On the trail of Taiwan's Confucius (China Post)

Everyone in Taiwan knows the story of Koxinga, the Ming Dynasty loyalist who fled to the island from the Chinese mainland, and defeated the Dutchmen then ruling Tainan and its hinterland.

Not so many people have heard of Shen Guang-wen, a scholar sometimes called "Taiwan's Confucius." Shen was one of many thousands of mainlanders who fled to Taiwan after the Manchurians - then in the process of establishing the Qing Dynasty - seized the imperial capital and gradually extended their rule southward.

Shen was born in 1612 and died in 1688. He arrived in Taiwan a full decade before Koxinga. His life and achievements are celebrated in the Qingan Temple in Tainan County's Shanhua Township. The temple is a third-grade national relic. It is usually described as having 300-plus years of history, but like many other landmarks in Taiwan, the structure visitors see today is not the original...

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