Name of the Temple: Huangsi College Wenchang Temple
Commanding deity: Emperor Wenchang
Address: No. 10, Wenchang 1st Street, Huangsi Li, Dadu District, Taichung City
Brief introduction: Located in Dadu District of Taichung City, the Huangsi College is commonly known as Wenchang Temple. Established by the local gentry Zhao Shunfang (趙順芳) in the 13th year of the Guangxu Emperor in Qing Dynasty (or in 1887), it was formerly an elementary school for children living in Xiabao Dadu (大肚下堡) (now Dadu, Longjing, and Wurih) and it was also the center of local cultural and educational development, witnessing the prosperity and decline of the area in the past.
Serving as a public school in Dadu during the Japanese Rule Period, the Huangsi College was the predecessor of the hundred-year-old Dadu Elementary School and was announced as a class 3 historic monument in November 1985 by Ministry of the Interior. Under the financial support by the central, provincial, county governments, and Dadu Township Office, it was renovated to its present shape from 1986 to 1989 but partially damaged by the 921 earthquake in 1999, it was repaired again in 2002 with the funding from Ministry of the Interior. When the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act was amended, the Huangsi College was re-classified as a county historic site but now a special-municipality historic site under the jurisdiction of Assets Administration Bureau of Ministry of Culture, when Taichung City and County was merged in 2010. It is the only monument college in Taichung City.
The Huangsi College is a traditional Chinese architecture in Minnan style. The entire building is 18-meter wide and 30-meter deep, covering an area of more than 13,000 Pings. With a north-sitting and southeast-facing arrangement, the Huangsi College is composed of the main gate, Baidian (or a worshiping palace), the main hall, and wing rooms on both left and right sides. The entire building is structured in between a Confucius Temple and a residential house. Its building materials, including carved bricks, bluestones, and Quanzhou white firs, are very magnificent, comparable to those of Lukang Dragon Temple (鹿港龍山寺). Its brick work was considered the best in Taiwan during the Qing Dynasty.
The main gate is seven-room to nine-room wide, if the wing walls on both sides are counted in. Its rooftops are designed in five sections, looking like five mountains.
Served as a place for worship, the Baidian is designed in the form of "platform" of the Confucius Temple. In its middle is a bluestone on which a compelling dragon is carved. Anyone who wishes to worship at the Baidian can only approach it from either side walk, implying that one has to detour to show respect to his/her teachers.
Into the second entrance, there is the three-room lecture hall, in the center of which Emperor Wenchang is enshrined. The main hall, the dining room, and the lecture hall are connected with transit porches whose brick walls are considered the most beautiful in any architecture.
Funded and built up by the gentry in Dadu in late Qing Dynasty, the Huangsi College was acclaimed as the most outstanding artwork among all the cultural and educational buildings in Taiwan in Qing Dynasty. Today, it is also the only college monument of high artistic value in central Taiwan and the most important cultural asset in Dadu. It is worthwhile that we cherish the artistic and cultural values of Huangsi College.