From the Marshes, a Capital is Born-The Story of Taipei

In early October, the Taipei City Government held a photo exhibit on the history of the development of Taiwan. One photo, in particular, drew a lot of attention. Taken in 1979, the photo showed a group of men and women in their 60s and 70s who had come up from central and southern Taiwan to see the sights in Taipei. They had just come face to face with the famous puppet master Huang Chun-hsiung, whose puppet theater they'd seen on television for years without ever catching a glimpse of the puppet master himself. The sightseers' big, gap-toothed grins spoke volumes about who they were and what Taipei had become by that time-Taiwan's "big apple."

If we could just find a time capsule from an earlier time, however, the picture would be far different. As it turns out, there is a time capsule of sorts available to us-a travelogue written in 1697 by Yu Yonghe. Yu came to Taiwan from Fujian Province and traveled much of the island at a time when most Han Chinese lived in the south and very few people ever traversed the entire length of Taiwan. Wrote Yu: "In all of Taiwan north of Touliu there is naught but wilderness. Towering forests and impenetrable briar thickets are everywhere, deer herds run in great multitudes, and one discovers nary a sign of Han Chinese presence." In a recently published encyclopedia of the history of Taiwan, the Academia Sinica mentions Yu's travelogue and states that his most valuable contribution was his description of northern Taiwan.

Civilization stays south

Throughout most of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Taiwan was part of Fujian Province. During the early years of the Qing period, the island was divided administratively into the counties of Tainan, Fengshan, and Zhuluo. The latter was the northernmost of these three counties, and extended all the way to Taipei and Keelung, but settlers long declined to venture north of Touliu (today the county seat of Yunlin). Further south in Tainan, the Dutch arrived in the 1620s and established a fortress called Zeelandia. Later in that century, the Ming loyalist Koxinga's able minister Chen Yonghua adopted a policy of keeping Taiwan equally strong in both the cultural and military spheres. A period of cultural flowering ensued in the south. Yu Yonghe's travelogue notwithstanding, northern Taiwan was also home to at least some Han Chinese, for History of the Development of Taiwan notes: "Koxinga used to exile convicts to Keelung and Tanshui." So northern Taiwan was once a penal colony?!

Because travel across the Taiwan Strait was no easy matter in centuries past, early settlers naturally chose the shortest route, and Tainan is the nearest place in Taiwan to the coast of Fujian. Tainan also had the natural harbor of Anping. The Fujian port cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou, moreover, were the biggest trading ports in China. All these factors combined to give Tainan an overwhelming advantage over other locations in Taiwan. When the Dutch took over Tainan, they encouraged the cultivation and export of cane sugar, a crop that grew exceptionally well on the Chianan Plain stretching out from Tainan in almost every direction. On the strength of this economic base, Tainan naturally became the political center of Taiwan. Although southern Taiwan is dominated today by Kaohsiung, back then the latter was just one of Tainan's satellite ports, with development limited by heavy silting and shallow berths.

By the latter part of the 18th century, however, settlers had marched northward across the Tatu River (in present-day Taichung County). The economy, moreover, had become more diversified, with rice and sugar cane now complemented by camphor, tea, and coal. Northern Taiwan was becoming more and more important. The Zhuluo County government established the Tanshui Office in Chuchien (present-day Hsinchu) in the 1720s, and then in the 1780s stationed a deputy magistrate still further north in Hsinchuang. Hsinchuang was a river port on the opposite bank from what is now Taipei, so this latter move showed that the development of the greater Taipei region had finally begun.

Taipei hits full stride

Tea cultivation provided important impetus for the settlement of northern Taiwan, and the tea trade laid the foundation for a strong mercantile atmosphere in Taipei right from the start. British tea merchant John Dodd introduced pouchong tea from mainland China in 1860, which soon came into cultivation throughout the hills of northern Taiwan. As tea became increasingly popular in the West, booming exports from northern Taiwan became one of the island's biggest sources of foreign currency. Foreign merchants rushed to establish trading arms in Taipei, and the tea trade in Taipei's Mengjia district (present-day Wanhua) reached the peak of prosperity from about 1820 to 1860, when people spoke of Tainan, Lukang, and Mengjia as the three leading urban centers in Taiwan.

By 1881, trade passing through the port of Tanshui outstripped the combined amount handled by the ports of Anping (Tainan) and Takou (Kaohsiung), thus marking a northward shift of Taiwan's economic center of gravity. Military conflict in 1874 and again in 1884 spurred the Qing court to place much greater importance upon Taiwan, and this change afforded Taipei still greater opportunity to establish itself as Taiwan's capital city.

In 1874 the Japanese, acting under the pretext that certain Ryukyu islanders had been murdered in Taiwan, sent a military expedition to occupy Mutanshe in southern Taiwan. Then in 1884 France, having declared war on China, attacked and shut down Keelung. All this made the Manchu court realize Taiwan's importance as a gateway to the seven provinces along the southeastern coast. Clearly, the aims of foreign powers vis-a-vis Taiwan had changed. Where they had once viewed the island as a convenient port of call for their merchant vessels, they now schemed to take complete control. Awakened to the dangers posed by aggressive foreign powers, the Qing court dispatched Shen Baozhen in 1874 to develop Taiwan's infrastructure and strengthen its defenses. The work started by Shen was continued by Ding Richang, who arrived in 1876.

In order to make sure that foreign powers wouldn't have any further opportunity for incursions into northern Taiwan, Shen had Taipei elevated to prefectural status. This change signified that northern Taiwan had finally achieved political parity with the south, where Lukang and Tainan had been designated as prefectures nearly a century earlier. Shen also sought to have Taiwan made a province, and though he failed to achieve this aim during his time in Taiwan, the change nevertheless came about not long after, in 1885.

Winding Road to Taipei

It fell to Liu Mingchuan, Taiwan's first provincial governor, to decide where to establish the provincial capital. He had originally intended to locate his capital in Jiaozaitu (part of present-day Taichung City) because of its convenient location halfway between north and south on Taiwan's western plain. However, explains Huang Wu-ta, director of the Taiwan Institute of Urban History, the conditions did not yet exist that would have allowed Jiaozaitu to serve as the capital. The overland transportation network during the late Qing dynasty was extremely poor, and people traveled north-south in Taiwan mainly via the sea. This factor marginalized Jiaozaitu, which had no port. Central Taiwan's key population center was farther south in the coastal city of Lukang. More importantly, the island's commercial center had already shifted by that time to Taipei, which was well served by the ports of Keelung and Tanshui. Liu made Taipei the temporary provincial capital while he worked to develop Jiaozaitu.

The construction of railway lines added further impetus to the development of Taipei. Policy battles between reformists and conservatives raged continually at the imperial court in Beijing during the latter years of the Qing dynasty, and it was actually to Taiwan's advantage to be on the nation's periphery. Progressive administrators in Taiwan were able to push through plans for modernization without the stiff opposition that they would have encountered elsewhere in China. Liu Mingchuan memorialized the throne to request permission to build a rail line from Keelung to Tainan, but this was a time when many Chinese looked with horror upon trains as nothing but big, black monsters. In southern Taiwan, which had a longer history behind it, there was less support for the construction of a railway. Funding was also a problem, because Liu could not count on the financially strapped court in Beijing for support. To obtain needed funds, Liu carried out a land census that led to increased land tax revenues. In so doing, he antagonized many wealthy landowners in southern Taiwan.

The situation was very different in younger Taipei, where the economy was based primarily on commerce. The people there were more favorably disposed to all things new. Rail lines were certainly a symbol of modernity, and it was thus in Keelung that ground was broken on Taiwan's first railway construction project. In order to move forward as quickly as possible with railway construction, Liu Mingchuan diverted funds from development of the provincial capital in central Taiwan, intending to pick up the pace in Jiaozaitu after the railway was in operation and generating revenue. Development plans in Jiaozaitu made little progress during Liu's term as governor, and his successor ended up memorializing the throne with a request to make Taipei the permanent provincial capital

The rail line was completed as far south as Hsinchu in 1893. Governor Liu had predicted that the opening of a railway would benefit commerce, and true enough, it soon became the main means for transporting export-bound tea. Camphor from Hsinchu, Miaoli, and Wuchi also made its way to Taipei via the rails, and from there was shipped abroad via Keelung or Tanshui.

While workers were building the Keelung-Taipei section of the rail line they struck gold between Chitu and Patu and set off a frantic gold rush. People poured into northern Taiwan, which rose to a position of undisputed pre-eminence vis-a-vis the south. Although the island has switched from Chinese sovereignty to Japanese and back again since that time, Taipei's position as the political capital has never since been challenged.

Takou morphs into Kaohsiung

The flurry of development in Taiwan that took place in the last quarter of the 19th century all came to naught, from the perspective of China's Manchu rulers, when China was forced in 1895 to cede Taiwan to Japan after being defeated in war by the latter. When the Japanese took possession of the island, they elected to establish their capital in Taipei.

Taipei was chosen primarily because of its relative proximity to the Japanese motherland, but the city certainly had other things going for it. The colonial authorities were anxious to find quarters as quickly as possible for their soldiers, government officials, and accompanying family members. In young and ascendant Taipei they found a city of big, new homes with a broad belt of farmland on the outskirts that promised unlimited potential for development. They settled into Taipei and ruled the island from there for the next 50 years.

So why didn't the Japanese locate their capital in a prosperous city like Tainan or Lukang? According to Huang Wu-ta, "Taipei was a natural choice." Japan at that time was in the midst of the Meiji Restoration, a time of wholesale Westernization. Among other things, the Japanese had adopted Western urban planning concepts, which emphasized straight streets and the establishment of separate residential and commercial zones. Everything about Taiwan's older urban centers-houses crowded in upon each other, lack of water supply and sewage systems, and the continual din of traditional markets and temple parades-was a symbol of filth and disorder to the Japanese. What is more, the strong local roots of the older, more established communities of the south made the people there more inclined to resist their new colonial rulers.

Nevertheless, while both the Qing court and the Japanese colonial authorities chose Taipei as the capital of Taiwan, they were also very concerned about exercising their authority over the entire island, and thus made a conscious effort to ensure that development took place equally in both the north and south. In order to exploit Taiwan's natural resources with maximum efficiency, the Japanese continued forward with Liu Mingchuan's railway plans and completed a north-south line running the length of the island in just 13 years. The rails passed through Taichung, propelling it to the prominence Liu Ming-chuan had once envisioned. In Anping, with its increasingly silted harbor, the Japanese constructed a system of canals, and the town of Takou rose during the colonial period from a sleepy little backwater to become Kaohsiung, the number-one city in the south. The Japanese intended for this "new-style city," typical of the cities they developed in Taiwan, to play a big part in their plans for southward conquest.

North versus South, Taiwan-style

After the Kuomintang lost the civil war against the Communist Party in 1949 and fled to a Taiwan which they knew virtually nothing about, they chose Taipei as their capital for the very simple reason that under the Japanese it had grown into the most modern city on the island. Business is naturally attracted to a national capital, because those who run businesses must establish connections with and lobby government officials. "A political capital always gets bigger and bigger," notes Huang, "and this is all the more true in the case of a country that depends heavily on commerce and foreign trade."

Looking back at the development of Han Chinese society on Taiwan over the past four centuries, it is hard to say whether it is fate or human effort that has guided the fortunes of this city or that. Taipei needs integrated development, but has missed the boat time and again as rule over the island has passed from China to Japan and back again. Continuity has been lacking. The Japanese emphasized planned development, while the Kuomintang government long regarded the city as only a temporary perch serving its long-term goal of reconquering the mainland. Today, Taipei has set its sights on becoming an international metropolis, but Taichung and Kaohsiung are pulling out all the stops in an effort to catch up. What changes will the 21st century bring to the course of urban development in Taiwan?

p.20

Taipei's West Gate was once called Baocheng Gate. This photo taken in 1897 shows a rail spur leading from Baocheng Gate to the main rail line outside the city walls. Taipei wasn't built until centuries after the main cities of central and southern Taiwan, but it overtook them to become the capital after the Qing court established Taiwan as a province.

p.21

Mengjia, known today as Wanhua, was one of Taipei's most prosperous districts in the late Qing period thanks to its bustling port on the Tanshui River. Taipei eventually overtook the older ports of Anping and Lukang as the main center of commerce in Taiwan.

p.22

A British tea merchant introduced Oolong tea to Taiwan in the latter part of the 19th century. Soon it was in cultivation throughout northern Taiwan, and Taipei rose as a major center of the tea trade. Kuiteh Street was lined with Chinese and foreign tea trading houses dealing in Oolong and Pouchong tea. The women work for major Taipei tea merchants, and are picking out the best tea leaves just after a harvest.

p.23

The construction of a railway further propelled Taipei on its way toward becoming the capital of Taiwan. Camphor and tea produced anywhere north of central Taiwan made its way via rail across the Taipei Bridge to big trading houses in Dadaocheng, a once-flourishing riverport in Taipei. From there they were shipped abroad via the port of Tanshui.

p.24

Sections 1 and 2 of today's Yenping North Road were known during the Japanese colonial period as Taiheimachi, the bustling heart of the Dadaocheng commercial district. Note the Western-style architecture.

p.25

The ROC government moved to Taiwan in 1949 and established Taipei as the temporary capital. Huts were thrown up along either side of the railroad tracks for refugees from the mainland, who opened eateries and other shops. Chunghua Road today looks nothing at all like it does in this photo from 1959.

Mengjia, known today as Wanhua, was one of Taipei's most prosperous districts in the late Qing period thanks to its bustling port on the Tanshui River. Taipei eventually overtook the older ports of Anping and Lukang as the main center of commerce in Taiwan.

A British tea merchant introduced Oolong tea to Taiwan in the latter part of the 19th century. Soon it was in cultivation throughout northern Taiwan, and Taipei rose as a major center of the tea trade. Kuiteh Street was lined with Chinese and foreign tea trading houses dealing in Oolong and Pouchong tea. The women work for major Taipei tea merchants, and are picking out the best tea leaves just after a harvest.

The construction of a railway further propelled Taipei on its way toward becoming the capital of Taiwan. Camphor and tea produced anywhere north of central Taiwan made its way via rail across the Taipei Bridge to big trading houses in Dadaocheng, a once-flourishing riverport in Taipei. From there they were shipped abroad via the port of Tanshui.

Sections 1 and 2 of today's Yenping North Road were known during the Japanese colonial period as Taiheimachi, the bustling heart of the Dadaocheng commercial district. Note the Western-style architecture.

The ROC government moved to Taiwan in 1949 and established Taipei as the temporary capital. Huts were thrown up along either side of the railroad tracks for refugees from the mainland, who opened eateries and other shops. Chunghua Road today looks nothing at all like it does in this photo from 1959.