According to the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, the Changhua County Government filed an application to the Ministry of Culture on November 20, 2017 to list “Lukang Tianhou Temple” as a National Historical Monument. Raised in Lukang, Mayor Wang, Huei-Mei of Changhua emphasized this case very much after stepping up to her office.
This case was approved by the Ministry of Culture on August 30, 2019 at the 15th meeting of the 7th Historical Monument and Memorial Architecture Review Conference to be regarded as a National Historical Monument. It added one more historical monument to Changhua, totaling seven, including Lukang Tianhou Temple, Changhua Confucius Temple, Lukang Longshan Temple, Yuan Ching Kuan, Daodong Academy, Maxing Chen Family Mansion (Yiyuan Masion), and Sheng Wang Temple. It is expected that the promotion of Lukang Tianhou Temple to a National Historical Monument will allow it to obtain more funds from the central government to conduct better cultural assets preservation works.
The Ministry of Culture has conducted many cultural asset evaluation and review conferences. Finally, the Changhua County Government was authorized to re-announce Lukang Tianhou Temple as a County Historic Monument to clarify the terrain and designated reason for its preservation. With two years of hard work, finally Lukang Tianhou Temple was smoothly approved to become the 7th National Historical Monument. In the future, it will obtain more funds from the central government for better preservation of cultural assets. It is expected that the central and local governments can collaborate to preserve cultural assets to allow them to sustain. The cultural assets are also expected to blend into people’s daily life becoming the treasure for people to experience humanities and history and explore folk religion.
On November 27, 1985 Lukang Tianhou Temple was announced as a Class 3 National Historical Monument by the Ministry of Interior. With reference to the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act announced on May 14, 1997, it was re-listed as a County Historical Monument of Changhua County. In 1996, Changhua County Government completed the Tianhou Temple Investigation Project. In recent years, considering the fact that the main architecture of the temple is deteriorating and lack of maintenance because of its age, in 2019, the county government tried to secure funds from the Ministry of Culture for the refurbishment planning project with approval. As the process of budgeting is completed, related procedures will be processed promptly to maintain the important cultural assets in Changhua.
The wooden crafts, stone sculptures, and paintings were completed by top artisans. For example, the large wooden crafts were done by Wang, Shun-Yi, Wu, Hai-Tung, Huang, Shu-Fa, Huang Lien-Chieh, and more. The stone sculptures were done by the artisan Jiang, Hsin and his family of Huian. The paintings were done by Guo, Xin-Lin and Ko, Huan-Chang. They were all outstanding artisans of their time. With the careful preservation of the Lukang Tianhou Temple Management Committee, the architecture and works by the great artisans are well-preserved. The Management Committee also established its self-directed cultural relics management and maintenance team to maintain and revive the cultural assets with values for preservation in the venue. Lukang Tianhou Temple is not only the witness of the prosperity of trade in the early tine, the cultural development, and the history of the settlement’s development, but also the importance of its geographic location with the close association of the port and river transportation. It is an actual manifestation of Lukang’s economic and social development, exerting significant impacts on the place. Related reasons and the scope of designation will be announced by the Ministry of Culture soon.