Taichung City: Nearly the Capital in 1887, Taiwan's Second-Largest Special Municipality Only in 2010

30-second overview: In October 1887, Liu Mingchuan petitioned to establish Taiwan as a province, selecting Qiaozitou in Changhua County, today’s central Taichung, as the provincial capital and planning an eight-trigram-shaped walled city. Construction began in 1889¹. Liu resigned in 1891; in 1894 Shao Youlian formally moved the provincial capital north to Taipei, and work on Taichung’s provincial city stopped. On October 1, 1920, the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office under Japanese rule implemented the five prefectures and two halls system, established Taichung Prefecture, and merged Taichung Street with nine surrounding villages to create Taichung City². In 1955, Tunghai University broke ground on Dadu Mountain; in 1963, Luce Memorial Chapel was completed, “the first work through which the architectural vocabulary of modernism entered Taiwan”³. In the early hours of September 21, 1999, the Chelungpu Fault tore from Jiji in Nantou all the way to Dongshi in Taichung, killing 358 people in Dongshi Township⁴. On December 25, 2010, the county and city merged and were upgraded into a 29-district special municipality. In 2016, the Toyo Ito-designed National Taichung Theater officially opened in Xitun District, with a construction cost of NT$4.36 billion⁵. Today, 2.86 million people live in this city that waited 123 years to move from candidate provincial capital to Taiwan’s second-largest special municipality.

The Seven Months When Taokas Dajiaxi Society Burned the Assistant Prefect’s Office

One hundred fifty-six years before Liu Mingchuan petitioned to establish Taiwan as a province, this Taichung Basin saw an anti-Qing uprising larger in scale than the Lin Shuangwen rebellion.

At the end of the ninth year of the Yongzheng reign (1731), Linbaolihu Maluku, leader of the Taokas Dajiaxi Society, rose in rebellion because “Qing officials assigned excessive corvée labor,” and burned down the office of the assistant prefect for pacifying the people of Tamsui under Taiwan Prefecture⁶. The uprising lasted seven months. The Qing court mobilized more than 6,000 troops from the mainland and put it down only by “using barbarians to control barbarians.” The largest armed anti-official incident in the history of Taiwan’s plains Indigenous peoples took place in today’s Dajia and Qingshui areas of Taichung.

Dajiaxi Society belonged to the Taokas people. Its traditional settlements were distributed along the Dajia River, and “the coastal plain zone from Taichung City through Miaoli County to Hsinchu County” was this group’s territory⁷. Farther south, the Dadu River basin belonged to the Papora people; 17th-century Dutch sources recorded that they had established the “Middag Kingdom.” Farther south again were the Babuza people. Most members of these three plains Indigenous groups later migrated collectively to the Puli Basin. Their villages are no longer visible in today’s central Taichung; what remains are place names such as “Dadun,” “Lanxingbao,” and “Qiaozitou,” layers left behind after Han settlers entered and cultivated the area.

📝 Curator’s note: The Dajiaxi Society anti-Qing incident is often compressed into a single sentence: “In the ninth year of Yongzheng, the Taokas rebelled.” It came 55 years before the 1786 Lin Shuangwen rebellion and, in its own time, was closer to an island-wide mobilization in scale, yet it has no place in today’s history textbooks. The reason is not complicated: Lin Shuangwen was a Han immigrant and was folded into the narrative of “immigrant pioneering history”; Linbaolihu Maluku was Taokas and was folded into the narrative of “pacifying barbarian disorder,” a category that has basically no seat in 21st-century frameworks of Taiwanese history. To write the Taichung Basin, one must begin with “who lived here before Han cultivation, and who first launched a seven-month war.” The Taichung Basin’s first historical name was in the Taokas language.

The Deity Statue in Lin Yongxing’s Home Later Became a 340-Kilometer Pilgrimage

The front of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple, 2018-08-04. Photo: Dquai, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Two years after the anti-Qing incident ended, this land began to grow a temple that would later draw more than 100,000 people to walk 340 kilometers.

In the eighth year of the Qing Yongzheng reign (1730), Lin Yongxing, a man from Meizhou Island, immigrated to Taiwan with his whole family and “respectfully invited a statue of the Heavenly Holy Mother from the ancestral Mazu temple in Meizhou to enshrine at home”⁸. In the 10th year of Yongzheng (1732), local gentry, seeing the incense offerings flourish, built a small shrine with Lin Yongxing’s consent. In the 35th year of Qianlong (1770), the small shrine was rebuilt and called Tianhou Temple. In the 52nd year of Qianlong (1787), “Dajia subprefect Zong Jinting, jinshi Chen Fenghao, gentry member Lian Kunshan, plains Indigenous leader Qiao Hualong, and other prominent donors initiated land donations for reconstruction”; after expansion, it was renamed “Jenn Lann Temple”⁸.

This temple began as one family’s household deity altar. Fifty-seven years later, it became Dajia’s largest temple. Another 240 years after that, it became the starting point of Taiwan’s largest folk event.

The Dajia Mazu pilgrimage and procession sets out every year in the third lunar month: nine days and eight nights, a 340-kilometer round trip on foot, crossing four counties and cities: Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin, and Chiayi⁹. The route begins in Dajia, Taichung, passes through Qingshui, Shalu, and Dadu into Changhua, continues through Changhua City, Yuanlin, Beidou, and Xizhou, then enters Yunlin’s Xiluo, Huwei, Tuku, and Yuanchang, and finally reaches Fengtian Temple in Xingang, Chiayi, passing more than 100 temples and 21 townships, towns, cities, and districts. Each year, “roughly more than 100,000 people” participate; at peak times cumulative attendance easily reaches the millions. In 2010, the Council for Cultural Affairs designated it an “Important Folk Custom” in the folklore category of the Republic of China’s intangible cultural assets. The Discovery Channel placed it alongside the Vatican Christmas Mass and the Hajj to Mecca as one of the “world’s three major religious events.”

But the route has not looked like this for 290 years.

Before 1988 (ROC year 77), Jenn Lann Temple actually made its pilgrimage to Beigang Chaotian Temple. From that year onward, “Jenn Lann Temple canceled its pilgrimage to Beigang Chaotian Temple and changed to a pilgrimage procession to Xingang Fengtian Temple; from then on, the Beigang pilgrimage was interrupted”¹⁰. The reason for the rerouting was inter-temple politics: Jenn Lann Temple was unwilling to accept Chaotian Temple’s description of the procession as “returning to the natal home to pay respects to the ancestor,” which implied that Dajia Mazu was a branch spirit from Beigang Mazu. Jenn Lann Temple demanded that Chaotian Temple publicly clarify; Chaotian Temple refused, and Jenn Lann Temple left. A pilgrimage route walked for a century was unilaterally rewritten in one stroke because two temples disagreed over “who is whose mother temple.” From that year onward, Yunlin’s Beigang lost an annual third-lunar-month event, and Chiayi’s Xingang gained one.

✦ “The Dajia Mazu pilgrimage and procession has roughly more than 100,000 participants each year and is one of the world’s three major religious events.” (Discovery Channel selection, cited through multiple sources⁹)

The current chair of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple is Yen Ching-piao, from the coastal-line district of Qingshui. He was formerly speaker of the Taichung County Council and served four consecutive terms as a legislator. His family, this temple in Dajia, and the political factions of the coastal line share the same root. That root will appear again later.

The Eight-Trigram City That Was Never Finished

In central Taiwan under Qing rule, the administrative center was Changhua County seat, today’s central Changhua, not Taichung. Not until October 1887, when Liu Mingchuan and Min-Zhe governor-general Yang Changjun jointly petitioned to reorganize Taiwan’s administrative divisions, was Taichung placed on the shortlist for the capital for the first time.

“After Taiwan was established as a province, the provincial city was selected at the former Qiaozitou of Changhua County (today’s Taichung City)”¹. Liu Mingchuan’s site selection had two layers of reasoning: Qiaozitou was located in the middle of the island of Taiwan and could attend to both northern and southern defense; the area around Lanxingbao already had existing settlements such as Dadun Street and Litoudian, giving it a solid base for development. “In the method of establishing institutions, terrain comes first; in the method of governance, balance is essential” was the language in his memorial. Dividing Taiwan into three prefectures and one subprefecture, and placing the seat of Taiwan Prefecture at Qiaozitou, was meant to shift the administrative center of the whole island from Tainan to central Taiwan.

In 1889 (the 15th year of Guangxu), construction of the provincial city began. “An eight-trigram-shaped walled city and numerous government buildings were first built”; “the extant north gate tower and prefectural Confucian examination shed are the largest among all walled cities built in Taiwan during Qing rule”². This eight-trigram city plan was an anomaly in the history of Qing walled cities. Most Qing county seats followed square or circular layouts; Liu Mingchuan’s eight-trigram city drew on both feng shui and military deployment logic, with eight major roads radiating outward from the center.

But this city was never finished.

In 1891, Liu Mingchuan resigned and returned home. His successor as Fujian-Taiwan governor, Shao Youlian, followed a different governing logic. The Chinese Wikipedia article records this turning point verbatim: “After assessing gains and losses, Shao Youlian pragmatically canceled most of the New Policies”; “construction of the provincial city began in 1889, but after Shao Youlian took office as governor he ordered work on the provincial city stopped and formally moved the provincial capital to Taipei Prefecture”¹¹. On the eve of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, the decision to move the provincial capital north to Taipei was finalized. The following year, in 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed, Taiwan was ceded to Japan, and the eight-trigram city Liu Mingchuan designed never had another chance to be completed.

The usual narrative often says “malaria” was the reason the provincial capital moved north, but direct evidence for this claim is thin in search results. The explanation closer to the truth is this: Shao Youlian judged that Qing strategic investment in Taiwan was ebbing. Rather than spend public funds building a new city in central Taiwan, it was better to move the administrative center to Taipei, which already had a commercial foundation. Central Taiwan’s walled-city project was shelved, and Taipei Prefecture began to grow a new political center from the commercial clusters of Bangka and Dadaocheng.

📝 Curator’s note: The standard narrative is that “Taichung almost became the capital, but malaria stopped it.” But this reverses cause and effect. In 19th-century central Taiwan, malaria was not Taichung’s exclusive local disease; at the time, all of southern Taiwan lay within a malaria zone. The real reason Shao Youlian halted construction of the provincial city was that the Qing court was revising downward its assessment of Taiwan’s strategic value. Liu Mingchuan’s active program of building a new province did not match Beijing’s fiscal capacity at the time. An island the Qing court was no longer willing to invest in heavily did not have the budget to sustain two administrative centers at once. Capital-site selection is always a political question: whether the state is still willing to invest in that location.

The “City” the Japanese Brought and the Party Chiang Wei-shui Brought

Twenty-five years after the Qing court halted construction, Taichung received a formal “city”-level administrative system for the first time.

In 1896 (Meiji 29), the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office under Japanese rule established Taichung County, and the name “Taichung” formally appeared from that point onward². In 1901 it was changed to Taichung Hall. On October 1, 1920, the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office implemented the “five prefectures and two halls” system, merging Taichung Hall and Nantou Hall into Taichung Prefecture while also establishing Taichung City: “Taichung Street and nine surrounding villages were merged to form Taichung City”². From that day on, Taichung, together with Taipei, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hsinchu, became one of the five administrative centers on the island of Taiwan upgraded to “city” status.

Taichung’s urban planning under Japanese rule drew on Kyoto and Keihan-style layouts: a main axis in front of the railway station, chessboard-like street blocks, and the two artificial rivers, Lüchuan and Liuchuan, cutting through the city. In 1908, the full north-south trunk railway opened, and Taichung Station became central Taiwan’s transportation hub. In 1917, Taichung Park was completed; the double-pavilion lake-center pavilion still visible today was built that year.

But what truly gave Taichung of the 1920s a place in Taiwanese history was people.

“From the 1920s onward, Taichung Prefecture streets and Taichung City became a stronghold of the non-armed anti-Japanese movement; the Taiwanese People’s Party founded by Chiang Wei-shui and others was also established in Taichung City”². Lin Hsien-tang led the Taiwan Cultural Association from Wufeng, Chiang Wei-shui founded the Taiwanese People’s Party, and Lien Wenqing led the left wing of the Taiwan Cultural Association. The center of Taiwan’s 1920s social movements was in central Taiwan. In 1926, Zhuang Chuisheng convened the founding meeting of Central Bookstore at Zuiyue Tower by Taichung’s Lüchuan; it officially opened on January 3, 1927. The shareholder list included “Lin Hsien-tang, Lin Youchun, Chen Xugu, Zhang Shenqie, Lai He, and others”¹², almost a roster of the Taiwan Cultural Association’s core members.

Central Bookstore was originally planned as the “Central Club, a central Taiwan gathering place for the Taiwan Cultural Association.” After the Taiwan Cultural Association split into left and right wings in 1927, it operated in bookstore form. It was “central Taiwan’s first bookstore specializing in the import of Chinese- and Japanese-language books and magazines, and also the largest Chinese-language bookstore on the island”¹². It closed in 1998 because of financial difficulties, and the building was sold. In 2016, the Sun Culture Foundation bought back ownership of the building. In January 2020, it officially reopened, exactly 93 years after its 1927 opening.

Central Bookstore’s existence, disappearance, and rebirth are material evidence of Taichung’s identity as a “central Taiwan cultural stronghold.” The non-armed anti-Japanese movement under Japanese rule left few physical traces. Even the venue where Chiang Wei-shui founded the Taiwanese People’s Party has long since been demolished; the Wufeng Lin Family Garden burned and was reconstructed. But this bookstore remains. The old building on Jiguang Street remains. The books in the display window are still arranged in a mix of Chinese and Japanese. It is still a bookstore selling books.

The Church on Dadu Mountain Without a Single Beam or Column

Luce Memorial Chapel, 2021-05-16. Photo: ChiaWeiHo, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In postwar Taichung, the first thing to put the city on the global map was a church.

On November 11, 1953, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon attended the groundbreaking ceremony at the Dadu Mountain campus site in Taichung. On November 2, 1955, Tunghai University held its founding dedication ceremony; this day was set as the university anniversary, and Tseng Yueh-nung became its first president¹³. The background to its founding was “one of the United States’ overseas Christian missionary enterprises, closely linked to U.S. aid to Asia and Cold War containment of communism”¹³. Tunghai was part of the Cold War-era U.S. aid system, forming a contemporary “U.S.-aided higher education network” together with National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, reestablished in 1956, and National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, reestablished in 1958.

Dadu Mountain was chosen because it was “away from the dust without leaving the city”: the hilltop overlooked central Taichung, but was separated from downtown Taichung Station by the Dadu Plateau. Beginning in 1956, the architect team designed a series of low, terrain-integrated courtyard-style buildings on this hillside, with Tang-style roofs, fair-faced red brick walls, and siheyuan courtyard layouts. This was the starting point of what would later be called the “Tunghai school of architecture.”

But what the world remembers most about Tunghai is the church on Dadu Mountain that rises like two clasped hyperbolic thin shells.

✦ “The first work through which the architectural vocabulary of modernism entered Taiwan.” (Luce Memorial Chapel, Ministry of Culture national monument registration rationale³)

In 1956, I. M. Pei invited the then 35-year-old Chen Chi-kwan to discuss the design. In 1957, the design drawings were published in an American architecture journal. Formal construction began at the end of 1962. On November 2, 1963, it was completed, exactly on Tunghai’s eighth founding anniversary, and Luce Memorial Chapel officially opened³. Its name came from Time magazine founder Henry Luce, who “donated funds to build it to spread the Gospel and commemorate his father, missionary Henry Winters Luce”³.

The chapel’s design has been disputed. In 1999, I. M. Pei publicly claimed that “Luce Memorial Chapel was entirely my design”; Chen Chi-kwan maintained that the two had designed it jointly. The more reliable details are as follows: Chen Chi-kwan opposed Pei’s earliest Gothic brick proposal on the grounds that “Taiwan has many earthquakes” and promoted the use of a “hyperbolic thin-shell structure.” The chapel we see today uses “hyperbolic surfaces joined to form an image pointing toward heaven, with a thin-shell lattice-beam structure; its interior does not have a traditional beam-and-column structure”³. The ridge is separated to set a glass skylight, carrying the meaning of “a slit of sky.” No beam or column runs through the entire chapel; it relies entirely on four concrete curved surfaces supporting one another.

In April 2019, it was upgraded to a national monument, registered under the type “university campus architecture.” In the 62 years from 1963 to today, this church has gone from a corner of the Dadu Mountain campus to a Taichung tourism landmark, to a totem of Taiwan’s postwar modernist architecture, to a shape every Tunghai alumnus recognizes no matter how long ago they graduated. It gave Taichung, for the first time, a building “recognized by the whole world,” 53 years before the National Taichung Theater that came 53 years later.

The Chelungpu Fault Tore to Dongshi: 358 Names

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

September 21, 1999, 1:47:15.9 a.m. Eight kilometers beneath Jiji Township, the Chelungpu Fault ruptured northward.

The seismic waves reached Taichung in only a few seconds.

Across Taiwan, 2,415 people died. Taichung County, which had not yet merged with Taichung City, accounted for more than 1,154 deaths; this is the figure used by Chinese Wikipedia. A CDC survey report in early November recorded 1,190 people⁴, the difference reflecting later statistics for those who died of severe injuries more than 50 days afterward. This article uses the conservative phrasing “more than 1,100 people.” In Taichung County, 16,861 buildings completely collapsed and 12,341 partially collapsed. “Completely and partially collapsed houses in Taichung County and Nantou County accounted for about 95% of damaged households across Taiwan”⁴.

The deepest wound was in Dongshi.

“A total of 358 people died in Dongshi Township, the highest casualty count of any township in this disaster”⁴. Two entire buildings of the Dongshi Wangchao complex collapsed, killing 28 people in those two buildings alone. Dongshi Township was the largest Hakka settlement in Taichung County; Hakka people made up about 80% of its population, and the local common language was the Dapu accent of Taiwanese Hakka¹⁴. Taichung City’s densest Dapu-accent Hakka settlement was the township with the highest 921 death toll in Taichung County. One earthquake cut away a large part of Dongshi’s population, housing, and Hakka cultural center all at once.

Fengyuan City lost 160 people. Dali City lost 162. Shigang Township lost 174; its population was only one-third that of Dongshi, but its death toll was similar.

Shigang’s injury was not only its death toll. Shigang Dam had been built directly on top of the Chelungpu Fault. “Because it was located exactly on the Chelungpu Fault zone, spillway gates 15 through 18 were fractured and damaged, subsiding about five meters; the dam body broke, the operating system was destroyed, and it could not intercept streamwater”⁴. A key dam in the Dajia River basin became ruins in those 102 seconds.

Farther south in Wufeng, the Chelungpu Fault cut through the athletic field of Guangfu Junior High School, “causing about 2.5 meters of displacement uplift.” The athletic field was later preserved in situ. In 2001 it was named the “921 Earthquake Education Park”; on September 21, 2004, it fully opened. Today it is Taiwan’s most complete earthquake museum. A 340-meter surface rupture along the fault zone remains there as it was, letting you see with your own eyes how a fault tore a school athletic field in half.

The section of the Central Cross-Island Highway from Guguan to Deji Reservoir, after 921, had “slope collapse mileage exceeding 80%, and as many as 26 locations where the roadbed was completely lost”¹⁵. Bus service was not reopened until November 16, 2018, and only on the Tongxiao section. In 2024, the Executive Yuan approved a reconstruction plan: “adopting the lower Qingshan alignment, with total funding exceeding NT$20.6 billion and expected completion in 2037 at the earliest”¹⁵. From 1999 to 2037, this road in the Central Mountain Range will have been under repair for 38 years and still not finished. Taichung’s mountains are still dealing today with the wound left by those 102 seconds.

Nantou’s wounds were in Zhongliao, Jiufen’ershan, and the Wufeng Lin Family Garden; Taichung’s wounds were in Dongshi, Shigang Dam, and Guguan. The same fault cut two central Taiwan county governments into brothers of shared trauma¹⁶.

📝 Curator’s note: The standard 921 narrative makes Nantou the protagonist: the epicenter was in Jiji, 886 people died, and a major Seediq cultural center was smashed. Taichung County’s wound is often passed over as “collateral damage in a neighboring county.” But look closely at the numbers: Taichung County had 1,154 deaths, 268 more than Nantou. The reason was geography: the northern segment of the Chelungpu Fault passed through the foothill zone of Taichung County, and Dongshi, Shigang, Dali, and Taiping sat directly on the fault. In addition, Taichung County’s rapid urbanization in the 1990s concentrated population along the fault zone. The Fengyuan-Dali-Taiping corridor was, apart from Jiji, central Taiwan’s most severely affected urban belt in 921. Writing 921 as “Nantou’s tragedy” misses these 1,154 people in Taichung County.

Houli’s Rice Fields and Wafer Fabs Negotiated on the Same Land

While the trauma of 921 was still being rebuilt, another industrial park began to grow in the Taichung Basin.

The Central Taiwan Science Park timeline is often confused. As early as the 1990s, the National Science Council was studying site selection for a “third science park.” In 1999, the NSC proposed the Study on Overall Environmental Analysis for Establishing a Science Park. In May 2001, the Executive Yuan approved the “Green Silicon Island Construction Blueprint” policy. In 2001, the Central Taiwan Science Park base selection committee selected Dadu Mountain, spanning Xitun and Daya, and Huwei from eight candidate sites¹⁷. The Executive Yuan’s formal approval of the preparatory establishment plan came on September 23, 2002¹⁷, eight years later than the “1994 Central Taiwan Science Park” date many people remember.

“Only 10 months and 5 days passed from approval of the preparatory establishment plan to the start of construction”¹⁷. On July 28, 2003, Central Taiwan Science Park opened for firms to move in. This speed is rare in the history of Taiwanese public works; even the second phase of Taoyuan Airport was not this fast. On October 27, 2004, AU Optronics formally began external operations, becoming the first large firm in the park to enter mass production.

Houli Park was the second phase of Central Taiwan Science Park. “Promotion of the additional Houli Park preparatory establishment also began after the Executive Yuan approved the preparatory establishment plan on June 27, 2005, and continued until firms were introduced and began plant construction on March 31, 2006”¹⁷. Houli was one of the townships severely hit by 921, and the park’s establishment carried a layer of political consideration around “post-disaster industrial reconstruction.” On November 16, 2009, Erlin Park was approved; this park belongs to Changhua County and crosses Taichung’s administrative boundary.

Major Central Taiwan Science Park firms include TSMC, which occupies the largest land area, AU Optronics, Taiwan Micron, and Chenfull Precision. Its industrial positioning is the central node in the semiconductor axis of “northern Hsinchu Science Park, central Central Taiwan Science Park, southern Southern Taiwan Science Park”: Hsinchu Science Park leads in IC design and advanced-process wafer foundry; Central Taiwan Science Park leads in memory and panels; Southern Taiwan Science Park leads in wafer manufacturing and packaging. Seen from Taiwan’s semiconductor map, central Taiwan waited nine years from the initial planning of 1994 to firms entering in 2003 before this node was placed on the map.

✦ “Since the Executive Yuan approved the Central Taiwan Science Park preparatory establishment plan on September 23, 2002... only 10 months and 5 days passed from approval of the preparatory establishment plan to the start of construction, and on July 28, 2003, it opened for firms to move in.” (Central Taiwan Science Park official history¹⁷)

But the costs of Central Taiwan Science Park’s expansion were not absent. Expansion of Houli Park produced strong local controversy: wastewater from the park flowed toward the upper Dajia River, and irrigation water quality, air pollution, noise, and falling groundwater levels all entered environmental impact assessment public hearings. In the 2010s, the EIA process for the Houli Park Qixing base expansion saw multiple conflicts between residents and firms. This chapter in the history of the Taichung Basin is the negotiation between 1990s rice fields and 2000s wafer fabs on the same land.

There Is Not One Straight Line Inside Toyo Ito’s Curved Walls

Thirteen years after Central Taiwan Science Park opened, Taichung received its first world-class contemporary building.

Exterior of the National Taichung Theater, 2018-03-17. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0.

In October 2001, the Council for Cultural Affairs approved a subsidy covering half the construction cost. In the 2005 international design competition, Japanese architect Toyo Ito won first prize. Construction began on December 3, 2009. On November 23, 2014, Ma Ying-jeou and Jason Hu cut the ribbon at completion. On September 30, 2016, Vice President Chen Chien-jen attended the official opening and inauguration⁵. The construction cost was NT$4.36 billion.

The theater is divided internally into three halls: a Grand Theater with 2,007 seats, including 133 orchestra-pit seats; a Playhouse with 794 seats, including 94 orchestra-pit seats; and a Black Box with 200 seats. What the global architecture community remembers most about this building is its curved-wall structure.

“From humanity’s most primal concepts of the ‘tree house’ and the ‘cave,’ sound caves were designed; all interior wall surfaces are curved.” (National Taichung Theater official design description⁵)

The entire building has no straight walls or standard columns: 58 curved walls connect to one another, and the interior contains more than 70,000 custom small concrete panels, each individually cast according to the angle of the curved surface. The construction difficulty led the Discovery Channel to make a 2017 documentary, Uncovering the Eight-Year Construction Process, recording the building’s construction from 2009 to 2016. Toyo Ito himself called it his “life’s representative work”⁵. Chronologically, it came after he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2013; the theater was still unfinished the year he won.

The theater is located on Section 3 of Taiwan Boulevard in Xitun District, the core development zone of the new Taichung City after the 2010 city-county merger. In architectural scale, it forms a triangle with the National Theater and Concert Hall in Taipei and Weiwuying in Kaohsiung as Taiwan’s “three major performing arts centers” in the north, center, and south. On central Taiwan’s cultural map, together with the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, opened in 1988, and Tunghai’s Luce Memorial Chapel of 1955, it forms Taichung’s three-layer cultural-architectural genealogy: postwar modernism (1963 Luce), 1980s public art museum (1988 NTMoFA), and 21st-century international starchitect building (2016 theater)¹⁸.

The history of NTMoFA is also worth noting. In June 1988, the “Taiwan Provincial Museum of Fine Arts” was completed and opened; “Taiwan Provincial Chair Chiu Chuang-huan and Taiwan Provincial Government Department of Education director Chen Zhuomin presided over the opening and inauguration”¹⁸. After the streamlining of the Taiwan Provincial Government in 1999, it was transferred to the Executive Yuan’s Council for Cultural Affairs and renamed the “National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts,” “becoming the country’s first national-level art museum.” This turn from provincial to national landed exactly in the political rhythm of provincial-government streamlining in December 1998.

The theater, NTMoFA, and Tunghai’s Luce Memorial Chapel all stand on the western side of central Taichung. This axis through Xitun District and Beitun District is the true contemporary heart of Taichung after the 2010 merger. The decline of the old city center, Zhong District and East District, and the rise of the new axis mark the westward shift of Taichung’s geographic center of gravity in the 2010s.

Twenty-Nine Districts Across Taichung from Sea to Mountains

While the theater was still under construction, Taichung underwent its largest postwar administrative restructuring.

On December 25, 2010, Taichung County, with 21 townships, towns, and cities, and Taichung City, with eight districts, formally merged and were upgraded into the special municipality of Taichung City. Twenty-nine districts. New Taipei City, Tainan City, and Kaohsiung City, the latter two also through county-city mergers, were upgraded on the same day; Taoyuan would not be upgraded until 2014¹⁹. From the postwar establishment of separate Taichung City and Taichung County in 1945 to the 2010 merger, a dual-track “county vs. city” administrative structure that had lasted exactly 65 years came to an end.

The merger was supposed to improve administrative efficiency, but in practice it produced new urban-rural disparities. The original Taichung City, with eight districts, had concentrated elites, dense budgets, and complete public facilities; the mountain areas, coastal line, and Hakka villages of the original Taichung County, with 21 townships, towns, and cities, were newly incorporated into the administrative tier of a special municipality, but resource distribution still tilted toward the core metropolis.

Gaomei Wetlands and wind turbines, 2018-05-11. Photo: Axjun, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Heping District is the most distinctive of the 29 districts. With an area of about 1,038 square kilometers, it is the largest in Taichung City, but has only about 10,000 people. It is Taichung City’s only special-municipality mountain Indigenous district²⁰. The Beishi group of the Atayal people is distributed in communities such as Sancha坑, Shuangqi, Daguan, and Xueshankeng. Farther east, in the upper Dajia River, Huanshan Village (Sqoyaw) is “the largest Atayal community in the Lishan area, with 177 households and 590 people at the end of 2023”²⁰. Wuling Farm, at 1,750-2,200 meters above sea level, is counted with Qingjing and Fushoushan as one of Taiwan’s three major high-mountain farms and is the trailhead for Snow Mountain Main Peak, 3,886 meters.

From Qingshui District at sea level to Huanshan Village in Heping District above 1,800 meters, these 29 districts span a full geomorphological cross-section from sea to mountains. The Taichung City Government’s official divisions separate them into three layers: nine coastal-line districts, Daan, Dajia, Waipu, Qingshui, Wuqi, Shalu, Longjing, Dadu, and Wuri; 14 central plain districts, Central, East, West, South, North, Beitun, Xitun, Nantun, Fengyuan, Tanzi, Daya, Shengang, Dali, and Taiping; and five eastern mountain districts, Dongshi, Shigang, Xinshe, Wufeng, and Heping²¹.

Terrain determined the political structure. The coastal line was the traditional base of the “Black Faction,” whose origin lay in Chen Shui-tan’s 1951 campaign for Taichung county magistrate, when “campaign materials and name cards all used black as their mark”²². Wufeng, Dali, and Taiping were the base of the “Red Faction,” whose origins lay in the Wufeng Lin family under Japanese rule; when Lin He-nian ran in the first Taichung county magistrate election, “red was used for campaign materials.” The Red and Black factions alternated power in Taichung County for half a century. Not until 2001, when Yen Ching-piao, during his time as council speaker, was searched and investigated in an incident involving “using public funds to drink with hostesses,” and Democratic Progressive Party forces also rose, did “the factional politics of Red-Black confrontation and alternating rule in Taichung County for half a century gradually decline”²².

But the factions did not truly disappear. After the 2010 merger, Yen Ching-piao’s family on the coastal line still retained legislative and council seats; Wufeng’s Red Faction tradition reorganized under the new electoral-district structure. In the Taichung mayoral election of November 24, 2018, Lu Shiow-yen defeated Lin Chia-lung, 827,996 votes to 619,855, winning by about 200,000 votes²³. She took the coastal line, traditionally blue-leaning, plus the mountain line, including Dongshi and Fengyuan, and parts of the central districts, becoming “the first female mayor of the Taichung special municipality and also the first female Kuomintang special-municipality mayor.” In 2022, Lu Shiow-yen was reelected, “setting an extremely high ceiling for Taichung mayoral elections.”

One key flashpoint in the 2018 election was the Taichung World Flora Exposition, which had just opened that November. The exposition was held across three park areas in Houli, Waipu, and Fengyuan from November 3, 2018, to April 24, 2019, a total of 173 days, and received A2/B1-level certification from the International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH)²⁴. Lin Chia-lung’s administration invested NT$16.7 billion in development funding for the expo, and late-stage financial controversies became a central election issue. The flora exposition was supposed to be a municipal report card; in the end, it became an electoral liability.

📝 Curator’s note: The decline of factional politics is not the same as its disappearance. In writing the half-century alternation of power between Taichung County’s Red and Black factions, the point is not Yen Ching-piao as an individual; he is only the representative figure of the Black Faction’s transformation into a modern brand. The point is that Taichung County’s electoral structure was long determined by the “Red Faction vs. Black Faction” axis, not by the national blue-green divide. Only when Lu Shiow-yen swept the 2018 election was this axis fully absorbed into the national blue-green map. But the coastal line’s Black Faction, Wufeng’s Red Faction, Dongshi’s Hakka vote bank, and Heping District’s Atayal vote bank remain identifiable substructures in Taichung City elections. Taichung City’s political map reads like a topographic map: elevation, ethnicity, and distance from the core metropolis each correspond to a political line.

The City That Waited 123 Years

In April 2026, Taichung City’s population was 2,868,452, making it Taiwan’s second-largest city²⁵. It is second only to New Taipei City’s 4.01 million and has 390,000 more people than the capital, Taipei, with 2.47 million. But the public narrative around its identity as “the second-largest city” is clearly thinner than its population ranking.

The gap lies in the fact that Taichung’s history as the second-largest special municipality is only 16 years old. Taipei was upgraded to a special municipality in 1967; by 2010 it had already been the capital for 43 years. Kaohsiung was upgraded in 1979; by 2010 it had 31 years behind it as well. Tainan, Taichung, New Taipei, and Taoyuan were all upgraded only in the 2010s. When Taipei and Kaohsiung already had complete special-municipality governance experience, budget structures, and bureaucratic systems, Taichung was still dealing with integrating 29 merged districts.

Return to that October in 1887, when the provincial capital Liu Mingchuan petitioned for was selected at Qiaozitou. If that eight-trigram city had not been stopped by Shao Youlian in 1894, if the provincial city had truly been completed, if Taiwan had not been ceded to Japan in 1895, would this Taichung Basin have directly become Taiwan’s capital? History cannot be counterfactual, but this hypothesis adds depth to the narrative that “Taichung nearly became the capital”: Taichung was once chosen, but that city was never finished.

From 1887 to 2010: exactly 123 years. Taichung waited more than a century to move from “unfinished candidate provincial capital” to “Taiwan’s second-largest special municipality.” In the course of that waiting, this city grew sites of the non-armed anti-Japanese movement, Central Bookstore and Chiang Wei-shui’s People’s Party in the 1920s; postwar Taiwan’s first modernist chapel, Luce in 1963; its first national-level art museum, NTMoFA in 1988; the deepest Hakka wound after 921, the 358 people of Dongshi in 1999; the central node of the semiconductor axis, Central Taiwan Science Park in 2003; and the opera house remembered by the global architecture community, Toyo Ito’s 2016 theater.

None of these was in Liu Mingchuan’s 1887 plan.

✦ “Qiaozitou, today’s Taichung city center, was Liu Mingchuan’s intended choice for the provincial capital.” (Multi-source historical records¹¹)

Return to Dajia Jenn Lann Temple. In the early morning of the day the procession sets out every third lunar month, hundreds of thousands of people converge in front of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple from Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin, and Chiayi. Firecrackers, palanquins, devotees, media SNG trucks. They walk from Jenn Lann Temple to Xingang Fengtian Temple in Chiayi, then back again: nine days and eight nights, 340 kilometers. Counting from 1730, when Lin Yongxing brought the deity statue from Meizhou to Dajia, this route has been walked for 296 years; counting from the 1988 rerouting to Xingang, it has been walked for 38 years; counting from the Ministry of Culture’s 2010 designation as intangible cultural heritage, it has been walked for 16 years, exactly the same age as Taichung as a special municipality.

Every timeline has its own length. Taichung’s question was never “why did the second-largest city become visible so late?” Taichung’s answer is: in 138 years of modernization, this city has never stopped growing new layers. From the Taokas people, Qing-era Qiaozitou, Japanese-era Taichung Prefecture, the postwar provincial city, to the 2010 special municipality, every layer presses down on the memory of the layer before it. What 2.86 million people live in is a city accumulated over 138 years.

Next time you pass through Taichung, do not only visit an old sun-cake shop or Fengjia Night Market. Try this route: at dawn, go to Dajia Jenn Lann Temple to see Mazu’s incense smoke; at noon, walk the 340-meter fault zone at the 921 Earthquake Education Park on the former Guangfu Junior High School campus in Wufeng; in the afternoon, go to Dadu Mountain to see the hyperbolic surfaces of Luce Memorial Chapel; at dusk, hear a performance inside the curved walls of the Xitun theater; at night, buy a book at Central Bookstore on Jiguang Street. After finishing this route, you will remember one thing: Taichung waited 123 years to become the second-largest special municipality, but it was never absent from Taiwan’s modern history.

Further Reading

• Keelung City — 22 Cities and Counties Series pilot: the world’s seventh-largest container port in 1984 fell to 113th in 2018; like Taichung, it is a city/county whose administrative status was once seen and then rewritten
• Nantou County — 22 Cities and Counties Series batch 3 sibling: Taiwan’s only landlocked county, with the 921 epicenter at its center, sharing the Chelungpu Fault trauma with Taichung
• Changhua County — 22 Cities and Counties Series batch 4 sibling: the 1709 Babao Canal irrigated central Taiwan, the 1786 Lin Shuangwen incident, the 1986 Lukang residents drove out DuPont; with Taichung, it belongs to the central Taiwan living sphere around the Bagua Range
• Yunlin County — 22 Cities and Counties Series batch 4 sibling: the Dajia Mazu pilgrimage passes through Xiluo, Huwei, and Tuku; with Taichung, it forms the middle section of the same Mazu route
• Chiayi City — 22 Cities and Counties Series batch 2 sibling: Xingang, the endpoint of the Dajia Mazu pilgrimage, is in Chiayi County; with Taichung, it marks the two ends of the same 340-kilometer religious route
• Miaoli County — 22 Cities and Counties Series batch 1 sibling: the northern neighboring county, an inland county of Hakka “hard-neck” resilience and county treasury debt; together with Taichung’s coastal-line Qingshui and mountain-line Dongshi, it forms central Taiwan’s Hakka map
• Taiwan Administrative Divisions — the complete institutional history of establishing Taiwan Prefecture in Taichung in 1887, establishing Taichung Prefecture in 1920, separating city and county in 1945, and merging city and county into a special municipality in 2010
• Urban Characteristics and Regional Culture — cross-county and cross-city comparative context for Taichung as the hub of the central Taiwan living sphere

Image Sources

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

• Hero (frontmatter): National Taichung Theater 20180317 — Exterior of the National Taichung Theater, 2018-03-17. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Scene §The Deity Statue in Lin Yongxing’s Home (Dajia Jenn Lann Temple): Front of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple — Front of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple, 2018-08-04. Photo: Dquai, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Scene §The Church on Dadu Mountain Without a Single Beam or Column (Luce Memorial Chapel): Luce Memorial Chapel — Luce Memorial Chapel, 2021-05-16. Photo: ChiaWeiHo, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Scene §The Chelungpu Fault Tore to Dongshi (921 Education Park): 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan 2024-09-21 — 921 Earthquake Education Park, 2024-09-21. Photo: Liu Shu-fu / Office of the President, CC BY 2.0.
• Scene §Twenty-Nine Districts Across Taichung from Sea to Mountains (Gaomei Wetlands): 高美濕地與風力發電機 — Gaomei Wetlands and wind turbines, 2018-05-11. Photo: Axjun, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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

References

1. Liu Mingchuan — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete record of Liu Mingchuan and Min-Zhe governor-general Yang Changjun jointly petitioning in October 1887 to reorganize Taiwan’s administrative divisions, selecting Qiaozitou in Changhua County (today’s Taichung City) as the provincial capital, the principle “In the method of establishing institutions, terrain comes first; in the method of governance, balance is essential,” and the administrative system of three prefectures and one subprefecture.↩
2. History of Taichung City — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete administrative history of Liu Mingchuan planning an eight-trigram-shaped walled city in Lanxingbao in 1887, the establishment of Taichung County in 1896, its change to Taichung Hall in 1901, the establishment of Taichung Prefecture on 1920/10/01 through merger with Nantou Hall, “Taichung Street and nine surrounding villages were merged to form Taichung City,” Taichung as a 1920s stronghold of the non-armed anti-Japanese movement, and Chiang Wei-shui’s Taiwanese People’s Party being founded in Taichung.↩
3. Luce Memorial Chapel — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete record of I. M. Pei and Chen Chi-kwan’s 1956 collaborative design, 1962 construction start, 1963/11/02 completion, commemoration of missionary Henry Winters Luce, “the first work through which the architectural vocabulary of modernism entered Taiwan,” hyperbolic thin-shell structure, April 2019 upgrade to national monument, and the design-authorship dispute between Pei and Chen.↩
4. 921 Earthquake — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete data on 1999/09/21 01:47:15.9, the Chelungpu Fault, Richter magnitude 7.3, Jiji epicenter, 8-kilometer depth, 2,415 deaths across Taiwan, 1,154 deaths in Taichung County, 16,861 completely collapsed and 12,341 partially collapsed households, Dongshi Township’s 358 deaths as the highest casualty count, Shigang Dam’s fractured spillway gates 15-18 subsiding 5 meters, and Nantou and Taichung counties and cities accounting for 95% of damaged households across Taiwan.↩
5. National Taichung Theater — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete engineering and design history: Council for Cultural Affairs approval in 2001/10, Toyo Ito winning first prize in the 2005 international competition, construction start on 2009/12/03, Ma Ying-jeou and Jason Hu ribbon-cutting on 2014/11/23, Vice President Chen Chien-jen opening on 2016/09/30, NT$4.36 billion construction cost, 2,007-seat Grand Theater, 794-seat Playhouse, 200-seat Black Box, the concept “from humanity’s most primal concepts of the ‘tree house’ and the ‘cave,’ sound caves were designed,” 58 curved walls, and 79,576 small concrete panels.↩
6. Dajiaxi Society Anti-Qing Incident — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete historical record of Dajiaxi Society leader Linbaolihu Maluku rising in the ninth year of Yongzheng (1731), burning the office of the assistant prefect for pacifying the people of Tamsui under Taiwan Prefecture, the seven-month duration, the Qing court’s mobilization of more than 6,000 mainland troops and use of “using barbarians to control barbarians” to put it down, and its status as the largest armed anti-official incident in the history of Taiwan’s plains Indigenous peoples.↩
7. Taokas People — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Ethnographic data on distribution “from Taichung City through Miaoli County to Hsinchu County’s coastal plain zone,” the Dajiaxi Society anti-Qing incident, the Papora people’s Middag Kingdom, Babuza distribution south of the Dadu River, and the three groups’ collective migration to the Puli Basin.↩
8. Dajia Jenn Lann Temple — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete temple-building history: in the eighth year of Yongzheng (1730), Meizhou native Lin Yongxing brought a Mazu statue to Taiwan; in the 10th year of Yongzheng (1732), gentry built a small shrine; in the 35th year of Qianlong (1770), it was rebuilt as Tianhou Temple; in the 52nd year of Qianlong (1787), Dajia subprefect Zong Jinting and others initiated land donation and reconstruction, renaming it Jenn Lann Temple.↩
9. Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage and Procession — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete pilgrimage data: nine days and eight nights, 340-kilometer round trip on foot, crossing the four counties and cities of Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin, and Chiayi, passing more than 100 temples and 21 townships, towns, cities, and districts, participation of more than 100,000 people each year, Council for Cultural Affairs designation as a national important folk custom in 2010, and Discovery’s selection as one of the world’s three major religious events.↩
10. Jenn Lann Temple 1988 Rerouting to Xingang — Academia Sinica Cultural Resources Geographic Information System — Academia Sinica Cultural Resources Geographic Information System entry on Dajia Jenn Lann Temple. Complete record of the 1987 pilgrimage to Meizhou to pay ancestral respects, the change of pilgrimage destination to Xingang Fengtian Temple from 1988 onward, the religious-status disagreement over “paying ancestral respects (returning to the natal home)” and “exchanging incense,” and the inter-temple political turning point that normalized the term “pilgrimage procession” to the present day.↩
11. Shao Youlian — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete decision history of the provincial capital’s move north: taking office as Taiwan governor in 1891, “After assessing gains and losses, he pragmatically canceled most of the New Policies,” “construction of the provincial city began in 1889, but after Shao Youlian took office as governor he ordered work on the provincial city stopped and formally moved the provincial capital to Taipei Prefecture,” the 1894 First Sino-Japanese War, and his transfer to acting Hunan governor.↩
12. Central Bookstore — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete bookstore history: founding meeting at Zuiyue Tower by Taichung’s Lüchuan on 1926/06/30, official opening on 1927/01/03, founder Zhuang Chuisheng, shareholders “Lin Hsien-tang, Lin Youchun, Chen Xugu, Zhang Shenqie, Lai He, and others,” original plan as the “Central Club, a central Taiwan gathering place for the Taiwan Cultural Association,” “central Taiwan’s first bookstore specializing in the import of Chinese- and Japanese-language books and magazines, and also the island’s largest Chinese-language bookstore,” closure due to financial difficulties in 1998, and reopening by the Sun Culture Foundation in 2020/01.↩
13. Tunghai University — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete founding history: U.S. Vice President Nixon’s groundbreaking ceremony on 1953/11/11, founding dedication ceremony on 1955/11/02 as the university anniversary, first president Tseng Yueh-nung, “one of the United States’ overseas Christian missionary enterprises, closely linked to U.S. aid to Asia and Cold War containment of communism,” and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia’s role in establishing the university.↩
14. Taichung City Hakka Culture — Hakka Affairs Council Taiwan Hakka Survey — Taiwan Hakka survey data from the Executive Yuan’s Hakka Affairs Council. Complete ethnic distribution record: Hakka people account for about 80% of Dongshi District, the local common language is the Dapu accent of Taiwanese Hakka, Dongshi District is Taichung City’s largest Hakka settlement, Shigang District saw Hakka-speaking groups from Dapu County move in for cultivation in the late Kangxi reign, and Xinshe District is Taichung City’s second-largest Hakka settlement.↩
15. Central Cross-Island Highway Guguan Section Closure After 921 — Directorate General of Highways — Official record from the Directorate General of Highways, Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Complete rescue record: after the 921 earthquake, slope collapse mileage on the Guguan-to-Deji section exceeded 80%, the roadbed was completely lost in 26 places, bus service resumed on the Tongxiao section on 2018/11/16, and the Executive Yuan approved in 2024 the Qingshan lower-line reconstruction plan with total funding of NT$20.6 billion and expected completion in 2037.↩
16. Chelungpu Fault — Central Geological Survey — Official Chelungpu Fault data from the Ministry of Economic Affairs Central Geological Survey. Complete fault-zone geological record: the northern segment runs from Zhuolan in Miaoli along the Dajia River and Wu River basins southward, passing through the foothill zone of Taichung County (Dongshi, Shigang, Dali, Taiping, Wufeng), with the southern end reaching Tongtou, Zhushan, Nantou, then turning to Zhongpu, Chiayi. On 1999/09/21, rupture began beneath Jiji Township in the middle segment and extended 100 kilometers northward, cutting across Taichung County townships, towns, and cities.↩
17. Central Taiwan Science Park — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete timeline: 1999 NSC Study on Overall Environmental Analysis for Establishing a Science Park, Executive Yuan approval of the “Green Silicon Island Construction Blueprint” in 2001/05, selection of Dadu Mountain and Huwei bases in 2001, Executive Yuan approval of the preparatory establishment plan on 2002/09/23, “only 10 months and 5 days passed from approval of the preparatory establishment plan to the start of construction,” firms moving in on 2003/07/28, AU Optronics mass production on 2004/10/27, Houli Park approval on 2005/06/27, and Erlin Park approval on 2009/11/16.↩
18. History of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts — National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts — National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts official history page. Complete transformation history: the Taiwan Provincial Museum of Fine Arts was completed and opened in 1988/06, “Taiwan Provincial Chair Chiu Chuang-huan and Taiwan Provincial Government Department of Education director Chen Zhuomin presided over the opening and inauguration,” Provincial Chair Lin Yang-kang decided to establish it on 1980/02/08, and after provincial-government streamlining in 1999 it was transferred to the Council for Cultural Affairs and renamed “National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts,” “becoming the country’s first national-level art museum.”↩
19. Administrative Divisions of the Republic of China — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete county-city restructuring record: on 2010/12/25, Taichung County and City merged, New Taipei City was reorganized, Tainan County and City merged, and Kaohsiung County and City merged, all being upgraded to special municipalities on the same day; Taoyuan was upgraded on 2014/12/25.↩
20. Heping District (Taichung City) — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete geographic and human data: Taichung City’s largest district by area (1,038 square kilometers), population of about 10,000, Taichung City’s only special-municipality mountain Indigenous district, Atayal Beishi group communities in Sancha坑, Shuangqi, Daguan, and Xueshankeng, Huanshan Village Sqoyaw in the upper Dajia River as “the largest Atayal community in the Lishan area, with 177 households and 590 people at the end of 2023,” Wuling Farm at 1,750-2,200 meters as one of the three major high-mountain farms, and Snow Mountain Main Peak’s 3,886-meter trailhead.↩
21. Taichung City Administrative Divisions — Taichung City Government — Official Taichung City Government districting data. Complete three-layer geomorphological administrative division of 29 districts: nine coastal-line districts (Daan, Dajia, Waipu, Qingshui, Wuqi, Shalu, Longjing, Dadu, Wuri), 14 central plain districts (Central, East, West, South, North, Beitun, Xitun, Nantun, Fengyuan, Tanzi, Daya, Shengang, Dali, Taiping), and five eastern mountain districts (Dongshi, Shigang, Xinshe, Wufeng, Heping).↩
22. Taichung Local Factions — The News Lens — In-depth report on Taiwan’s local factions by The News Lens. Complete factional history: Red Faction origins in the Wufeng Lin family, Lin He-nian’s first Taichung county magistrate campaign “using red for campaign materials,” Black Faction Chen Shui-tan in 1951, when “campaign materials and name cards all used black as their mark,” Yen Ching-piao’s 1999 search and investigation while council speaker for “using public funds to drink with hostesses,” “the factional politics of Red-Black confrontation and alternating rule in Taichung County for half a century gradually declined,” and the rise of DPP forces in 2001.↩
23. 2018 Republic of China Special Municipality Mayor and County Magistrate Elections — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete election data: on 2018/11/24, Lu Shiow-yen defeated Lin Chia-lung 827,996 votes to 619,855, winning by 200,000 votes; she became “the first female mayor of the Taichung special municipality and also the first female Kuomintang special-municipality mayor”; in 2022 she was reelected, “setting an extremely high ceiling for Taichung mayoral elections.”↩
24. 2018 Taichung World Flora Exposition — Wikipedia — Chinese Wikipedia entry. Complete exhibition-period and three-park data: 2018/11/03-2019/04/24, a total of 173 days; “certified and authorized by the International Association of Horticultural Producers as an A2/B1-level international horticultural exposition”; Houli Horse Ranch and Forest Park Area, 30.04 hectares (ecology Nature, natural coexistence); Waipu Park Area, 14.32 hectares (production Green, green sharing); and Fengyuan Huludun Park, 16.52 hectares (life People, humanistic good, the only free-admission area).↩
25. Taichung City Population Statistics — Taichung City Government Civil Affairs Bureau — Official population statistics from the Taichung City Government Civil Affairs Bureau. April 2026 Taichung City population of 2,868,452, Taiwan’s second-largest city after New Taipei City’s 4.01 million, with 29-district monthly statistics synchronously updated in the Wikipedia Taichung City entry.↩