Qionglin was originally named Pinglin but during the Ming Dynasty, when an official mentioned the village to Emperor Shenzong, he felt that it lacked elegance so renamed it "Qionglin" by imperial edict. Throughout the Ming and Qing Dynasties, all of the Tsai family branches in Qionglin achieved great success academically and in the civil service. This led to each building their own smaller family shrines, commonly referred to as the "7 mansions and 8 ancestral shrines". This made it the village with the largest collection of family shrines on the island.
