A fort, an academy and a school of thought

The Dutch built Fort Provintia in 1653 at Sakam, about three kilometres east of their harbour at Anping. It was a smaller outpost than Zeelandia, intended to strengthen the company's hold on the plain and its Siraya villages. When Koxinga's army landed in 1661, the fort surrendered without a long siege, and the Dutch period in Taiwan ended soon afterwards. The building was later wrecked by a rebellion and by earthquakes, and the structures on the site today are mainly Qing reconstructions. The name Chihkan comes from the Siraya village of Sakam, which became the Chinese Chhiah-kham.

In 1665, three years after the Dutch surrender, Zheng Jing approved a proposal by his chief of staff Chen Yonghua to build a Confucian temple and a national academy on a hill south of the fort. The temple, known as the Wen Miao, stood on the right and the academy on the left. It was the first institution of its kind in Taiwan and is still called the First Academy. After the Qing annexation in 1683 the compound became the Taiwan Prefecture Academy, and it was repaired and expanded several times, notably in 1712 and 1777. The layout of those renovations survives.

The temple compound has a ceremonial axis: the Gate of Great Achievement, the Ta-Cheng Hall with the tablet of Confucius, and the two side chambers for his disciples. The academy behind it has the Ming-Lun Hall, where instructors lectured, and a courtyard flanked by the Chambers of the Six Arts. The buildings were damaged under Japanese rule, when they were used as a school and barracks, and were restored in the 1980s. Ceremonies are still held, and the temple is the only place in Taiwan that offers the three animals, a goat, a pig and an ox, to Confucius. The surrounding streets are full of small shops and old houses.