The Cheng Family Ancestral Temple

The Cheng Family Ancestral Temple is a third-grade historic site, built in the third year of the Xianfeng reign during the Qing Dynasty (1853) by Zheng Yongxi. Its architecture follows a three-courtyard, two-hall layout, featuring a single-eave swallowtail roof ridge. The brick carvings on the walls of the front hall corridor are exquisitely refined. In the Qing Dynasty, families with members who passed the imperial examinations at the county level or higher were permitted to erect flagpoles as symbols of academic achievement and honor. The four stone flagpole platforms in front of the Cheng Family Ancestral Temple, along with multiple plaques commemorating successful candidates in the highest imperial exams, provincial exams, tribute student status, advanced Confucian studies, and filial piety, are clear evidence of the Cheng family’s rich legacy in education and culture. The temple is not open to the public, but visitors can catch a glimpse of the grandeur of this prominent family during ancestral worship ceremonies held on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, as well as during the spring and autumn memorial rites held during the Lantern Festival and Winter Solstice.

Zheng Yongxi (1788–1858), styled Zhongzai and also known as Ziting, was a native of Tamsui, Taiwan during the Qing Dynasty. He served as an Assistant Department Director in both the Ministry of War’s Military Selection Bureau and the Ministry of Rites’ Rites Regulation Bureau, and authored the “Collected Works of Beiguo Garden.”

Zheng Yongxi’s ancestral home was in Kinmen, Quanzhou Prefecture (originally from Zhangpu, Zhangzhou Prefecture, Fujian). In the third year of the Daoguang reign (1823), he passed the imperial examination and was appointed as a Tongzhi official. In the fourteenth year, he served in the capital as an Assistant Department Director in the Ministry of War’s Military Selection Bureau and the Ministry of Rites’ Rites Regulation Bureau. In the seventeenth year, he returned to Taiwan, where he served as head lecturer at Mingzhi Academy and devoted himself to local development. In the nineteenth year, he personally raised a volunteer militia to resist British military incursions.