Nantou County: Taiwan’s Only Landlocked County, with the 921 Earthquake Epicenter at Its Center

30-second overview: At 1:47:15 a.m. on September 21, 1999, the Chelungpu Fault ruptured 8 kilometers beneath Jiji Township for 102 seconds¹. The earthquake measured 7.3 on the Richter scale. Across Taiwan, 2,415 people died, 29 went missing, and 51,711 buildings fully collapsed. Nantou County alone accounted for 886 deaths and 23,127 fully collapsed households. More than 90% of buildings in Zhongliao Township were damaged; the Jiufen’ershan landslide buried 180 hectares and killed 41 people, with 22 still unrecovered². On October 27, 1930, Mona Rudao, chief of the Seediq community of Mahebo, led people from six communities in an attack during the flag-raising ceremony at Wushe Public School, killing 134 Japanese civilians. Six months later, in the Second Wushe Incident, the Toda group launched a night raid on detention sites; 216 people were killed or died by suicide³. In 1934, Wujie Dam raised Sun Moon Lake’s water level by 18.18 meters and flooded Lalu Island, sacred ground of the Thao people; in 1957, Zhongxing New Village was built as the provincial government’s temporary office site, and in 1998 provincial streamlining hollowed out its functions, leaving only the palm-lined boulevard⁴. In 2016, Lushan Hot Spring officially disappeared from Taiwan’s tourism map. Some 470,000 people live in this county, rising from 100 meters in downtown Nantou to Yushan at 3,952 meters, where Seediq, Bunun, Thao, and Tsou communities live alongside Han Taiwanese. Taiwan’s deepest wounds are all here.

At 1:47 a.m., the Tables in Jiji Township Jumped

1:47:15.9 a.m., September 21, 1999.

Eight kilometers beneath Jiji Township, the Chelungpu Fault thrust upward. The surface rupture extended from Zhuolan in Miaoli all the way to Tongtou in Zhushan, Nantou, for a total length of 100 kilometers, with maximum horizontal displacement of 9 meters and vertical displacement of 6 meters¹. The entire earthquake lasted about 102 seconds. Richter magnitude 7.3. The United States Geological Survey measured a moment magnitude of 7.6 to 7.7.

In the central mountain region near two in the morning, people were asleep.

In those 102 seconds alone, 2,415 people in Taiwan died². ⚠️ Different sources give two death tolls: the official National Fire Agency, Ministry of the Interior figure is 2,415 people, also used by the Central Weather Administration and Chinese Wikipedia; The Reporter’s in-depth feature for the 20th anniversary of the 921 earthquake uses 2,454, including those who later died of severe injuries⁵. This article uses the official figure of 2,415. Another 29 people went missing, 11,305 were injured, 51,711 buildings fully collapsed, and 53,768 partially collapsed.

How much did Nantou County itself account for? Chinese Wikipedia records verbatim: “In Nantou County, 886 people died, 678 were severely injured, 23,127 households fully collapsed, and 16,792 households partially collapsed”². Nantou County together with Taichung County and City accounted for “about 95% of all damaged households in Taiwan” in fully and partially collapsed buildings².

The epicenter was in Jiji Township, 9.2 kilometers west-southwest of Sun Moon Lake.

✦ “A powerful earthquake is more frightening than war.” (Taiwan Panorama 921 special issue, quoting a Zhongliao resident⁶)

The Reporter later traced the total damage: “Damage from 921 was approximately more than NT$360 billion; the government budgeted more than NT$260 billion for reconstruction, while private donations totaled approximately NT$34 billion.”⁵ On the third day after the disaster, a reporter entered Nantou: “Passing the bare Jiujiofeng peaks, I saw Puli’s Yuying Elementary School collapsed into a heap, and Puli Senior High School piled with relief supplies. The next day was the Mid-Autumn Festival. As evening approached, the entire old street of Guoxing had no lights, and residents stared blankly around beneath the eaves of roadside houses that had not collapsed.”⁵

The Mid-Autumn Festival came four days after 921. Moonlight fell on mountain towns without electricity.

Taiwan’s Only Landlocked County, Rising from 100 Meters to 3,952 Meters

Sun Moon Lake at dusk. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Nantou is the only county among Taiwan proper’s 22 counties and cities that has no coastline.

From the Changhua County border in the west to the Hualien County border in the east, Nantou runs 95 kilometers north to south and 72 kilometers east to west, covering 4,106 square kilometers. It is Taiwan’s second-largest county after Hualien⁷. Its elevation starts at roughly 100 to 150 meters in downtown Nantou and climbs all the way to Yushan’s main peak at 3,952 meters. Hillslopes account for 83% of the county, with very little flatland. Among its 13 townships, towns, and cities, Xinyi Township and Ren’ai Township are mountain Indigenous townships, while Yuchi Township is a plains Indigenous township.

The Zhuoshui River is Taiwan’s longest river, at 186.4 kilometers. It originates at “Sakuma Saddle,” between Hehuan Mountain’s main and east peaks, at an elevation of 3,220 meters, and flows downhill through eight Nantou townships⁷. Provincial Highway 14A climbs to the saddle between Hehuan Mountain’s main and east peaks at 3,275 meters. Called Wuling, it is the highest point on Taiwan’s road system.

Some 470,000 people live in this county, based on 2025 figures⁷. The share of residents aged 65 and above is 22.51%, making it Taiwan’s third-oldest county from the top. Young people have long been leaving the mountain areas.

📝 Curator’s note: “No coastline” sounds like a defect. But when the Kuomintang government chose Zhongxing New Village in 1957 as the provincial government’s temporary office site, one reason was precisely that it was inland enough: if cross-strait war reached Taipei, the provincial government would not be destroyed together with the central government. Inland meant backup. It meant safety. Then at 1:47 a.m. on September 21, 1999, Taiwan’s deepest postwar internal wound erupted from the center of this “most inland” county. The physical meaning of inlandness was redefined within 102 seconds: you might think that being far from war means being far from disaster, but the Chelungpu Fault does not choose sides.

The history of this county is arranged by elevation. The Babao Canal on the plains, Wushe on the mountainside, Lalu Island beneath the lake surface, Yushan at 3,952 meters: each altitude layer bears a story.

Hehuan Mountain landscape. Photo: Chewy3326, CC BY 2.5. via Wikimedia Commons.

The Water of Babao Canal Has Flowed to Mingjian Township Since the Kangxi Era

In the forty-eighth year of the Kangxi Emperor’s reign in the Qing dynasty, 1709, Shi Shibang began construction⁸.

The Zhuoshui River had abundant water and heavy sediment. Whoever could divert it from upstream and channel it downward would obtain the lifeline of the Changhua Plain. Shi Shibang was from Quanzhou. In his thirties at the time, he staked his family fortune on this canal. After several years of digging, he still could not get through; collapses kept occurring at certain points. Legend says an old man calling himself “Mr. Lin” came to find him and gave him a hydraulic diagram, saying the route could be opened if Shi followed the plan. Shi Shibang did so, and the canal worked. The old man refused payment, gave no name, and left. Later generations built the Mr. Lin Temple at the Ershui canal head to commemorate him⁸.

⚠️ The Mr. Lin story is a retelling of folk legend, not a Qing-era primary source. But Shi Shibang really existed (1671-1743), and the completion of Babao Canal in the fifty-eighth year of Kangxi, 1719, is confirmed by three sources⁸. The excavation took a full 10 years. It is one of Taiwan’s three great old irrigation canals; the other two are Tongfuzun in Tainan and Long’en Canal in Hsinchu. Today, Mingjian Township in Nantou is an important irrigation area for Babao Canal, and Shi Shibang’s original intake point was near the Nantou County border upstream on the Zhuoshui River.

Every sixth lunar month, Ershui Township in Changhua holds the Water Running Festival to commemorate Shi Shibang, Mr. Lin, and Huang Shiqing, the three people credited with building the canal.

This is the first historical layer of Qing-ruled Nantou: an irrigation system brought in by Han settlers from the western plains. In 1709, even the Yongzheng Emperor had not yet ascended the throne. In this only landlocked county, the earliest story is water coming down from the mountains.

In the first year of Yongzheng, 1723, Changhua County was established, and Nantou was placed under it. In the twenty-fourth year of Qianlong, 1759, Changhua County established a county assistant magistrate in Nantou; “this was the beginning of government and education in Nantou County”⁹. In the first year of Guangxu, 1875, Nantou Ting was established. In 1895, the Japanese arrived, abolished the Qing-era Miaoli County, and reorganized the area as Nantou Ting. In 1920 it was placed under Taichu Prefecture.

The name “Nantou County” and this territorial outline would not formally appear until after the war in 1945.

At the Moment of the Flag-Raising Ceremony at Wushe Public School, Mona Rudao Led Six Communities In

It was the morning of a sports meet.

On the morning of October 27, 1930, the fifth year of Showa, Wushe Public School in Noko District, today’s Wushe Elementary School in Ren’ai Township, Nantou County, was holding a joint athletic meet. Japanese police, teachers, and family members were all present. On the sports field, the Japanese flag was being raised and the national anthem sung¹⁰.

More than 300 Indigenous people rushed in.

Their leader was Mona Rudao, chief of the Mahebo community. Chinese Wikipedia records this person verbatim: “Mona Rudao, already renowned for bravery in his youth, was one of the few wise and courageous men who obtained chiefly status through ability rather than bloodline”¹⁰. The trigger was the “toast incident” of October 7, 1930: at the wedding of Mona Rudao’s son, Dado Mona, Japanese police officer Yoshimura knocked away a cup offered in a toast. Afterward, the Seediq people’s accumulated resentment toward the Japanese police erupted all at once.

Six communities joined the uprising, listed verbatim in Chinese Wikipedia: “Mahebo (Mhebu), Tarowan (Truwan), Boarung, Suku, Hogo (Gungu), and Rodofu (Drodux)”¹⁰.

They killed 134 Japanese civilians and teachers and injured 215 people¹⁰. ⚠️ This is the precise figure used by Chinese Wikipedia: 134 Japanese civilians. Another two Han people wearing Japanese clothing were killed by mistake by the Indigenous attackers; if they are included, the Japanese-side total death toll becomes 136. This article uses the precise formulation of 134 Japanese people plus two Han people.

The Japanese side mobilized 5,311 personnel for the suppression: 1,563 Japanese troops, 1,231 police, 1,381 military laborers, plus pro-Japanese “allied savages”¹⁰. ⚠️ Multiple sources indicate that the Japanese side used gas shells in the mountains, but the Chinese Wikipedia entry marks this as a disputed account. The suppression continued until December 1.

Mona Rudao handed battlefield command to his son, shot his wife dead, then walked alone into the forest above a cave and died by suicide with a gun. His remains were found only in 1933, made into a specimen, and transferred to the Department of Anthropology at Taihoku Imperial University, postwar National Taiwan University.

The incident was not over. In the early hours of April 25, 1931, the Second Wushe Incident erupted. Chinese Wikipedia records verbatim: “more than 200 able-bodied men from the Toda group formed teams and launched night raids on four detention sites in Rodofu and Siba’u”; “a total of 216 people were killed or died by suicide”¹⁰. Only 298 survived.

Why did the Toda group kill their own people? “The Japanese authorities acknowledged that police stationed there, worried that the protected savages would carry out revenge, prompted the Taucha community to launch the assault”¹⁰. Japanese police incited pro-Japanese Indigenous groups to kill anti-Japanese Indigenous groups, then rewarded them afterward with the lands of the uprising communities. The internecine violence among communities was the result of Japanese manipulation.

📝 Curator’s note: Reducing the Wushe Incident to a single phrase, “Indigenous resistance against Japan,” is to give up on understanding it. The full incident contains at least five layers: the Seediq people’s long accumulated resentment toward Japanese police; the October 7, 1930 toast incident as trigger; the October 27 uprising by six communities at the public school; Mona Rudao’s suicide in the mountains; and the Japanese police-manipulated intra-ethnic killing of the Second Wushe Incident on April 25, 1931. The deaths of 134 Japanese civilians, the deaths or suicides of 216 Indigenous people, and the forced relocation of 298 survivors to “Kawanakajima,” today’s Qingliu community, in the Beigang River basin: writing the Seediq people as one tidy anti-Japanese whole misses the layer of history in which Japanese police manipulated divisions among communities. The Wushe Incident is a concrete dissection of how Japanese colonial rule operated in the mountains; resistance is only one surface face of it.

In 1973, Mona Rudao’s remains were returned from the Department of Anthropology at National Taiwan University to Wushe for burial. Li Yih-yuan, acting chair of NTU’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, wrote to the university president to explain: “The remains of this martyr should not be kept in a research institution; they should in fact be returned for burial in his homeland.”¹¹ Using Han rituals, with wreaths, a mourning hall, and music, he was buried behind the Wushe Indigenous Anti-Japanese Monument across from Ren’ai Elementary School in Nantou.

In 2011, Wei Te-sheng’s Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale was released, earning NT$880 million worldwide and NT$810 million in Taiwan¹². Part I, The Sun Flag, premiered on September 9; Part II, The Rainbow Bridge, premiered on September 30. The film made the Wushe Incident of 81 years earlier known again across Taiwan.

But today, when you go to Wushe, what you see is a tourist site: Mona Rudao Memorial Park, the Wushe Incident Memorial, Qingliu community. The Seediq people’s wound has been turned into a landscape route for photographs.

Wujie Dam Raised the Water Level by 18.18 Meters, and the Thao People’s Lalu Island Became a 30-Meter Islet

On June 3, 1934, Sun Moon Lake First Power Plant, today’s Daguan Power Plant’s Daguan No. 1 Plant, was completed. Its generating capacity was 143,500 kilowatts, “at the time the largest hydroelectric facility in Asia and the seventh-largest in the world”¹³.

From the establishment of Taiwan Power Company in 1919, when the Sun Moon Lake hydroelectric project was designated a top priority, to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which drove up costs and halted construction, to the 1931 resumption with a revised plan, the project built a concrete gravity dam in Wujie, Ren’ai Township, upstream on the Zhuoshui River. Wujie Dam stood 57.6 meters high and 90.91 meters long, with six gates. A diversion tunnel was then excavated to send water into Sun Moon Lake¹³. The largest hydraulic engineering project of the Japanese colonial period took 15 years.

In September 1934, the Wujie diversion channel began releasing water, and Sun Moon Lake’s water level rose by 18.18 meters¹³.

The lake’s surface area expanded from 4.55 square kilometers to 7.73 square kilometers. The history page of the Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area website records the impact on the Thao people verbatim: “The raised water level flooded the Thao people’s traditional settlements and farmland. The Japanese relocated the Thao to Dehua Community, allotting only two fen of land to each person, and the Thao population gradually declined.”¹⁴

The Thao people originally lived in the Shiyin settlement on the eastern side of Sun Moon Lake, with farmland distributed around the lake. In the year the water level rose, their homes were flooded.

Lalu Island is a small island at the center of Sun Moon Lake and the Thao people’s highest ancestral spirit site. In the Thao language, Lalu means “sacred island in the heart”¹⁵. During the Japanese period it was called “Jade Island”; after the war, in 1949, the Kuomintang renamed it “Guanghua Island,” meaning “glorifying China.” From what had originally been more than 100 jia of farmland, it shrank after the reservoir project into an isolated island 30 meters in diameter. It took 15 years for a sacred island to become a small island that tour boats circle for photographs.

Lalu Island, 2013-08-19. Photo: Ckbun, CC BY-SA 3.0. via Wikimedia Commons.

By 2000, the Thao had won the restoration of Guanghua Island’s name to “Lalu Island”¹⁵. The next year, on August 8, 2001, the Thao were officially recognized from among the plains Indigenous peoples as the 10th Indigenous people. ⚠️ Thao population figures vary by year: the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Household Registration counted 776 people in 2017, while other statistics put the number at around 885. This article uses “roughly more than 800 people”; among Taiwan’s 16 Indigenous peoples, the Thao are the third-smallest by population¹⁶.

✦ “The raised water level flooded the Thao people’s traditional settlements and farmland. The Japanese relocated the Thao to Dehua Community, allotting only two fen of land to each person.” (Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area history page¹⁴)

The lake surface tourists see at Sun Moon Lake today is a “nature” rewritten by engineering that raised it by 18.18 meters. What “Sun Moon Lake cruises” circle is the Thao farmland flooded 91 years ago.

The Bunun people live on the other side of Nantou: Xinyi Township. Along the Chenyoulan River basin, they are distributed among five communities: Zhuo, Ka, Dan, Luan, and Isbukun¹⁷. The Zhuo group lives in Jiumei Village, the northernmost part of Xinyi Township; the Ka group is in Dili and Shuanglong; the Dan group is in the upper Chenyoulan River area of Dili Village; the Luan group is in Fengqiu, Wangxiang, and Xinxian; and the Isbukun group is in Dongpu and Luona. Pasibutbut, or eight-part polyphony, “is transmitted only among the Bunun Luan and Isbukun groups”; the Dan, Ka, and Zhuo groups do not sing it¹⁷. ⚠️ Tourism promotion often treats “eight-part polyphony” as a symbol of all Bunun people, but in reality only two groups sing it. Mingde community, where Luan and Isbukun people live together, is today the community that can sing pasibutbut and is closest to the Bunun ancestors’ earliest homeland.

The eastern part of Xinyi Township also includes traditional Tsou territory, and Yushan National Park sits in this area. Yushan National Park spans four counties and cities: Xinyi Township in Nantou County, Alishan Township in Chiayi County, Taoyuan District in Kaohsiung City, and Zhuoxi Township in Hualien County¹⁸. ⚠️ General descriptions often omit the Zhuoxi, Hualien portion, but the park’s actual area extends into Hualien’s southeastern corner. Established on April 10, 1985, it covers 105,490 hectares and is Taiwan’s largest national park by area.

In Nantou, Taiwan’s only landlocked county, the Seediq, Bunun, Thao, and Tsou peoples live alongside Han Taiwanese of Hoklo and Hakka backgrounds. Mountain Indigenous townships account for two of its 13 townships, towns, and cities, but the area of those two townships far exceeds the other 11 combined.

The Palm Boulevard of Zhongxing New Village Is Still There

Zhongxing New Village archway. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 2.5. via Wikimedia.

In 1956, the Taiwan Provincial Government moved from Taipei to Nantou. The place had originally been called Yingpankou¹⁹.

The reason for the relocation was backup logic: to prevent the provincial government and central government from being destroyed together if cross-strait war reached Taipei. The layered governance structure of “a state within a province, and a province within the state” needed a physical base far from the capital. Nantou is Taiwan’s only landlocked county: inland, farthest away, safest.

In 1957, the overall urban design of Zhongxing New Village was completed. Modeled on London’s “New Town” approach, it was built as a garden-style administrative community covering about 200 hectares¹⁹. This was Taiwan’s first formal implementation of urban planning: a sewer system separating rainwater and wastewater, cul-de-sacs to strengthen community consciousness, garden city zoning, and a 500-meter palm-lined boulevard as the frontage, with tall palm trees planted on both sides.

At the peak of the provincial government, tens of thousands of people lived in Zhongxing New Village. It was a self-sufficient administrative city with civil servant dormitories, schools, markets, and cinemas.

In 1994, in the first and only direct election for governor of Taiwan Province, James Soong was elected with 4.8 million votes¹⁹.

In December 1998, the Taiwan Provincial Government underwent streamlining. ⚠️ Two dates are often mixed: December 20 was the day James Soong left office, while December 21 was the official completion of provincial streamlining, carried out by the Executive Yuan under amendments to the Province and County Self-Government Act. This article uses “provincial streamlining in December 1998” without specifying a particular day.

At the moment of provincial streamlining, Zhongxing New Village’s functions were hollowed out. Most departments and offices were abolished, the number of civil servants plunged, and the flow of people through dormitories, markets, and schools followed. In 2011, the Nantou County Government registered Zhongxing New Village as a “cultural landscape.” In 2018, the National Development Council established the Zhongxing New Village Revitalization Project Office, dividing the area into three cores: north, the historic-cultural area; center, the leisure-living area; and south, the university town, with National Chung Hsing University’s Nantou campus¹⁹.

But the 500-meter palm boulevard is still there.

📝 Curator’s note: Zhongxing New Village is a story told backward. In ordinary urban decline, buildings decay first, and people leave afterward. In Zhongxing New Village, functions were pulled out first, people left, and the buildings remained. From 1998 to 2026, nearly 30 years, the palm trees have kept growing, dormitories remain dormitories, though half-empty, and the market has fewer stalls but still opens. It did not become a ruin. It became a “specimen of the provincial government era.” Tourists come here to photograph the palm boulevard; what they photograph is the shape left behind by an era hollowed out by provincial streamlining. When this new town was built in 1957, the Kuomintang government was thinking, “What if cross-strait war breaks out?” When provincial streamlining took place in 1998, the thinking was, “The provincial government’s overlapping bureaucracy should be cut.” Between the first motive and the second lies four decades in which Taiwan’s political structure turned over. This palm boulevard is the physical witness left by that turning.

Zhongxing New Village is the form of Nantou’s provincial government era. Wushe is the Seediq people’s wound. Sun Moon Lake is the lake that followed the flooding of the Thao homeland. Babao Canal is water that entered from the west in the Kangxi era. This only landlocked county compresses the wounds and ambitions of Taiwan’s different eras into the same inland ground.

In Zhongliao Township, 92% of Houses Collapsed; in 2016, Lushan Officially Disappeared from the Tourism Map

Back to the night of 921.

Zhongliao Township lies in central Nantou County, and the Shuangdong Fault runs directly through it. Taiwan Panorama’s 921 special issue records verbatim: “In Zhongliao Township, more than 90% of all buildings were damaged. In villages of only twenty to thirty thousand people, 154 people died, and many families perished entirely.”⁶ Fully and partially collapsed houses reached 82.6% of the township. All 34 extra-high-voltage transformers at the Zhongliao extra-high-voltage switching station were destroyed, causing a Taiwan-wide blackout that night.

More than 181 people died in Puli Township, and more than 400 buildings collapsed, including Puli Township Office itself².

In Zhushan Township, 118 people died; 2,711 households fully collapsed, and 2,973 partially collapsed².

Jiufen’ershan is in Nangang Village, Guoxing Township. The top of a mountain simply fell away: 180 hectares collapsed, with 35 million cubic meters of earth and rock. “At least forty villagers were buried alive”²⁰; the later precise figure is 41 people buried alive, with 22 still unrecovered. After the mountain collapsed, its height dropped by roughly 400 meters.

In Jiji Township, where the epicenter was located, the wooden station building of Jiji Station tilted severely, and the epicentral structure of Wuchang Temple collapsed. The tracks of the Jiji branch railway were badly twisted. In Caotun Township, the shaking stripped the entire Jiujiofeng range bare in an instant; in 2000, it was designated a nature reserve.

✦ “More than two thousand people lost their lives in the rubble, and tens of thousands lost their once happy and warm homes amid the tremendous roar.” (Taiwan Panorama 921 special issue⁶)

Revisions to building regulations after 921 took place in 2003. The government raised seismic resistance coefficients, roughly from level 3-4 to level 5-6, and strengthened ductile design for walls, columns, and beams. “Only houses that obtained building permits in 2003 or later comply with the new regulations” became a later dividing line in Taiwan’s real estate market for judging building age²¹.

921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan, 2024-09-21. Photo: Liu Shu-fu / Office of the President, CC BY 2.0. via Wikimedia Commons.

But some things could not be rebuilt after 2003.

Lushan Hot Spring in Ren’ai Township was already famous during the Japanese colonial period as “Fuji Hot Spring” and “Hatozawa Hot Spring.” Located in the Tarowan River valley at an elevation of more than 400 meters, its waters are neutral sodium bicarbonate springs, with temperatures from 58 to 98 degrees Celsius. In the past it was praised as the “best spring under heaven,” and the source temperature reached 87 degrees²².

On the day of 921, Lushan’s slopes first became geologically unstable. Then typhoons came one after another: in 2001, Typhoon Toraji swelled the Tarowan River and damaged multiple lodgings; on September 12, 2008, Typhoon Sinlaku was called “Lushan’s heaviest blow,” severely damaging multiple hotels; in 2010, Typhoon Songda caused further damage²².

In June 2011, the Nantou County Government decided on collective relocation to Fuxing Village in Puli Township, 36 kilometers away.

In 2015, the Water Resources Agency’s Fourth River Management Office completed demolition within the 3.63-hectare river area line of Lushan Hot Spring²².

In 2016, after the five legal Lushan Hot Spring businesses received NT$700 million in compensation, they formally closed, and Lushan Hot Spring disappeared from Taiwan’s tourism map. ⚠️ Timing of relocation and closure: relocation demolition began in 2015, and businesses fully closed in 2016. A hot spring tourism area with more than 80 years of history took 17 years from 921 to complete the process of disappearance.

When Public Television Service’s Our Island reported on Lushan, it used one sentence: “Water brings wealth, and it also brings disaster. Lushan had limitless business opportunities because of hot spring water, and unpredictable danger because of the floods of the Tarowan River.”²²

Three Ethnic Names Grew Back over 26 Years

Back to that 1:47 a.m. at the beginning.

The Chelungpu Fault beneath Jiji Township thrust upward for 102 seconds; across Taiwan, 2,415 people died, including 886 in Nantou County alone. That was September 21, 1999.

Twenty-six years later, in 2025.

After those 102 seconds, three things happened, all related to names growing back.

In 2000, the island at the center of Sun Moon Lake changed from “Guanghua Island” back to Lalu, meaning “sacred island in the heart” in the Thao language¹⁵. Fifty-one years after the Kuomintang government had renamed it, the Thao used the opening in public attention after the 921 disaster to take back the island’s name.

On August 8, 2001, the Thao were officially recognized from among the plains Indigenous peoples as the 10th Indigenous people. That year was exactly 67 years after their ancestors’ settlement had been flooded by Wujie Dam in 1934¹⁶. ⚠️ Why recognition became possible: after 921 in 1999, post-disaster reconstruction in Nantou brought the Thao’s situation to the attention of all Taiwan: a population of only a little over 800, sacred ground flooded, traditional lands turned into a tourist site. Disaster became political leverage for the name-rectification movement.

On April 23, 2008, the Seediq were separated from the Atayal and officially recognized as the 14th Indigenous people²³. The Seediq include three language groups: Seediq Tgdaya, the Tgdaya group and the main participants in the Wushe Incident; Sediq Toda, the Toda group; and Sejiq Truku, the Truku group. The Truku group had already gained separate recognition earlier, on January 14, 2004, under the name “Truku,” becoming the 12th people, living in eastern Hualien. In 2008, the Tgdaya and Toda groups in western Nantou completed recognition. The people named “Seediq” at the moment of the flag-raising ceremony at Wushe Public School on October 27, 1930 had to wait 78 years to return to their own ethnic name.

Together with the 1998 provincial streamlining and the 2016 closure of Lushan Hot Spring, a single landlocked inland county places more than 80 years of Taiwan’s wounds and repairs on the same map: Wujie Dam in 1934, Zhongxing New Village in 1957, 921 in 1999, Thao name recognition in 2001, Seediq name recognition in 2008, and Lushan’s disappearance in 2016.

If you go to Nantou next time, do not only visit Sun Moon Lake and Qingjing. Try taking Provincial Highway 14 to Wushe and looking at the anti-Japanese monument behind Mona Rudao Memorial Park. Then drive to Zhongxing New Village and walk the full 500 meters of the palm boulevard. Loop back to Jiji and see the tilted gable wall preserved at Wuchang Temple after the earthquake. Finally, stay a night in Puli. Puli Brewery was established in 1917; in 1949, the Kuomintang government brought in Zhejiang winemaking techniques, and in 1952 it successfully trial-produced Shaoxing wine using Puli’s natural Ailan spring water. Today it is the center of Taiwan’s Shaoxing wine production²⁴.

Then you will remember one thing: Taiwan’s deepest wounds are all in this only landlocked county. The epicenter was in Jiji, Seediq blood was in Wushe, and the form of the provincial government was in Zhongxing New Village. The 18.18 meters raised by Wujie Dam are still beneath the surface of Sun Moon Lake, turning the Thao people’s Lalu Island from sacred ground into a 30-meter islet; the water of Babao Canal has flowed from the Kangxi era to Mingjian Township to irrigate fields, and in 1709 even the Yongzheng Emperor had not yet ascended the throne.

Nantou is Taiwan’s deepest postwar internal wound, but it has never left its position. The Seediq name grew back in 2008. The Thao grew back in 2001. Lalu Island grew back in 2000. Zhongliao Township rebuilt the 90% of houses that had collapsed, and the 22 people in Guoxing Township who were never found became names on a stone monument.

After those 102 seconds at 1:47 a.m., Nantou did not become a ruin. It became a tourist county you might drive through and think is only Sun Moon Lake, Qingjing, Wuling, and Hehuan Mountain. But beneath it lie four wounds of Taiwan’s modern history: Han canal construction in 1709, the Seediq uprising in 1930, the flooding of the Thao homeland in 1934, and Taiwan’s deepest earthquake in 1999. Growing names back is what this county has been doing.

Further Reading

• Sun Moon Lake — The full history of the 1934 Wujie Dam project that raised the lake surface by 18.18 meters, Asia’s largest hydroelectric power station, and the Thao people’s relocation
• Yushan — Taiwan’s highest peak at 3,952 meters; Yushan National Park spans four counties and cities: Xinyi in Nantou, Alishan in Chiayi, Taoyuan in Kaohsiung, and Zhuoxi in Hualien
• History and Name-Rectification Movements of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples — The national context of the 2001 Thao recognition as the 10th people, the 2004 Truku recognition, and the 2008 Seediq recognition movement
• Eight-Part Polyphony — The truth about pasibutbut: it is transmitted only among the Bunun Luan and Isbukun groups, and in Mingde community
• Prehistory and Indigenous Peoples — A timeline of the Seediq, Bunun, Thao, and Tsou peoples’ millennia of residence in the Central Mountain Range
• Keelung City — Pilot article in the 22 Counties and Cities series: the world’s seventh-largest container port in 1984 fell to No. 113 by 2018, another county or city, like Nantou, omitted from center-focused narratives
• Miaoli County — Batch 1 sibling article in the 22 Counties and Cities series, an inland county: Hakka stubborn resilience versus doubled county debt, facing the same dual issue as Nantou of “mountain-area population outflow + political theater”

Image Sources

This article uses five Wikimedia Commons CC-licensed images, hot-linked from the Wikimedia upload server:

• Hero (frontmatter): Sun Moon Lake in Twilight — Photo: Tommy.In, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sun Moon Lake at dusk, an artificial lake formed after Wujie Dam raised the water level by 18.18 meters in 1934.
• Scene §Taiwan’s Only Landlocked County (Sun Moon Lake): Same as hero — repeated in the article as a geographic visual anchor.
• Scene §Taiwan’s Only Landlocked County (Hehuan Mountain): Hehuanshan Cuesta — Photo: Chewy3326, CC BY 2.5. The area around Hehuan Mountain’s main peak; Wuling, at 3,275 meters, is the highest point on Taiwan’s road system.
• Scene §Wujie Dam (Lalu Island): Lalu Island, August 19, 2013 — Photo: Ckbun, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Thao sacred island at the center of Sun Moon Lake; in 2000, its name was restored from “Guanghua Island” to Lalu.
• Scene §Zhongxing New Village: Taiwan JhongSing Village Paifang — Entrance archway of Zhongxing New Village, completed in 1957 in imitation of the British New Town model, a physical witness of the provincial government era. CC BY-SA 2.5.
• Scene §Zhongliao Township (921 Earthquake Museum): 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan 2024-09-21 — Photo: Liu Shu-fu / Office of the President, CC BY 2.0. The 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan, preserving the Chelungpu Fault site at the former Guangfu Junior High School in Wufeng, Taichung.

Licenses: CC BY-SA 3.0 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / CC BY 2.0 / CC BY 2.5.

References

1. 921 Earthquake — Central Weather Administration Seismological Center — Official earthquake report by the Central Weather Administration. A complete primary record of the reverse-fault earthquake at 1:47:15.9 a.m. on September 21, 1999, Richter magnitude 7.3, epicenter in Jiji Township, focal depth 8 kilometers, 100 kilometers of Chelungpu Fault displacement, maximum horizontal displacement of 9 meters, vertical displacement of 6 meters, and total duration of 102 seconds.↩
2. 921 Earthquake — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Original text: “In Nantou County, 886 people died, 678 were severely injured, 23,127 households fully collapsed, and 16,792 households partially collapsed,” plus “fully and partially collapsed households in Nantou County and Taichung County and City accounted for about 95% of all damaged households in Taiwan.” Includes Zhongliao Township’s 92.5% fully and partially collapsed houses, 41 people buried alive at Jiufen’ershan, 22 unrecovered, and detailed township data.↩
3. Wushe Incident — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Full timeline and quotations for the October 27, 1930 public school incident origin, including the October 7 toast incident, the list of six participating communities, 134 Japanese civilian deaths, the Second Wushe Incident on April 25, 1931, the Toda group night raid that killed or drove to suicide 216 people, and the forced relocation to Qingliu community, or Kawanakajima.↩
4. History of Zhongxing New Village — National Development Council Zhongxing New Village Revitalization Project — Official introduction by the National Development Council’s Zhongxing New Village Revitalization Project Office. Complete record of construction and functional changes: 1956 relocation, 1957 completion, 1998 provincial streamlining, 2011 cultural landscape registration, and the 2018 establishment of the revitalization project office.↩
5. 20th Anniversary of the 921 Earthquake: Reconstruction and Unfinished Work — The Reporter — The Reporter’s in-depth 20th-anniversary feature on 921. Original text: “Damage from 921 was approximately more than NT$360 billion; the government budgeted more than NT$260 billion for reconstruction, while private donations totaled approximately NT$34 billion,” plus “On the third day after the disaster ... passing the bare Jiujiofeng peaks, I saw Puli’s Yuying Elementary School collapsed into a heap.” Uses an alternate death toll of 2,454, including those who later died of severe injuries.↩
6. 921 Earthquake Special Issue: A Powerful Earthquake Is More Frightening Than War — Taiwan Panorama — Taiwan Panorama’s in-depth disaster-area report on 921. Original text: “In Zhongliao Township, more than 90% of all buildings were damaged. In villages of only twenty to thirty thousand people, 154 people died, and many families perished entirely,” plus “A powerful earthquake is more frightening than war,” “More than two thousand people lost their lives in the rubble,” and “At Jiufen’ershan in Nangang Village, Guoxing Township, Nantou, the deepest subsidence reached 100 meters.”↩
7. Overview of Nantou County — Nantou County Government — Official Nantou County Government data: area of 4,106.436 square kilometers, Taiwan’s second-largest county, 95 kilometers north to south and 72 kilometers east to west, 13 township-level administrative divisions, hillslopes accounting for 83%, population of 470,000 in 2025, 65-and-over population share of 22.51%, Taiwan’s only landlocked county, Yushan main peak at 3,952 meters, and other basic geographic and human data.↩
8. Babao Canal — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Full irrigation construction history: Shi Shibang began excavation in the forty-eighth year of Kangxi, 1709; completed it in the fifty-eighth year of Kangxi, 1719; the Mr. Lin legend; the Ershui Water Running Festival; and its status as one of Taiwan’s three great old canals, the other two being Tongfuzun in Tainan and Long’en Canal in Hsinchu. The Mr. Lin story is marked as a retelling of folk legend.↩
9. Historical Development of Nantou County — Nantou County Government — Historical development record on the Nantou County Government website. Complete administrative history: in 1683, under Zhuluo County, Taiwan Prefecture, Fujian Province; in 1723, Yongzheng established Changhua County; in 1759, the twenty-fourth year of Qianlong, Changhua County established a county assistant magistrate in Nantou, “the beginning of government and education in Nantou County”; in 1875, Nantou Ting was established; in 1895, Japanese-period Nantou Ting; in 1920, reassigned to Taichu Prefecture; in 1945, postwar Nantou County was established; in 1957, Zhongxing New Village was completed; and in December 1998, provincial streamlining.↩
10. Wushe Incident — Wikipedia — Same as [^3]. Includes Mona Rudao’s biography, “Mona Rudao, already renowned for bravery in his youth, was one of the few wise and courageous men who obtained chiefly status through ability rather than bloodline”; the six-community list (Mahebo / Tarowan / Boarung / Suku / Hogo / Rodofu); Japanese mobilization of 5,311 personnel; the disputed use of gas shells; Mona Rudao’s suicide and the specimenizing of his remains; the Toda group’s night raid in the Second Wushe Incident; and the full record of forced relocation to Kawanakajima.↩
11. Return and Burial of Mona Rudao’s Remains: 1973 NTU Letter by Li Yih-yuan — Storm Media — Storm Media historical report. Original text from the 1973 letter by Li Yih-yuan, acting chair of National Taiwan University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, to the university president: “The remains of this martyr should not be kept in a research institution; they should in fact be returned for burial in his homeland,” plus the full historical record of his burial using Han rituals, including wreaths, mourning hall, and music, behind the Wushe Indigenous Anti-Japanese Monument across from Ren’ai Elementary School in Nantou.↩
12. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale — Wikipedia — Wei Te-sheng’s 2011 film. Complete production and release record: Part I, The Sun Flag, premiered on September 9, 2011; Part II, The Rainbow Bridge, premiered on September 30, 2011; global box office of NT$880 million, including NT$810 million in Taiwan; and official competition selection at the Venice Film Festival.↩
13. Sun Moon Lake Hydroelectric Project — StoryStudio — StoryStudio historical feature. Complete engineering history: establishment of Taiwan Power Company in 1919, suspension after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, resumption in 1931, completion of Sun Moon Lake First Power Plant on June 3, 1934 with generating capacity of 143,500 kilowatts, “at the time the largest hydroelectric facility in Asia and the seventh-largest in the world,” Wujie Dam specifications of 57.6 meters high, 90.91 meters long, and six gates, and Sun Moon Lake’s water level rising by 18.18 meters.↩
14. Sun Moon Lake History and Thao Relocation — Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area — Official Sun Moon Lake tourism website history page. Original text: “The raised water level flooded the Thao people’s traditional settlements and farmland. The Japanese relocated the Thao to Dehua Community, allotting only two fen of land to each person, and the Thao population gradually declined.” Includes the complete record of Sun Moon Lake’s water level rising by 18.18 meters in 1934, the lake area expanding from 4.55 to 7.73 square kilometers, the flooding of the Thao Shiyin settlement, and forced relocation to Buji Community, today’s Ita Thao.↩
15. Lalu Island — Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area — Official Sun Moon Lake tourism website page on Lalu Island. Original text: “LALU (Lalu Island) means ‘sacred island in the heart’ in the Thao language.” Includes the complete place-name history: “Zhu Islet” under Qing rule, “Jade Island” during Japanese rule, Kuomintang renaming as “Guanghua Island” in 1949, and the Thao people’s successful campaign to restore the name Lalu Island in 2000.↩
16. Thao Name Recognition — Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica — Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology page on Thao history. Complete ethnic history: on August 8, 2001, the Thao were officially recognized from among the plains Indigenous peoples as the 10th Indigenous people; current population is roughly over 800, with 776 counted by the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Household Registration in 2017 and other statistics around 885; and among Taiwan’s 16 Indigenous peoples, they are the third-smallest by population.↩
17. Five Bunun Groups in Xinyi Township — National Repository of Cultural Heritage / Xinyi Township Office — Xinyi Township Office ethnic distribution data. Distribution of the five major groups: Zhuo group in Jiumei Village; Ka group in Nantou, Dili, and Shuanglong; Dan group in the upper Chenyoulan River area of Dili Village; Luan group in Fengqiu, Wangxiang, Xinxian, and Renlun; and Isbukun group in Dongpu, Luona, and Mingde. Pasibutbut eight-part polyphony “is transmitted only among the Bunun Luan and Isbukun groups,” and Mingde is the present community that can sing it and is closest to the ancestors’ earliest homeland.↩
18. Yushan National Park — Yushan National Park Headquarters — Official Yushan National Park website. Primary-source data: established on April 10, 1985; Taiwan’s second national park; area of 105,490 hectares, making it Taiwan’s largest national park; spans four counties and cities (Xinyi Township in Nantou + Alishan Township in Chiayi + Taoyuan District in Kaohsiung + Zhuoxi Township in Hualien); and Yushan main peak, 3,952 meters, located in Xinyi Township, Nantou.↩
19. Zhongxing New Village Construction and Provincial Streamlining — Wikipedia + National Development Council — Chinese Wikipedia entry on Zhongxing New Village plus the National Development Council Zhongxing New Village Revitalization Project. Complete history of construction and functional change: 1956 relocation origin; 1957 completion of the overall urban design, modeled on the British New Town approach, garden-style administrative community, rainwater and wastewater separation, cul-de-sacs, and 500-meter palm boulevard; James Soong’s 1994 election as provincial governor with 4.8 million votes; December 1998 provincial streamlining; 2011 cultural landscape registration; and the 2018 NDC takeover dividing the area into north, center, and south cores.↩
20. Jiufen’ershan Landslide — Taiwan Panorama — Taiwan Panorama 921 special issue. Original text: “At Jiufen’ershan in Nangang Village, Guoxing Township, Nantou, the deepest subsidence reached 100 meters, and at least forty villagers were buried alive.” Later precise figures: 180 hectares collapsed, 35 million cubic meters of earth and rock, 41 people buried alive, 22 still unrecovered, and the collapse reduced the mountain’s height by roughly 400 meters.↩
21. Post-921 Building Regulation Revisions — Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of the Interior — Official record of regulatory revisions by the Construction and Planning Agency, Ministry of the Interior. Complete regulatory change record after 921: in 2003, the Building Technical Regulations were amended, seismic resistance coefficients were raised from roughly level 3-4 to level 5-6, ductile design of walls, columns, and beams was strengthened, and “only houses that obtained building permits in 2003 or later comply with the new regulations” became a dividing line for building age in Taiwan’s real estate market.↩
22. Lushan Hot Spring Relocation — PTS Our Island — Public Television Service’s Our Island feature on Lushan Hot Spring. Japanese-period Fuji Hot Spring / Hatozawa Hot Spring, Tarowan River valley, elevation above 400 meters, neutral sodium bicarbonate springs, water temperature 58-98 degrees Celsius, and original text: “Water brings wealth, and it also brings disaster. Lushan had limitless business opportunities because of hot spring water, and unpredictable danger because of the floods of the Tarowan River.” Includes full chronology: 1999 921 earthquake, 2001 Typhoon Toraji, 2008 Typhoon Sinlaku, 2010 Typhoon Songda, 2011 collective relocation decision, 2015 demolition of 3.63 hectares within the river area line, and 2016 business closures after operators received NT$700 million in compensation.↩
23. Seediq Name Recognition — PTS News — PTS News 2008 report on official recognition. Original text: “On April 23, 2008, the Seediq became an Indigenous people recognized by the government of the Republic of China, becoming the 14th Indigenous people.” Includes the full context of the three language groups, Seediq Tgdaya, Sediq Toda, and Sejiq Truku; the earlier recognition of the Truku as the 12th people on January 14, 2004; and the completion of recognition for the western Seediq in 2008.↩
24. Puli Brewery Shaoxing Wine — Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation — Official history of Puli Brewery by Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corporation. Complete brewery history: established privately in 1917; brought under the Taiwan Governor-General’s monopoly system in 1922 during Japanese rule; Zhejiang winemaking techniques introduced by the Kuomintang government in 1949; successful trial production of Shaoxing wine in 1952 using Puli’s natural Ailan spring water; and its present role as the center of Taiwan’s Shaoxing wine production.↩