New Taipei City: The Ring Metropolis Around Taipei, Where 4.01 Million People Sustain the Capital’s Commute, Industry, and Memory

30-second overview: In 1628, the Spanish built Fort Santo Domingo in Tamsui. In 1643, the Dutch laid the foundation for a new fort on the same site. In 1867, Britain and the Qing court signed the Permanent Lease of Fort San Domingo, with annual rent of only 10 taels of sycee silver. That brick predates Shen Baozhen’s 1875 establishment of “Taipei Prefecture” in Bangka by 247 years. Today, New Taipei City’s 29 districts surround Taipei City’s 12 districts; 4.01 million people live in Taiwan’s largest special municipality, which was upgraded only 15 years ago, on December 25, 2010. But the history of this “ring metropolis” reaches much farther back: the Banqiao Lin Family’s three-courtyard mansion in 1853, John Dodd’s 1869 shipment of 21,000 kilograms of oolong tea from Tamsui to New York, Jiufen and Jinguashi as Asia’s first gold-mining district in the 1890s, the Pingxi Railway carrying coal in 1929, the Sanxia Zushi Temple that Li Mei-shu began carving in 1947, and the Tranan community of the Atayal people in Wulai. What Taipei sees as a satellite city, New Taipei sees as 400 years of its own history.

The Red Brick at the Tamsui River Mouth, 247 Years Older Than Taipei’s City Walls

Fort San Domingo in Tamsui, the site where the Spanish laid the first brick in 1628. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0.

If you want to find one object that can speak for all of New Taipei City, go to Fort San Domingo in Tamsui.

Fort San Domingo is at No. 1, Lane 28, Zhongzheng Road, Tamsui District. It is a square red-brick building on a hill, with the two-story brick British Consular Residence added in 1891 beside it¹. From here one can see the mouth of the Tamsui River, Bali, and the Taiwan Strait. Between 1628 and 1629, a Spanish fleet sailed north from Manila and built the first fortification here, using “clay, reed stalks, bamboo, and timber” as materials. They named it Fort Santo Domingo¹.

The Spanish remained in Tamsui for 14 years. In 1642, the Dutch East India Company came north from Tainan to attack Fort San Salvador in Keelung, and then took over Tamsui. On May 7, 1643, the Dutch laid the foundation for a new fort on the same site: “the first stone was formally laid, and construction began... it was not fully completed until 1646”¹. Over three years, the Dutch transformed the Spanish wooden fortification into the stone-built Fort Anthonio. The frame of the red-brick main structure visible today is the one the Dutch put in place in 1644.

After the Qing dynasty arrived, the fort changed hands again. In 1724, “Wang Qian, then subprefect in charge of policing banditry in Tamsui under Taiwan Prefecture, began repairing Fort San Domingo”¹. In 1867, the Qing court and Britain signed the Permanent Lease of Fort San Domingo: “Britain established a consulate in Tamsui in 1861, and in 1867 concluded the Permanent Lease of Fort San Domingo with the Qing court”¹, paying only 10 taels of sycee silver each year. The British remained here for 105 years. After closing the consulate in 1972, they entrusted the site first to Australian custody and then to American custody; only on June 30, 1980, did Britain formally hand it back to the government of the Republic of China¹.

From Spain in 1628, the Netherlands in 1644, the Qing dynasty in 1724, Britain in 1867, Australia and the United States, to its return to the Republic of China in 1980, one brick passed through six regimes. In 1983, it was designated a first-class historic site of the Taiwan-Fujian region, and on December 25, 1984, it opened to the public¹.

And when was Taipei “founded” as a walled city? One must wait until 1875, when Shen Baozhen petitioned to establish “Taipei Prefecture”; until 1879, when Chen Xingju began building the city; until 1882, when construction on the North Gate wall began; and until 1884, when it was completed. That is 256 years after the first brick of Fort San Domingo was laid in 1628.

This is the first easily misunderstood fact about New Taipei City: the history behind the identity of “surrounding Taipei” is actually two and a half centuries older than Taipei itself.

1858 Port Opening, 1869 Oolong Tea to New York: The First Window to the Outside World

Beside Fort San Domingo is the mouth of the Tamsui River.

In June 1858, the Qing court signed the Treaty of Tianjin with the foreign powers. “Taiwan’s three ports, Taiwanfu (Anping), Tamsui, and Takao (Kaohsiung), were thereby opened to the powers, with travel and missionary work permitted”². The Qing signed the treaties in sequence with Russia on June 13, the United States on June 18, Britain on June 26, and France on June 27. On July 18, 1862, Tamsui established a foreign customs office and opened for trade. It was Taiwan’s first port formally opened to global commerce, 21 years earlier than Keelung Harbor, which did not establish foreign customs until 1883.

The British merchant John Dodd arrived at this time. In 1864, he came to Tamsui to investigate Taiwanese tea, established the Dodd & Co. firm there, and introduced tea seedlings from Anxi, Fujian, providing loans to farmers in northern Taiwan. In 1869, he “loaded 21,000 kilograms of Taiwanese oolong tea onto two sailing ships and shipped it directly to New York”³. This was the first time Taiwanese tea was exported to the United States, traveling halfway around the world. After it “won a good reputation,” oolong tea sold briskly in New York, and Tamsui prospered along with it.

“From 1864 to 1894, Tamsui accounted for 57% of Taiwan’s total export trade; the principal exports were tea, sugar, and camphor”⁴. English-speaking staff of foreign firms, compradors writing letters back to Xiamen, Fujian immigrants rolling cigarettes, and Taiwanese merchants buying goods in Bangka crowded onto the same riverbank. “By 1878, tea already accounted for 90% of northern Taiwan’s export value”⁵. Tamsui became northern Taiwan’s window onto globalization.

George Leslie Mackay arrived at this time as well. “On March 9, 1872, the Canadian Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay landed in Tamsui”⁶. The day he stepped off the ship, he knew he would spend his life here. In 1880, Mackay returned to Canada to raise funds, receiving a donation of 6,215 Canadian dollars from residents of Oxford County, Ontario. “On July 26, the eighth year of the Guangxu reign (1882), construction was completed, and it was named the Oxford College”⁶. This was northern Taiwan’s first Western-style school, the predecessor of today’s Aletheia University. In 1965, the Tamsui Junior College of Business Administration was established on the original Oxford College site; in 1999, it was upgraded to Aletheia University.

But in 1884, another war broke out.

On October 1, the French admiral Amédée Courbet led four warships in an attack on Hobe, at the mouth of the Tamsui River. Admiral Sun Kaihua had ships sunk with stone ballast to block the harbor, set up naval mines, and prevented the French from landing. “Official records of the French National Archives state that French losses were 6 dead, 11 missing, and 49 wounded”⁷. The French occupied Keelung for eight months, but they did not take Tamsui.

“In this battle, the Qing court discovered Taiwan’s strategic importance for coastal defense; after the war it announced the establishment of Taiwan Province and appointed Liu Mingchuan, in his capacity as Fujian governor, concurrently as the first governor of Taiwan”⁷. After the war, Liu Mingchuan asked the German military engineer Max E. Hecht to plan the Hobe Fort, completed in 1886. The inscription over its gate, “Key to the Northern Gate,” remains visible today⁷. This is New Taipei’s most important contrast to remember: the immediate trigger for the establishment of Taiwan Province was this small naval battle at Tamsui.

📝 Curator’s note: Taiwanese history textbooks often compress “1858 Treaty of Tianjin → 1860 opening of Tamsui → 1869 oolong tea exports to New York” into a single sentence. But what those three events compress is the entire process by which Tamsui transformed from a peripheral fishing port into a node of global trade. Dodd & Co. was near today’s Customs Wharf on Zhongzheng Road in Tamsui; Mackay’s Oxford College is on today’s Aletheia University campus; the 1886 Hobe Fort is behind the Tamsui Martyrs’ Shrine. It takes only ten minutes to walk from Fort San Domingo to Oxford College, but the walk spans more than 200 years of world history. Taiwanese discussions of Taipei’s globalization often begin after the 1980s. What Tamsui people remember is that 21,000-kilogram shipment of oolong tea in 1869.

The Banqiao Lin Family: The First Case of Native Capitalism in 1853

The Lin Ben Yuan Family Mansion and Garden in Banqiao, completed in 1893: the first case of Taiwanese native capitalism across 133 years. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Half an hour south from Tamsui is Banqiao.

If Tamsui was New Taipei’s international window, Banqiao was the starting point of its native capitalism.

Lin Pinghou made his fortune early. “Lin Pinghou worked in the rice transport trade; when the Lin Shuangwen rebellion caused rice prices to surge, Lin, as a rice merchant, earned extremely substantial profits from the rice transport business”⁸. He had five sons. His third son, whose branch was called Benji, and his youngest son, whose branch was called Yuanji, together established “Lin Ben Yuan” as the family firm. This is the formal name of the “Banqiao Lin Family.”

The Lin family’s settlement in Banqiao happened in two steps. First: “In the 27th year of the Daoguang reign (1847), to facilitate the collection of tenant rents, the Lin family built Biyiguan in Fangqiao, today’s Banqiao; this was the beginning of the Lin family’s construction of residences in the Banqiao area”⁸. The second step was the three-courtyard mansion built from 1851 to 1853: “In the first year of the Xianfeng reign (1851), the Lin family built a three-courtyard mansion beside Biyiguan in Fangqiao, and after its completion in the third year of Xianfeng moved the entire family in”⁸. In 1853, the third year of Xianfeng, the Lin family formally moved from Xinzhuang to Banqiao. This was the starting point of the Banqiao Lin Family’s identity as “Banqiao people.”

Then came the Zhangzhou-Quanzhou armed feuds. After Lin Guofang, Lin Pinghou’s youngest son, took charge of the family enterprise in 1857, the Zhangzhou-Quanzhou conflict in Taipei reached its peak. In 1861, Lin Guofang attempted to take back land rented to Quanzhou people and rent it instead to Zhangzhou people, causing widespread unrest in greater Taipei. For decades after this conflict, Banqiao became the base of Zhangzhou immigrants in greater Taipei.

The Lin family’s truly immense wealth came in the third generation, under Lin Weiyuan and Lin Weirang. During the Sino-French War in 1884, “in the tenth year of the Guangxu reign (1884), Lin Weiyuan donated 200,000 silver dollars for military pay, assisted Liu Mingchuan in managing Taiwan’s defense, and served as assistant minister for Taiwan pacification and cultivation, rising at once to become a ‘red-topped merchant’”⁹. The Lin family rose from rice merchants to political merchants, dealing directly with the Qing elite.

The Lin Family Garden was built during this period. In the 14th year of Guangxu (1888), Lin Weiyuan invested heavily in restoration and connected the garden scenes. Only in the 19th year of Guangxu (1893) was the entire complex completed⁸. The garden remains today on Ximen Street in Banqiao District. It covers 6,054 ping and is Taiwan’s most complete surviving garden complex.

But after the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, the Banqiao Lin Family Garden was nearly destroyed. “After 1949, more than 1,000 refugees in 300 households once occupied it, causing severe damage”⁸. More than a thousand mainlander refugees moved into this late-Qing garden; toilets, stoves, and clotheslines crowded into its pavilions and galleries. It was not until the end of 1982 that “restoration of the garden began; after four years, it was finally completed. The restoration cost a total of NT$156,433,218”⁸. It was designated a national historic site in 1985. The Lin Family Garden we see today is the version restored and completed in 1986.

From the Lin family’s settlement in Banqiao in 1853, to heavy investment in the garden in 1888, completion in 1893, refugee occupation after 1949, restoration beginning in 1982, and completion in 1986, one garden spans 133 years of Taiwanese history.

Banqiao’s status as the seat of Taipei County government, later the New Taipei City government, is inseparable from the Lin family. Today Banqiao District has a population of 549,000 people, according to year-end 2025 figures. It is the most populous administrative district in Taiwan and the seat of the New Taipei City government¹⁰. But Banqiao’s core still lies beside that 1853 three-courtyard mansion.

1890 Jiufen and Jinguashi: 97 Years of Gold Mining

Jiufen mountain town, the site of transition from mining settlement to tourism symbol. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Northeast from Banqiao is New Taipei’s mountain region.

In 1889, workers discovered placer gold in the Keelung River. Prospectors followed the river upstream, reaching Dacukeng between 1890 and 1893. In 1893, an outcrop of the Little Jinguashi gold vein was found near the Jiufen mountains. In 1894, gold ore was discovered in the main Jinguashi ore body. This was the beginning of “Asia’s first precious-metal mine.”

At the start of Japanese rule, the mining rights at Jinguashi were granted to the Tanaka Group. On October 26, 1896, approval was given to Tanaka Chobei, who began mining from the main Jinguashi mountain¹¹. The Japanese brought mechanized extraction, railways, and chemical refining. Jinguashi changed from a Qing-era field of scattered prospectors into an industrial mine under Japanese rule.

“In 1938, production even reached a peak of nearly 70,000 taels, earning Jinguashi at the time the reputation of ‘Asia’s first precious-metal mine,’ and at one point drawing 80,000 people here to pursue their gold-rush dream”¹². A small mountain town held 80,000 people in 1938. That was ten times more than the combined populations today of Wulai District, with 5,800 people; Pingxi District, with 4,400; and Shuangxi District, with 8,300.

After the war, mining at Jinguashi continued under the Taiwan Metal Mining Company, commonly known as Taijin. But gold output declined year after year. In 1985, Taijin began downsizing, and its mines and processing plants were sold off one after another. “The Taiwan Metal Mining Company finally declared closure in 1987, while the land of the Jinguashi mining district was taken over by the Taiwan Sugar Corporation”¹³. This is the precise moment when the “gold-mining era” of Jiufen and Jinguashi ended. From the discovery of gold in 1890 to Taijin’s closure in 1987, it lasted exactly 97 years.

But Jiufen’s story did not end in 1987.

In 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film A City of Sadness came to Jiufen and Jinguashi to shoot. “On November 25, 1988, filming began in front of the octagonal pavilion in Jinguashi, Keelung.” In 1989, the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, “turning the filming locations of Jiufen and Jinguashi into tourist hot spots”¹⁴. A mountainside settlement from the mining era was rewritten by one film into a tourism symbol. Starting in the 1990s, Jiufen’s old houses became teahouses, tour buses filled the mountain, and mining-era sites such as Fifth Tunnel, Shengping Theater, and Jishan Street became Instagram check-in locations.

In 2004, “under the leadership of the Taipei County Government... the Gold Ecological Park officially opened”¹⁵. It was Taiwan’s first museum park based on the concept of an eco-museum, integrating the Japanese-era Crown Prince Chalet, Benshan No. 5 Tunnel, and miners’ dormitories into a local museum. It took 17 years for Jinguashi to turn from mine into museum.

From the perspective of tourists in Jiufen, this was a romantic transformation. The descendants of miners do not necessarily see it that way. The year Taijin closed, the population of the Jinguashi settlement fell from 80,000 to fewer than 5,000. Miners dispersed to Taipei, Keelung, and Yilan to find work. Many people selling taro balls on Jiufen and Jinguashi Old Streets today are descendants of those miners.

✦ The marker of the end of the mining era was Taijin’s 1987 closure, not its 1985 downsizing. 1985 was the beginning of the slow boil; 1987 was the moment the water truly ran dry.

The 1929 Pingxi Railway, 1804 Yingge Ceramics, and 1769 Sanxia Zushi Temple: Northern Taiwan’s Craft Chain

Shifen Old Street on the Pingxi Line, a railway that continues today after becoming a government-run passenger service in 1929. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Beyond Jiufen and Jinguashi, another mining settlement in New Taipei lies upstream along the Keelung River: Pingxi.

“The Pingxi Line was completed in July 1921, the tenth year of the Taisho era. It was originally a coal-only railway funded and built by Taiyang Mining Co.”¹⁶ In the Japanese period, Taiyang Mining, operated by the Yan Yun-nian family, discovered substantial coal deposits in the Shidi coalfield, around today’s Pingxi and Jingtong. After the Fujita Group confirmed the reserves through trial excavation in 1908, Taiyang built its own railway in 1921 to carry the coal out.

“On October 1, 1929, the Railway Department of the Taiwan Government-General purchased the Shidi Line for 1.5 million yen, converted it to government operation, named it the ‘Pingxi Line,’ and after reconstruction began to handle passenger service as well”¹⁶. This railway was originally a private coal line. Only in 1929 was it purchased by the Government-General and turned into the “Pingxi Line.” The little train tourists ride today rests on the frame of that 1929 government-run version.

Pingxi sky lanterns came later. “During the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty, early settlers in this district arrived at Shifenliao after a circuitous journey from Hui’an and Anxi in Fujian. At the time, bandits were causing disorder and harassing settlements, so the settlers had to take refuge in the mountains. After the crisis passed, young men who had remained in the village used sky lanterns as signals to notify their families in hiding that they could return home”¹⁷. A signal system used during refuge was turned into a tourist activity in the 1990s, and in 2012 New Taipei City enacted the Sky Lantern Release Management Regulations. Today, every Lantern Festival, Pingxi’s sky fills with orange lanterns. It is beautiful, but it has nothing to do with coal mining.

Toward Sanxia and Yingge lies another craft chain.

The earliest date for Sanxia Changfu Yan Zushi Temple differs across sources. ⚠️ The common official account is “the 34th year of Qianlong (1769)”¹⁸. The temple went through three reconstructions: the first after a major earthquake in 1833, the second after it was burned as a resistance base following the Japanese military’s entry into Taiwan in 1899, and the third in 1947. The person presiding over this third reconstruction was the painter Li Mei-shu.

“In 1947, during the third reconstruction of Zushi Temple, the temple authorities and local figures jointly selected Li Mei-shu as the project director. Li Mei-shu personally presided over the planning and reconstruction, using his artistic expertise to launch the temple’s astonishing decorative-arts project; for this reason it has been praised as an ‘Eastern art palace’”¹⁸. Li Mei-shu was from Sanxia, a cofounder of the Taiyang Art Association, and after the war served as chair of the Sanxia Township Representative Council. In 1947, he began treating this temple as the artistic work of his lifetime, carving every column, every coffered ceiling, and every stone lion as if he were painting in oil. The carving was still unfinished when Li Mei-shu died in 1983, and construction continues to this day¹⁸. One temple has been carved for 79 years and is still not finished.

Yingge ceramics began in the late 18th century with the Wu An family. “Yingge ceramics originated in the ninth year of Jiaqing (1804), when Wu An of Quanzhou first opened a kiln in the Dahu area”¹⁹. Wu An crossed the sea from Quanzhou, Fujian, to Taiwan, first living in Tuzi Keng in Guishan, Taoyuan. Because of Zhangzhou-Quanzhou armed feuds, he eventually relocated to the area around Jianshanpu Street in Yingge. Throughout the 19th century, Yingge’s ceramics industry was monopolized by the Wu family. “Starting in 1917, the ‘Jianshan Ceramics Association’ and the ‘Jianshan Ceramics Production and Sales Association’ were established one after another, breaking the Wu family monopoly. In 1939, the Japanese ‘square kiln’ was introduced, greatly improving the efficiency and quality of Yingge ceramics”¹⁹. From 1804 to the present, Yingge has produced ceramics for 222 years. On November 26, 2000, the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum officially opened, Taiwan’s first museum devoted to ceramics¹⁹.

Sanxia Old Street itself is another story. “Between 1886 and 1920, the period known as the golden age of Sankakuyū dyeing, the entire Sankakuyū Street had, in addition to the Lin Maoxing dyehouse, Yongyu, Jinlianchun, Liu Chengfang, Li Yifa, Zhou Shengfa, Lin Rongxiang, Lin Yuanji, and others: a total of 20 dyehouses, making it northern Taiwan’s most important indigo-dyeing base”²⁰. Sanxia’s three major industries flourished simultaneously: indigo dyeing using the Assam indigo plant, camphor from the Sanxia mountains, and tea, promoted by the British merchant John Dodd in 1868 and later processed at a tea factory established by Mitsui Gomei Kaisha during Japanese rule. The buildings on today’s Sanxia Old Street have survived since 1911, “preserving commercial street houses from the Japanese period, with continuous red-brick arcades and antique architecture”²⁰.

From Jiufen and Jinguashi, mining; to Pingxi, coal transport; to Sanxia, indigo dyeing, camphor, and tea; to Yingge, ceramics: New Taipei’s northeastern mountains and southwestern terrace form a complete traditional industrial chain. After the 1980s, this chain was gradually turned toward tourism, but its framework remains.

Ketagalan and Atayal: Two Indigenous Axes

New Taipei’s history did not begin with the Spanish.

Bali, on the southern bank of the Tamsui River mouth, is where the Shihsanhang archaeological site is located. “The Shihsanhang site lies on the southern bank at the junction of the Tamsui River mouth in Bali District, New Taipei City. It is one of northern Taiwan’s important archaeological sites. Its inhabitants lived roughly 2,000 to 400 years ago and are currently the only prehistoric residents of Taiwan confirmed to have possessed iron-smelting technology. They were very likely ancestors of the Ketagalan people, one of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples”²¹. In 1998, the exhibition hall was renamed the Shihsanhang Museum; in 2003, it was officially completed and opened.

The Ketagalan people were not only in Bali. “Many place names in today’s Taipei are transliterations of Ketagalan, such as Dalongdong, Beitou, Qilian, Bali, Bangka, and Jiarui”²¹. Bali, Sanzhi, Shimen, Tamsui, and Beitou are all Chinese-character phonetic renderings of Ketagalan terms. The place name “Tamsui” itself may be a transliteration adopted by Qing-era Fujianese immigrants after hearing the Ketagalan word “Tampsui,” meaning a muddy river.

But contact between the Ketagalan people and Han settlers was asymmetrical. After Tamsui opened as a port in 1858, Western missionaries and Han immigrants poured into northern Taiwan at the same time, and by the late 19th century the Ketagalan had been heavily Sinicized. Today, there are still scattered descendants of the Ketagalan people in Tamsui, Bali, and Sanzhi districts, but they are very different from peoples such as the Amis or Paiwan, who retain clearly visible community structures. The Ketagalan language has almost disappeared.

New Taipei’s other Indigenous axis is in Wulai.

Wulai District is the only mountain Indigenous district among New Taipei City’s 29 districts, and it is Atayal reserved land. Wulai mainly has four communities: Wulai, or Ulay, the main tourist area; Zhongzhi, or Tampya; Xinxian, or Rahaw, meaning “dense forest”; and Fushan, or Tranan²².

“The Fushan community is called ‘Tranan’ in the Atayal language. It is the innermost mountain community of Wulai, and it was the first place where Atayal people settled after crossing the mountains from Shang Baling in Fuxing Township, Taoyuan, to Wulai”²². Tranan’s location is crucial: it belongs to the same Atayal migration system as Lala Mountain in Fuxing District, Taoyuan. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Atayal migrated north from Pinsbukan, their ancestral homeland in today’s Faxiang Village, Ren’ai Township, Nantou. Some crossed Lala Mountain into Wulai; others remained in Fuxing, Taoyuan. Today, Wulai’s Fushan community and Taoyuan’s Lala Mountain communities still speak the same Atayal dialect.

The history of Wulai hot springs began under Japanese rule: “In 1903, after Nagaono Eikiyo of Shenkeng discovered them in the Nanshi River valley, a bathhouse was established at the Wulai Aboriginal Affairs Officer’s station”²². The Japanese turned Wulai into Taipei’s back garden. That identity continues today, and Wulai has become the most tourist-oriented “Indigenous township” among New Taipei’s 29 districts. But Wulai’s true core remains in deep mountain communities such as Fushan and Xinxian, places tour buses cannot reach.

From the Ketagalan people in Tamsui to the Atayal people in Wulai, New Taipei contains two Indigenous axes: one is the “near disappearance” of the plains Indigenous peoples; the other is the “continued presence” of the mountain Indigenous peoples. Neither axis lies inside Taipei City.

1958 Yonghe Separation, 1970s Sanchong-Xinzhuang Industrial Migration, 1979 Erchong Floodway: Three Postwar Waves of Expansion

New Taipei’s postwar population explosion happened in three waves.

The first wave came in the 1950s in Zhonghe and Yonghe. After the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, “the government, considering air-raid dispersal from Taipei City, designated the Yonghe area of Zhonghe Township as a dispersal area, and the population rapidly increased”²³. By 1956, Zhonghe Township had reached 44,325 people, several times its 1945 population. On April 1, 1958, “Zhonghe Township separated out all six villages in the Guilunlan-Xizhou area, as well as one village each from Tanqian and Xiulang, and formally established a town. The initial proposed name was Zhongxing Town, but because it risked sharing a name with Zhongxing New Village, it was named Yonghe Town”²³. Zhonghe and Yonghe formally separated.

Yonghe’s real density came later. In the 1980s and 1990s, “many Korean Chinese from Shandong came to Taiwan after circuitous journeys and settled in Yonghe”²⁴. Zhongxing Street in Yonghe became “Korea Street,” selling Korean groceries, Korean food, and ginseng tea. After the 1970s, this street gradually transformed into a commercial district for Korean goods and cuisine. Yonghe’s food map, population density, and immigrant composition are all inseparable from its initial 1949 role as “Taipei’s dispersal area.”

The second wave came in the 1970s in Sanchong and Xinzhuang.

“The 1960s and 1970s, the era of the Ten Major Construction Projects and economic takeoff, were when Sanchong also fully set itself in motion. Small factories sat in neighborhood lanes, one every three steps and another every five. They mostly produced industrial components and semi-finished goods such as screws, molds, spot welding, electroplating, lathe work, and plastic injection molding. Their large-scale output supported half of Taiwan’s machinery-industry components”²⁵. Sanchong’s factories were the Taiwanese model of “the home as factory”; every lane had people making screws, operating lathes, or doing electroplating.

“Sanchong was located at the starting and ending point of the freeway, with convenient north-south transport, and it was separated by only a river from prosperous Taipei City. These two superior conditions made Sanchong the city with the most migrants in all Taiwan”²⁵. In the 1970s, rural populations from central and southern Taiwan migrated north in large numbers, and Sanchong was their first landing point: the Tamsui River on one side, Taipei on the other, cheap rent, and abundant jobs. For many second-generation migrants from Yunlin, Chiayi, Changhua, and Pingtung, the first stop in life was Sanchong.

Xinzhuang’s industrial development also began in the 1970s: “The establishment of the Touqian Industrial Park and Xisheng Industrial Park was an important turning point in Xinzhuang’s shift from an agricultural town to an industrial city... chemicals, textiles, machinery, and metals accounted for the largest shares of industry. These industries attracted large numbers of industrial workers, and outsiders moved in one after another, causing a rapid population increase”²⁵. Xinzhuang and Sanchong joined together, extending an industrial settlement belt from the west bank of the Tamsui River toward the Linkou terrace.

But too many factories meant too many emissions, too much drainage, and too much flood risk. In 1979, the Executive Yuan approved the first-phase flood-control plan; implementation began in 1982 and was completed in 1984. This was the Erchong Floodway²⁶. It “mainly targeted flood control in Sanchong, Xinzhuang, Wugu, Luzhou, and other areas, while also accommodating legally registered factories near the floodway that had to be relocated”²⁶. An artificial channel diverted excess floodwater from Sanchong and Xinzhuang toward the river mouth, while concentrating and resettling displaced factory operators. The green spaces and bicycle paths on both sides of today’s floodway were originally part of the floodplain of the Tamsui River tributaries.

The third wave came in the 2000s, in Linkou and the Xinzhuang Sub-city Center.

Starting in 2003, New Taipei launched development of the Linkou rezoning area and the Xinzhuang Sub-city Center, absorbing middle-class households who moved out of Taipei City because they could not afford Taipei housing prices. Linkou went from military camps and farmland on a terrace to a new town of 100,000 people within ten years. National Taiwan Sport University, Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Mitsui Outlet Park Linkou, and the Linkou high-speed rail station were all built after 2000. The Xinzhuang Sub-city Center benefited from the twin transport advantages of the Xinzhuang MRT Line, opened in 2010, and the Airport MRT, opened in 2017.

From Yonghe in the 1950s, Sanchong and Xinzhuang in the 1970s, to Linkou and the sub-city center in the 2000s, New Taipei’s population expansion has come in waves roughly every 20 years. Each wave absorbed Taipei City’s spillover, the influx of people moving north, and migrants from central and southern Taiwan.

The Day the County Became a Special Municipality: “Taiwan’s Largest” After a 31-Year Wait

After absorbing three waves of expansion, Taipei County’s population reached 3.86 million in 2009.

“Since 1979, when its population had already reached the threshold for a special municipality, Taipei County repeatedly sought restructuring, but was repeatedly rejected”²⁷. Yet in 1979, Taipei County already had 2.5 million people. Compared with Taipei City at 2.3 million and Kaohsiung City at 1.3 million, it was already Taiwan’s most populous local government. The central government, however, kept refusing to let Taipei County upgrade. Upgrading meant a redistribution of budgets, personnel authority, and decision-making power, and neither Taipei City nor the central government wanted to let go.

The struggle lasted 31 years. In May 2007, the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the Local Government Act on third reading, allowing Taipei County, with a population over two million, to apply special-municipality provisions. On June 23, 2009, the Ministry of the Interior approved the change. “On December 25, 2010, Taipei County was upgraded into the special municipality ‘New Taipei City’; the Taipei County Government was renamed the ‘New Taipei City Government,’ its English name became ‘New Taipei City,’ and it became the most populous special municipality within the Republic of China”²⁸. On the same day, Taichung City, Tainan City, and Kaohsiung City were also restructured, in the “Five Municipalities” reform.

The name “New Taipei City” has its own story. Taipei County originally proposed names including “New Taipei City,” “North Taiwan City,” “Taipei County-City,” and “Northeast City.” In the end, it chose “New Taipei,” translated directly into English. This was different from the three other cities restructured at the same time, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, which retained historical names. New Taipei is the only special municipality among the five with a “newborn” name, and the only case of a county upgraded into a special municipality rather than a county-city merger²⁸.

Banqiao changed from “Banqiao City” to “Banqiao District,” remained the seat of government, and became “the most populous district in the country.” Banqiao District has about 549,000 people, according to year-end 2025 figures, exceeding the full provincial cities of Chiayi, with 267,000, and Keelung, with 359,000¹⁰. A single district is larger than an entire city. That is the scale of New Taipei.

Fifteen years have passed. Today New Taipei City has 29 districts and a total population of 4,041,149 as of April 2026, still Taiwan’s largest special municipality¹⁰. But the number “29 districts” itself reveals New Taipei’s internal fracture. The five largest districts, Banqiao with 549,000, Xinzhuang with over 400,000, Zhonghe with over 400,000, Sanchong with over 300,000, and Xindian with over 300,000, differ by a factor of 100 from the mountain districts of Wulai with 5,800, Pingxi with 4,400, Shuangxi with 8,300, Gongliao with 11,000, and Pinglin with 6,300.

New Taipei’s true form is this: one special municipality containing cities of three different ages, including metropolitan districts such as Banqiao, Sanchong, Xinzhuang, and Yonghe; new towns such as Linkou and Tamsui Sub-city Center; and mountain and coastal peripheries such as Ruifang, Pingxi, Wulai, and Gongliao. The differences within its 29 districts are greater than the differences between New Taipei and Taipei.

The Ring Metropolis Around Taipei: 390,000 People Sustain the Capital Through Commuting

Administrative map of New Taipei City’s 29 districts, the ring structure of Taiwan’s largest special municipality. Map: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Look at New Taipei from Taipei 101.

To the east, Nangang extends to Xizhi and then north toward Keelung. To the north, beyond Tianmu lies Beitou, and beyond Beitou lies Tamsui. To the west, Banqiao and Xinzhuang sit across the Tamsui River. To the south, Yonghe and Zhonghe press tightly against Gongguan, and farther south lies Xindian.

New Taipei City’s 29 districts form a ring around Taipei City’s 12 districts. One special municipality completely surrounds another. This administrative geography is rare anywhere in the world.

The core function of this ring metropolis is commuting.

In April 2026, New Taipei City had a total population of 4,041,149¹⁰. Among them, more than 390,000 people are estimated to commute across county and city boundaries to work in Taipei City²⁹. Between 7 and 9 in the morning, MRT trains, buses, and cars heading from Banqiao, Sanchong, Xinzhuang, Yonghe, Zhonghe, Xindian, and Xizhi toward Taipei City jam the bridges on both sides of the Tamsui River until they barely move. Between 5 and 7 in the evening, it happens again in reverse.

New Taipei’s MRT network grew slowly. The Tamsui Line opened in 1996, from Taipei Main Station to Tamsui. The Zhonghe Line, from Nanshijiao to Taipei, opened in 1997; the Xindian Line, from Xindian to Taipei, followed in 1998. These were all extensions of the “Taipei Metropolitan Area Mass Rapid Transit System” planned from the 1980s onward. The Airport MRT opened in 2017. The Danhai Light Rail Green Mountain Line opened in 2018. On January 31, 2020, the Circular Line formally began operation, with a total length of 15.4 kilometers and 14 stations; its first-phase route covered Xinzhuang, Banqiao, Zhonghe, and Xindian³⁰. Today, among New Taipei’s 29 districts, only 16 have MRT service. The remaining 13, including Wulai, Pingxi, Gongliao, Shuangxi, Pinglin, Shiding, Shenkeng, Sanzhi, Shimen, Jinshan, Wanli, Ruifang, and Pingxi, have no MRT line at all.

This is the physical site of “390,000 commuters.” New Taipei City “sustaining the capital through commuting” is not just rhetoric; it is the daily reality of people queuing for trains and buses every morning at Banqiao Station, Touqianzhuang in Xinzhuang, and under Taipei Bridge in Sanchong.

📝 Curator’s note: The common online narrative is that “New Taipei is Taipei’s bedroom community,” but this narrative has two blind spots. The first blind spot: it treats New Taipei as a single city, ignoring the coexistence of three urban ages within its 29 districts. The Atayal communities of Wulai and the Banqiao Lin Family Garden are in the same special municipality. The second blind spot: the commuting relationship is actually two-way. 390,000 New Taipei residents work in Taipei, but at the same time Taipei City’s water supply, garbage disposal, cemeteries, MRT maintenance depots, airport connections, and agricultural-product supply are heavily located in New Taipei’s mountains and river mouths. Tamsui’s water source comes from Wulai’s Nanshi River; Taipei City’s landfill is in Xizhi; its cemeteries are in Jinshan; its public cemeteries are in Banqiao. The relationship between New Taipei and Taipei is mutual need, not one-way dependence. When the Banqiao Lin Family moved from Xinzhuang to Banqiao in 1853, Taipei’s “Taipei Prefecture” had not yet been established. History makes clear which came first.

The 2000 Gongliao Ocean Music Festival: Another Axis on a Rock Beach

If you want to see New Taipei’s contemporary culture, do not go to Banqiao or Tamsui. Go to Fulong.

Fulong Beach is in Gongliao District, at the northeasternmost corner of New Taipei City, pressed against the Pacific Ocean. “The first International Ocean Music Festival was held on July 15, 2000, at Fulong Beach in Gongliao Township, Taipei County. It lasted only one day and had about 8,000 participants”³¹. This was the beginning of what later became the Hohaiyan Gongliao Rock Festival, one of the most important annual events in Taiwan’s independent music scene.

⚠️ The correct starting year for this music festival is 2000. Taiwan.md’s previous Stage 0 record listed 1999; this has been calibrated here.

“The Ocean Music Festival was first initiated through cooperation between the Taipei County Government and the independent underground music production company Taiwan Colors Music. The main figures who brought it into being were Chang Szu-shi-san, the head of Taiwan Colors Music, and Liao Chih-chien, then director of the Taipei County Government Information Office”³¹. “Hohaiyan comes from the language of the Amis, one of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples, and is an interjection related to ocean waves”³¹. The name of the music festival is itself an Indigenous axis.

From 2000 to today, the Ocean Music Festival has run for 26 editions, with suspensions in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. Sodagreen, Fire EX., The Chairman, Mayday, Tolaku, Echo, The Girl and the Robots, Tizzy Bac, Constant & Change, Sunset Rollercoaster, and Hello Nico: almost all of the most important bands in Taiwan’s independent music scene over the past 25 years have performed on Fulong Beach.

The significance of this music axis lies in the fact that New Taipei provided a public cultural space in the Taipei metropolitan area but outside Taipei City. Fulong is an hour and a half by car from Taipei Main Station, or two hours by local train. Every summer in late July or early August, tens of thousands of young people take trains from Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, and Hsinchu to Fulong Station, then walk from the station to the beach. This “short-term migration” is unique to New Taipei: Taipei City has no sea; Taoyuan’s coast is too far from the urban area; but Fulong is just within 60 kilometers.

New Taipei City has also tried to extend this music axis into the metropolitan area. In 2022, the New Taipei City Pop Music Center opened in the Xinzhuang Sub-city Center. But a pop music center is, after all, different from the seaside. What makes Fulong special is the combined presence of the mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant built in 1979, the white sand beach, the Pacific Ocean, and the tail end of summer typhoons. Together they create the feeling of a “rock beach just far enough from the capital.”

From 1628 to 2026: 400 Years Inside the City That Surrounds Taipei

Return to the brick at the beginning.

From the first brick laid at Fort San Domingo in Tamsui in 1628 to today, 2026, 398 years have passed. In that time it has passed through the Spanish, the Dutch, the Qing dynasty, the British, Australian custody, American custody, and the Republic of China. That is almost five times longer than Taiwan’s identity as the “Republic of China,” counted from 1945.

The administrative name “New Taipei City,” by contrast, is only 15 years old this year.

But this ring metropolis surrounding Taipei did not come into being only in 2010. From the Spanish Fort San Domingo in 1628, the first construction of Sanxia Changfu Yan in 1738, or according to another account its second reconstruction in 1769, Wu An’s kiln in Yingge in 1804, the Banqiao Lin Family’s three-courtyard mansion in 1853, the opening of Tamsui in 1858, oolong tea to New York in 1869, Mackay’s landing in Tamsui in 1872, the discovery of gold in Jiufen and Jinguashi in 1890, completion of the Lin Family Garden in 1893, the Pingxi Railway in 1929, Li Mei-shu’s carving of Zushi Temple beginning in 1947, the separation of Zhonghe and Yonghe in 1958, Sanchong and Xinzhuang’s industrial migration in the 1970s, Taijin’s closure in 1987, the first Gongliao Ocean Music Festival in 2000, and the county’s upgrade to a special municipality on December 25, 2010, New Taipei’s history is a dense 400-year timeline.

Twenty-nine districts, cities of three ages, 4.01 million people, and 390,000 people commuting to Taipei for work every day, yet the city itself is two and a half centuries older than the capital. The most easily misunderstood fact about New Taipei City is that it has never been a “satellite city.”

Seen from Taipei, New Taipei is a satellite. Seen from Fort San Domingo in Tamsui, Taipei is the neighbor that arrived later.

The next time you go to New Taipei, do not only walk the corridors of the Banqiao Lin Family Garden, though that 1893 garden is still worth an afternoon. Do not only eat fish crisps on Tamsui Old Street, though Tamsui really does have a commercial framework beginning with the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin. Try walking from Fulong Station to the beach and listening to the Ocean Music Festival that has continued from 2000 to today, if you go in late July. Try taking the Pingxi Line to Jingtong Station and seeing the tourist railway converted from the Shidi coalfield discovered in 1908, with coal-transport track remains still along the route. Try taking a bus from Wulai to the Fushan community and seeing the mountain trails of Tranan, the Atayal community.

After walking these routes, you will remember one thing: New Taipei City is not a bedroom community surrounding Taipei. New Taipei City is a historical clock that contains Taipei; it is just that the number on the dial happens not to be Taipei’s marker.

Image Sources

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

Hero (frontmatter) + Scene §Tamsui River Mouth: 2017 Fort San Domingo — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0. A 400-year layered structure: Spanish Fort Santo Domingo in 1628, Dutch Fort Anthonio in 1644, British lease in 1867, return to the Republic of China in 1980.
Scene §Banqiao Lin Family: Lin Family Mansion and Garden — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA. The first case of Taiwanese native capitalism, completed as a mansion in 1853, fully completed as Lin Family Garden in 1893, and restored in 1986.
Scene §1890 Jiufen and Jinguashi: Jiufen Old Street 2017 — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA. The site of a mining settlement’s transition to tourism after gold was discovered in 1890, Taiwan Metal Mining Company closed in 1987, and A City of Sadness was filmed there in 1989.
Scene §1929 Pingxi Railway: Shifen Old Street — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA. Today’s tourist railway on the Pingxi Line, which began as a Taiyang Mining coal line in 1921 and was purchased by the Government-General in 1929 for government-run passenger service.
Scene §Surrounding Taipei: New Taipei City administrative district map — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ring structure of Taiwan’s largest special municipality, whose 29 districts surround Taipei City’s 12 districts.

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

⚠️ Some image links are Wikimedia Commons category-page placeholders or inferred filenames. A later polish session will replace them with specific high-resolution files.

References

Fort San Domingo — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on Fort San Domingo. Original wording: “From 1628 to 1629, the Spanish began building a city here using clay, reed stalks, bamboo, and timber as materials, establishing it as a stronghold and naming it Fort Santo Domingo” + “On May 7, 1643, the first stone was formally laid, and construction began... it was not fully completed until 1646” + “In 1724, Wang Qian, then subprefect in charge of policing banditry in Tamsui under Taiwan Prefecture, began repairing Fort San Domingo” + “Britain established a consulate in Tamsui in 1861, and in 1867 concluded the Permanent Lease of Fort San Domingo with the Qing court” + “On June 30, 1980, Fort San Domingo was formally handed over by Britain to the government of the Republic of China” + the complete six-regime history: Australian custody after 1972, then American custody; first-class historic site in 1983; opened to the public on 1984/12/25.↩
1858 Taiwan Port Opening Commemoration Day — GJ Taiwan — GJ Taiwan article commemorating Taiwan’s port opening on June 26, 1858. Original wording: “In June 1858, the Qing state signed the Treaty of Tianjin with the powers; among its terms, Taiwan’s three ports, Taiwan (Anping), Tamsui, and Takao (Kaohsiung), were opened to the powers and travel and missionary work were permitted” + the complete timeline of four treaty signings: Russia on 6/13, the United States on 6/18, Britain on 6/26, and France on 6/27.↩
Tamsui’s Tea Trade and Dodd & Co. — Multi-source integration — Tamsui Wiki, College of Liberal Arts, Tamkang University, entry on Tamsui Old Street. Complete record of John Dodd establishing Dodd & Co. in Tamsui in 1864, introducing tea seedlings from Anxi, Fujian, lending to northern farmers, and in 1869 using two sailing ships to carry 21,000 kilograms of Taiwanese oolong tea directly to New York.↩
Tamsui Old Street — Tamsui Wiki — Tamsui Wiki entry on Tamsui Old Street. Original wording: “From 1864 to 1894, the total export trade from Tamsui accounted for 57% of all Taiwan, with tea, sugar, and camphor as the major exports” + the record of the port’s rise and decline: “By Meiji 43 (1910), Tamsui Harbor’s position had gradually been replaced by Keelung Harbor.”↩
The First Flourishing of the Commodity Economy — CommonWealth Magazine — CommonWealth Magazine retrospective on Taiwanese economic history. Original wording: “By 1878, tea already accounted for 90% of northern Taiwan’s export value,” statistical data on late-Qing northern tea’s dominance of exports.↩
Oxford College — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on Oxford College. Original wording: “On March 9, 1872, Canadian Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay landed in Tamsui” + “On July 26, the eighth year of the Guangxu reign (1882), construction was completed, and it was named ‘Oxford College’” + complete history: Mackay returned to Canada in 1880 and raised 6,215 Canadian dollars from residents of Oxford County, Ontario; in gratitude to Oxford County, its English name was set as Oxford College; in 1965, the Tamsui Junior College of Business Administration was planned on the original site; in 1999, it became Aletheia University.↩
Battle of Hobe — Tamsui Historical Museum, New Taipei City — Official historical record of the Battle of Hobe by the Tamsui Historical Museum, New Taipei City. Original wording: “Official records of the French National Archives state that French losses were 6 dead, 11 missing, and 49 wounded” + the complete battle record: on 1884/10/01, Admiral Courbet led four French warships to attack the mouth of the Tamsui River; Admiral Sun Kaihua blocked the harbor by sinking ships loaded with stone and laid mines; after the war, the Qing court announced the establishment of Taiwan Province and appointed Liu Mingchuan concurrently as Taiwan’s first governor; Hobe Fort was completed in 1886 according to the plans of German military engineer Max E. Hecht, with the inscription “Key to the Northern Gate.”↩
Lin Ben Yuan Family Mansion and Garden — Lin Family Garden official website — Official website of the Lin Ben Yuan Family Mansion and Garden in Banqiao. Original wording: “Lin Pinghou worked in the rice transport trade; when the Lin Shuangwen rebellion caused rice prices to surge, Lin, as a rice merchant, earned extremely substantial profits from the rice transport business” + “In the 27th year of the Daoguang reign (1847), to facilitate the collection of tenant rents, the Lin family built Biyiguan in Fangqiao, today’s Banqiao; this was the beginning of the Lin family’s construction of residences in the Banqiao area” + “In the first year of the Xianfeng reign (1851), the Lin family built a three-courtyard mansion beside Biyiguan in Fangqiao, and after its completion in the third year of Xianfeng moved the entire family in” + “At the end of 1982, restoration of the garden began; after four years, it was finally completed. The restoration cost a total of NT$156,433,218” + the complete three-generation history: Lin Guofang and the Zhangzhou-Quanzhou armed feud from 1857 to 1861; Lin Weiyuan’s major investment in restoration in 1888; full completion in 1893; occupation after 1949 by more than 1,000 refugees in 300 households, causing damage; national historic site designation in 1985; total area of 6,054 ping; Taiwan’s most complete surviving garden architecture.↩
Lin Weiyuan and the Red-Topped Merchant — National Policy Foundation — National Policy Foundation article on Taiwanese native capitalism. Original wording: “In the tenth year of the Guangxu reign (1884), Lin Weiyuan donated 200,000 silver dollars for military pay, assisted Liu Mingchuan in managing Taiwan’s defense, and served as assistant minister for Taiwan pacification and cultivation, rising at once to become a ‘red-topped merchant’,” the key late-Qing moment when native capital became red-topped capital.↩
New Taipei City Population Statistics — Department of Civil Affairs, New Taipei City Government — Population statistics from the Department of Civil Affairs, New Taipei City Government. Population of 4,041,149 in April 2026, still Taiwan’s largest special municipality after exceeding 4 million in May 2019; 29 administrative districts, restructured in 2010 from Taipei County’s 10 county-administered cities and 21 townships; Banqiao District population about 549,000 at year-end 2025, Taiwan’s largest district by population; Xinzhuang, Zhonghe, Sanchong, and Xindian each over 300,000 to 400,000 as the other top-five districts; internal 100-fold gap between the large districts and mountain districts such as Wulai, Pingxi, Shuangxi, and Gongliao, with 4,400 to 11,000 people.↩
Jinguashi — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on Jinguashi. Complete discovery history: workers found placer gold in the Keelung River in 1889; prospectors followed the river upstream from 1890 to 1893; in 1893, an outcrop of the Little Jinguashi gold vein was found in the Jiufen mountains; in 1894, gold ore was found in the main Jinguashi ore body; on October 26, 1896, mining rights were approved and issued to Tanaka Chobei’s Tanaka Group; mechanized mining and chemical refining under Japanese rule; its reputation as “Asia’s first precious-metal mine.”↩
Jinguashi Mining History — The News Lens — In-depth report by The News Lens on Jinguashi mining history. Original wording: “In 1938, production even reached a peak of nearly 70,000 taels, earning Jinguashi at the time the reputation of ‘Asia’s first precious-metal mine,’ and at one point drawing 80,000 people here to pursue their gold-rush dream,” a record of 80,000 people gathering in Jinguashi at its Japanese-era peak.↩
Taijin Company Closure — Wikipedia Jinguashi entry — Chinese Wikipedia entry on Jinguashi, section on the end of mining. Original wording: “The Taiwan Metal Mining Company finally declared closure in 1987, while the land of the Jinguashi mining district was taken over by the Taiwan Sugar Corporation.” The two-stage timeline of mining’s end, downsizing in 1985 and full closure in 1987; this calibrates the common misstatement that it “closed in 1985.”↩
A City of Sadness and Jiufen’s Tourism Transformation — City.gvm — City.gvm, from Global Views Monthly, article on Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film and Jiufen’s tourism transformation. Original wording: “On November 25, 1988, filming began in front of the octagonal pavilion in Jinguashi, Keelung” + “turning the filming locations of Jiufen and Jinguashi into tourist hot spots.” Records the 1989 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion, the rise of Jiufen teahouses beginning in the 1990s, and the transformation of a mining settlement into a tourism symbol.↩
Gold Ecological Park — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on the Gold Ecological Park, now the New Taipei City Gold Museum. Original wording: “In 2004, under the leadership of the Taipei County Government... the Gold Ecological Park officially opened.” Taiwan’s first museum park based on the eco-museum concept, integrating the Japanese-era Crown Prince Chalet, Benshan No. 5 Tunnel, and miners’ dormitories; a record of the 17-year transformation from Taijin’s 1987 closure to the 2004 opening.↩
Pingxi Line — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on the Pingxi Line. Original wording: “The Pingxi Line was completed in July 1921, the tenth year of the Taisho era. It was originally a coal-only railway funded and built by Taiyang Mining Co.” + “On October 1, 1929, the Railway Department of the Taiwan Government-General purchased the Shidi Line for 1.5 million yen, converted it to government operation, named it the ‘Pingxi Line,’ and after reconstruction began to handle passenger service as well.” Complete railway history: Fujita Group’s 1908 trial excavation of the Shidi coalfield; Taiyang Mining, run by the Yan Yun-nian family, as a private coal railway; Government-General purchase in 1929 and conversion to a government-run passenger service.↩
Pingxi Sky Lanterns — Ministry of the Interior Taiwan Religious Culture Map — Entry on Pingxi sky lanterns in the Ministry of the Interior’s Taiwan Religious Culture Map. Original wording: “During the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty, early settlers in this district arrived at Shifenliao after a circuitous journey from Hui’an and Anxi in Fujian. At the time, bandits were causing disorder and harassing settlements, so the settlers had to take refuge in the mountains. After the crisis passed, young men who had remained in the village used sky lanterns as signals to notify their families in hiding that they could return home” + the modern record of sky-lantern rituals revived in the 1990s and the 2012 enactment of the New Taipei City Sky Lantern Release Management Regulations.↩
Sanxia Changfu Yan Zushi Temple — Multi-source integration + Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture — Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture, data on Sanxia Changfu Yan Zushi Temple. Common official account: founded in the 34th year of Qianlong, 1769; first reconstruction after the major earthquake of the Daoguang period in 1833; second reconstruction after it was burned as a resistance base in the early Japanese period in 1899; third reconstruction in 1947 under painter Li Mei-shu, then chair of the Sanxia Township Representative Council; still unfinished before Li’s death in 1983 and still under construction today. ⚠️ Stage 0 recorded “1738,” while other literature gives “1796”; this article follows the common official version used by the Bureau of Cultural Heritage: 1769, the 34th year of Qianlong.↩
Origins of Yingge Ceramics and the Ceramics Museum — Yingge Township Gazetteer + Yingge Ceramics Museum — Yingge Township Gazetteer and official data from the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum. Original wording: “Yingge ceramics originated in the ninth year of Jiaqing (1804), when Wu An of Quanzhou first opened a kiln in the Dahu area. Wu An crossed the sea to Taiwan, first living in Tuzi Keng, Dahu, Yingge, now Tuzi Keng, Guishan Township, Taoyuan County; before long, because of Zhangzhou-Quanzhou armed feuds, he moved circuitously to the area around Jianshanpu Street in Yingge” + “Starting in 1917, the ‘Jianshan Ceramics Association’ and the ‘Jianshan Ceramics Production and Sales Association’ were established one after another, breaking the Wu family monopoly. In 1939, the Japanese ‘square kiln’ was introduced, greatly improving the efficiency and quality of Yingge ceramics” + the complete 222-year ceramics history, including the November 26, 2000 opening of the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum as Taiwan’s first ceramics-themed museum.↩
Sanxia Old Street — Haishan Studies Museum, National Taipei University — National Taipei University Haishan Studies Museum entry on Sanxia Old Street. Original wording: “Between 1886 and 1920, the period known as the golden age of Sankakuyū dyeing, the entire Sankakuyū Street had, in addition to the Lin Maoxing dyehouse, Yongyu, Jinlianchun, Liu Chengfang, Li Yifa, Zhou Shengfa, Lin Rongxiang, Lin Yuanji, and others: a total of 20 dyehouses, making it northern Taiwan’s most important indigo-dyeing base.” Records Sanxia’s three major industries, indigo dyeing with Assam indigo, camphor from the Sanxia mountains, and tea through Mitsui Gomei Kaisha in the Japanese period, as well as old street buildings with red-brick arcaded commercial houses surviving from 1911.↩
Shihsanhang Museum — Tourism Administration, Ministry of Transportation and Communications — Official Tourism Administration data on Shihsanhang Museum. Original wording: “The Shihsanhang site lies on the southern bank at the junction of the Tamsui River mouth in Bali District, New Taipei City. It is one of northern Taiwan’s important archaeological sites. Its inhabitants lived roughly 2,000 to 400 years ago and are currently the only prehistoric residents of Taiwan confirmed to have possessed iron-smelting technology. They were very likely ancestors of the Ketagalan people, one of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples” + the Ketagalan place-name legacy: “Many place names in today’s Taipei are transliterations of Ketagalan, such as Dalongdong, Beitou, Qilian, Bali, Bangka, and Jiarui,” plus the complete archaeological-site record: the exhibition hall was renamed Shihsanhang Museum in 1998 and officially completed and opened in 2003.↩
Wulai’s Four Communities + Atayal Migration History — Eco Tour Taiwan + Wulai Atayal Museum — Official data from the Wulai Atayal Museum. Original wording: “The Fushan community is called ‘Tranan’ in the Atayal language. It is the innermost mountain community of Wulai, and it was the first place where Atayal people settled after crossing the mountains from Shang Baling in Fuxing Township, Taoyuan, to Wulai” + “In 1903, after Nagaono Eikiyo of Shenkeng discovered them in the Nanshi River valley, a bathhouse was established at the Wulai Aboriginal Affairs Officer’s station.” Complete community structure: Wulai Ulay, Zhongzhi Tampya, Xinxian Rahaw, meaning “dense forest,” and Fushan Tranan, plus the Atayal migration northward from Pinsbukan in Faxiang Village, Ren’ai Township, Nantou.↩
Yonghe District — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on Yonghe District. Original wording: “In 1956, the population of Zhonghe Township rose to 44,325, prompting discussion of separation and town establishment” + “On April 1, 1958, Zhonghe Township separated out all six villages in the Guilunlan-Xizhou area, as well as one village each from Tanqian and Xiulang, and formally established a town. The initial proposed name was Zhongxing Town, but because it risked sharing a name with Zhongxing New Village, it was named Yonghe Town.” Complete separation history: after the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, air-raid dispersal planning for Taipei City; formal separation of Zhonghe and Yonghe in 1958; boundary officially confirmed in October 1960.↩
Yonghe Korea Street — StoryStudio — In-depth report by StoryStudio on Yonghe Korea Street. Original wording: “Many Korean Chinese from Shandong came to Taiwan after circuitous journeys and settled in Yonghe. The 1980s and 1990s were the peak period of Korean Chinese migration to Taiwan.” Formation history of Zhongxing Street’s gradual transformation after the 1970s into a commercial district selling Korean groceries, Korean cuisine, and ginseng tea.↩
Sanchong’s Black Settlement + Xinzhuang Industrial Development — Smile Taiwan + Sanchong District Office + Xinzhuang District Office — Smile Taiwan’s in-depth report “Sanchong’s Black Settlement” plus official data from the Sanchong and Xinzhuang district offices. Sanchong original wording: “The 1960s and 1970s, the era of the Ten Major Construction Projects and economic takeoff, were when Sanchong also fully set itself in motion. Small factories sat in neighborhood lanes, one every three steps and another every five. They mostly produced industrial components and semi-finished goods such as screws, molds, spot welding, electroplating, lathe work, and plastic injection molding. Their large-scale output supported half of Taiwan’s machinery-industry components” + “Sanchong was located at the starting and ending point of the freeway, with convenient north-south transport, and it was separated by only a river from prosperous Taipei City. These two superior conditions made Sanchong the city with the most migrants in all Taiwan.” Xinzhuang original wording: “The establishment of the Touqian Industrial Park and Xisheng Industrial Park was an important turning point in Xinzhuang’s shift from an agricultural town to an industrial city... chemicals, textiles, machinery, and metals accounted for the largest shares of industry. These industries attracted large numbers of industrial workers, and outsiders moved in one after another, causing a rapid population increase.”↩
Erchong Floodway — Wikipedia + Water Resources Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs — Chinese Wikipedia entry on Erchong Floodway plus official data from the Water Resources Agency. Complete engineering record: first-phase flood-control plan approved by the Executive Yuan in 1979, implementation began in 1982, completion in 1984, mainly targeting flood control for Sanchong, Xinzhuang, Wugu, Luzhou, and other areas, while also accommodating legally registered factories near the floodway that had to be relocated.↩
Historical Background of Taipei County’s Upgrade to Taipei City — Liberty Times integration — Multi-source integration on the historical background of Taipei County’s upgrade to a special municipality. Complete upgrade campaign timeline: since 1979, the population had already reached the threshold for a special municipality, but repeated attempts at restructuring were rejected; in May 2007, the Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the Local Government Act on third reading, allowing Taipei County, with a population over two million, to apply special-municipality provisions; on June 23, 2009, the Ministry of the Interior approved the change.↩
2010 Republic of China County and City Reorganization into Special Municipalities — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on the 2010 Five Municipalities reform. Original wording: “On December 25, 2010, Taipei County was upgraded into the special municipality ‘New Taipei City’; the Taipei County Government was renamed the ‘New Taipei City Government,’ its English name became ‘New Taipei City,’ and it became the most populous special municipality within the Republic of China.” Complete record of the concurrent restructuring of Taichung City, Tainan City, and Kaohsiung City, the Five Municipalities reform; New Taipei as the only special municipality among the five with a “newborn” name and the only case of a county upgraded into a special municipality rather than a county-city merger.↩
New Taipei Cross-County Commuting Statistics — Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics + multi-source integration — Cross-county commuting statistics from the Population and Housing Census, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. About 390,000 New Taipei City residents commute across county and city boundaries to work in Taipei City, about 20% of New Taipei’s employed population, making it Taiwan’s largest cross-county commuting city pair. Records the ring-metropolis transport structure: among New Taipei’s 29 districts, 16 have MRT lines, while Wulai, Pingxi, Gongliao, Shuangxi, Pinglin, Shiding, Shenkeng, Sanzhi, Shimen, Jinshan, Wanli, Ruifang, and Pingxi, 13 districts in total as listed, have no MRT at all.↩
History of New Taipei MRT Route Development — Transportation Department, New Taipei City Government — MRT route development history from the Transportation Department, New Taipei City Government. Complete public transport timeline: Tamsui Line opened in 1996, from Taipei Main Station to Tamsui; Zhonghe Line opened in 1997, from Nanshijiao to Taipei; Xindian Line opened in 1998, from Xindian to Taipei; Airport MRT opened in 2017, from A1 to A21; Danhai Light Rail Green Mountain Line opened on 2018/12/23; Circular Line officially began operation on 2020/01/31, with a total length of 15.4 kilometers and 14 stations, and first-phase route covering Xinzhuang, Banqiao, Zhonghe, and Xindian; Danhai Light Rail Blue Sea Line phase one opened on 2020/11/15.↩
Hohaiyan Gongliao Rock Festival — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry on the Hohaiyan Gongliao Rock Festival. Original wording: “The first International Ocean Music Festival was held on July 15, 2000, at Fulong Beach in Gongliao Township, Taipei County. It lasted only one day and had about 8,000 participants” + “The Ocean Music Festival was first initiated through cooperation between the Taipei County Government and the independent underground music production company Taiwan Colors Music. The main figures who brought it into being were Chang Szu-shi-san, the head of Taiwan Colors Music, and Liao Chih-chien, then director of the Taipei County Government Information Office” + “Hohaiyan comes from the language of the Amis, one of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples, and is an interjection related to ocean waves.” Stage 0’s erroneous record of “first held in 1999” is calibrated here to “July 15, 2000.”↩