AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Yushan Nongxian Gong is a small folk Taoist temple in the quiet upland hamlet of Yanshuikeng, deep in Nanhua District's fruit-growing country in southern Tainan. Built by and for the Chen clan descendants who first settled here in the 1860s, it is devoted to Shennong Dadi — the mythic Divine Farmer who taught agriculture and tasted the hundred herbs of medicine. The temple may look like a modest metal-clad structure, but it anchors a community story of migration, divine guardianship, and rural faith that stretches back over 150 years.↗↗↗
For travellers exploring the agricultural heartland of southwestern Taiwan, Nongxian Gong offers an authentic glimpse into how a single family's protective spirit became the spiritual center of a mountain hamlet — and why farmers across this region still turn to the same deity when the harvest is at stake.
Origins of the Temple
During the Tongzhi reign of the Qing Dynasty in the 1860s, a branch of the Chen clan sailed from Quanzhou Prefecture in Fujian and pushed inland to clear land in the upper Zengwen River valley, settling at a spot called Yanshuikeng — literally Salt Water Pit. As the story is told, a traveling devotee named Chen Lianlong arrived in the hamlet carrying a statue of Shennong Dadi. The local Chen clan persuaded him to leave the deity behind rather than continue onward into uncertain territory; they feared that if the traveler pressed on, both he and the sacred image might come to harm.