Taipei City: Three Times Within One City, Longshan Temple of 1738 Looking at Taipei 101 of 2004

30-second overview: The Taipei Basin holds three times set side by side. Wanhua District has Bangka Longshan Temple, built in 1738 by pooled funds from people of the three Quanzhou counties of Jinjiang, Nan'an, and Hui'an; by 2026 it is 288 years old. After Tamsui opened as a port in the 1860s, Dadaocheng became the world node for northern Taiwan's tea exports; in 1885 Liu Mingchuan placed the first provincial capital of Taiwan Province here. Across another road, Taipei 101 in the Xinyi Planning District, completed on December 31, 2004, stands on the former site of the Japanese-era Songshan Warehouse and the postwar 44th Arsenal. In 1875 Shen Baozhen established Taipei Prefecture; in 1920 the Japanese merged the three market towns of Bangka, Dadaocheng, and the walled city into Taipei City; in 1947 the first shot of the February 28 Incident was fired at Tianma Tea House; in 1949 the Nationalist government moved to Taipei; in 1967 Taipei was upgraded into Taiwan's first special municipality, 12 years before Kaohsiung and 43 years before the other metropolitan areas; in 1990 came the Wild Lily Student Movement; in 2014 the Sunflower Movement occupied the Legislative Yuan for 24 days. Twelve districts, living in different centuries. This article wants to say: the Taipei others see is Taipei 101 and the National Palace Museum; the Taipei that Taipei residents live is the same city spanning 266 years between Wanhua, Dadaocheng, and Xinyi.

At Four in the Morning, Huannan Market Is Already Moving

If you ask a Taipei resident "when is Taipei most compelling," they will not tell you about the New Year's fireworks at Taipei 101. That belongs to tourists. They may say Huannan Market at four in the morning, or the light filtering between the old houses of Dihua Street at five.

Huannan Market is in Wanhua District. Trucks begin entering at three in the morning; vegetable farmers, meat vendors, and seafood wholesalers call out prices under lights before dawn. Half an hour by car away, the Kanziding Fish Market¹ has just finished its auctions. Baskets of fish transported from Keelung Harbor have by now already changed hands to stalls in Wanhua. A few hours later, Japanese restaurants in Taipei's East District, breakfast shops around Zhongxiao Fuxing, snack stalls on Yongkang Street, and restaurants in Xinyi District will all use ingredients delivered today.

Walk one kilometer north from Wanhua along the Tamsui River, and you arrive at Dihua Street in Dadaocheng. When Li Chunsheng was doing tea business on this street in the 1860s, this was the busiest external-trade port in all of northern Taiwan. The Western-style mansion of Jinji Tea Company, built by Chen Tianlai on Guide Street in the 1920s, still stands on its original site. Today Dihua Street sells dry goods from north and south China, Chinese medicine, and cloth by day; before dawn it is as quiet as a century ago.

Cross Chongqing North Road further east, and you enter the area of Taipei Prefecture's walled city, whose establishment Shen Baozhen memorialized to the throne in 1875. The North Gate, Cheng'en Gate, still stands in its original position. Completed in 1884, it is 142 years old in 2026. The walled city is now Zhongzheng District, where all five branches of government are located: the Presidential Office, Executive Yuan, Legislative Yuan, Judicial Yuan, Examination Yuan, and Control Yuan.²

Walk another five kilometers east from the North Gate to Xinyi District, and Taipei 101 stands there. At 508 meters,³ it was the world's tallest building on the day it was completed, December 31, 2004. The land beneath it was the Japanese Army's Songshan Warehouse during Japanese rule and became the "44th Arsenal" producing weapons after 1947. Only in 1980 did planning begin to turn it into today's financial and commercial district.

This is Taipei's most contemporary proof of itself as a capital. From Longshan Temple in Wanhua to Taipei 101 in Xinyi, the straight-line distance is five kilometers, and the time gap is 266 years. Every day three million people move within these five kilometers. Most do not raise their heads to see how many eras they are walking through.

The Ketagalan, Chen Lai Zhang, and That Temple from 1738

Four hundred years ago, the Taipei Basin was not called Taipei, and the people who lived here were not called Han.

The place name "Beitou" comes from the Ketagalan word "Patauw," meaning "witch"; according to tradition, the name came from witches who once lived there.⁴ "Bangka" (Manka) is also a Ketagalan word, meaning "dugout canoe" or "a place where trade was conducted by dugout canoe." Beneath the Han place name "Dadaocheng" lies the former site of the Ketagalan settlement "Tappari." Ketagalan Boulevard in front of today's Presidential Office in Taipei City received its current name only on March 21, 1996, when then-mayor Chen Shui-bian renamed it from "Jieshou Road."⁵

Han people entered the area gradually only after 1709. In the 48th year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing, five merchants from Quanzhou -- Chen Tianzhang, Lai Yonghe, Chen Xianbo, Chen Fengchun, and Dai Tianshu -- formed a joint venture called the "Chen Lai Zhang reclamation partnership." They applied to Song Yongqing, the Zhuluo county magistrate, for a reclamation permit in the "Dajiala" area and began large-scale reclamation of the Taipei Basin.⁶ "Dajiala" broadly referred to today's Wanhua, Datong, Songshan, and Dadaocheng areas.

Twenty-nine years later, in 1738, the third year of the Qianlong reign, a temple appeared in Bangka.

"In the third year of the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty (1738), people from the three Quanzhou counties of Jinjiang, Nan'an, and Hui'an pooled funds to build it, and invited a divided spirit of Guanyin Bodhisattva from Anhai Longshan Temple in Jinjiang County, Fujian Province, to Taiwan."⁷ This sentence from Bangka Longshan Temple's official website is the earliest textual evidence of Taipei as a Han city. From the moment the temple was built, Longshan Temple was not only a religious center; "matters such as deliberations and lawsuits all sought divine arbitration,"⁷ making it the core of Bangka's collective community life. During the Sino-French War in the tenth year of the Guangxu reign, 1884, Bangka residents organized a volunteer militia and used Longshan Temple as a command post against the French. Afterward, the Guangxu emperor bestowed a plaque reading "Cihui Yuanyin." In 2018, the Ministry of Culture announced its elevation to a national historic site.⁷

Bangka Longshan Temple, 2017. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

📝 Curator's note: The standard tourism narrative writes Longshan Temple as "Taipei's oldest temple" and stops there. But the point of the year 1738 is not "oldness"; it is that it predates every official Taipei. The Qing court established Taipei Prefecture only in 1875. The Japanese established Taipei City only in 1920. The Nationalist government began governing from Taipei only in 1949. Longshan Temple is earlier than every official version of this city. When you stand today on the temple forecourt, beneath your feet is the "Dajiala" reclaimed by the Chen Lai Zhang partnership in 1709, the faith jointly funded by people of three counties in 1738, the volunteer-militia command post under French artillery fire in 1884, and the old street scene where tourists in 2026 hold up phones to take pictures. One temple pins down five centuries of time.

1875 Prefecture Established, 1882 Construction Began, 1884 Completed

In the first year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing, 1875, imperial commissioner Shen Baozhen petitioned the Qing court to establish Taipei Prefecture. The cause was the Mudan Incident of 1874: Japan sent troops to Mudan in Pingtung on the grounds of protecting its people, and Shen Baozhen was appointed imperial commissioner and sent to Taiwan to handle the matter. After the incident subsided, he explained Taiwan's strategic importance to the Qing court in his report and proposed that "Taipei should be built as one prefecture and three counties." The Qing court approved, and Taipei Prefecture was formally established, governing Tamsui County, Hsinchu County, Yilan County, and later Keelung Subprefecture.⁸

But having the prefecture's name did not yet mean having a walled prefectural city. The year 1875 was the starting point for planning and deliberation; formal construction did not begin until 1882.

"Construction formally began on the 24th day of the first month of Guangxu 8 (March 13, 1882)."⁹ The Wikipedia entry "Taipei City Walls" records the starting date word for word. Construction ran for more than two years. "In 1884, Taipei City was completed, with five gates established: the East Gate, West Gate, South Gate, Little South Gate, and North Gate";¹⁰ "the city wall's circumference was 1,506 zhang"; "wall height: one zhang and five chi; wall width (top carriageway): one zhang and two chi; north-south: about 1.3 km; east-west: about 1 km; area: about 1.4 km²."⁹ This 1.4-square-kilometer walled city took more than 50 years to be dismantled. Beginning in 1900, the Japanese gradually removed the walls and converted them into three-lane boulevards, today's Zhongshan South Road, Zhonghua Road, and Aiguo West Road, leaving only four of the five gates. By 2026 the North Gate, Cheng'en Gate, still stands in its original place.

Taipei Prefecture City North Gate, Cheng'en Gate, 2017. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Before the walled prefectural city was built, Dadaocheng had already become northern Taiwan's busiest market town. Tamsui opened as a port in 1860, the tenth year of the Xianfeng reign, and in 1863 the agreed scope of Tamsui Harbor was extended to Dadaocheng.¹¹ Oolong tea became the most important export. In the 1860s, the British merchant John Dodd came to Taiwan to investigate conditions, hired the Xiamen native Li Chunsheng as comprador, introduced tea seedlings from Anxi in Fujian, and used Dadaocheng as a base to export Taiwanese oolong tea to the United States.¹¹ In 1869, the first shipment of 120,000 catties of Taiwanese oolong tea was exported directly from Tamsui to New York under the name "Formosa Tea." Li Chunsheng later became known as the "father of Taiwan tea." In 1891 Chen Tianlai opened Jinji Tea Company on Guide Street in Dadaocheng to export pouchong tea to Southeast Asia and China. The Chen family's Chinese-Western hybrid, Baroque-style "Chen Tianlai Residence," built between 1920 and 1923, still stands in its original position on Guide Street in 2026.

In October of the eleventh year of Guangxu, 1885, the Qing court issued an edict establishing Taiwan as a province and appointed Liu Mingchuan as Taiwan's first governor.¹² The modernization projects Liu Mingchuan advanced during his tenure in Taiwan were so dense that they scarcely resemble the work of a nineteenth-century Qing official: in 1885 he established the Western Learning Hall in Dadaocheng, Taiwan's first modern school; in 1888 he opened Taiwan's first postal bureau; in 1889 the railway from Dadaocheng to Keelung opened, Taiwan's first railway; in 1891 Dadaocheng Railway Station, Taipei's first railway station, began service; he established Taiwan's first telegraph line and purchased Taiwan's first steamroller to pave stone roads.¹²

Liu Mingchuan chose the provincial capital site near Dadaocheng, not inside the Taipei Prefecture city that had been completed only in 1884. That decision made Dadaocheng do business, the walled city handle government, and Bangka keep the old gods. This structure of three parallel market towns was later continued and used by the Japanese.

✦ "In affluent Dadaocheng, many new experiments and activities first appeared here, and then spread to every part of the island." (StoryStudio, "Where Is Taipei? The Life Story of the Heavenly Dragon Kingdom"¹³)

Entering the City Without Street Fighting: The Day the Japanese Took Over Taipei

Four years after Liu Mingchuan left Taiwan, this city became Japanese.

On April 17, 1895, the Qing court signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki and ceded Taiwan. On May 25, Taiwanese officials and gentry announced the establishment of the "Republic of Taiwan," with Tang Jingsong as president and Taipei Prefecture City as its political center. But this republic existed for only 13 days.

"On June 4, 1895, Tang Jingsong used inspection of the front lines as a pretext, fled Taipei, and left for Xiamen aboard a German steamer."¹⁴ After Tang Jingsong fled, Taipei's city was left without leadership. Soldiers looted, government offices were burned, and the whole city fell into chaos. "On June 7, 1895, they entered the city smoothly without firing a shot."¹⁴ The Japanese army entered Taipei peacefully that day because foreign residents and wealthy merchants inside the city had proactively sent representatives to Keelung to invite the Japanese army into the city to maintain order. Some people still remember this detail today as "June 6," but the word-for-word date in the Wikipedia entry on the history of Taipei City is June 7. Taipei changed from Qing to Japanese rule without a street battle.

The first major thing the Japanese did after taking over was replan Taipei as a modern city. Beginning in 1900, they gradually demolished the Qing-era walls and converted them into three-lane boulevards. Taipei Station, completed in 1908, replaced Dadaocheng Railway Station. Sewers were laid beginning in 1909, telephone lines in 1911, and a citywide water system was completed in 1915. The most symbolic structure was the Taiwan Governor-General's Office: construction began on June 1, 1912, was completed in March 1919, and cost 2.81 million yen in total. The building adopted the Japanese Tatsuno style: red brick walls with white banded ornament, and a central tower about 60 meters high. "It was the tallest red-brick building in Japan; in addition to earthquake resistance and adaptation to a tropical climate, the tower was also equipped with Taiwan's first elevator."¹⁵ This building stood on the central axis of the former Taipei Prefecture city and later became the Nationalist government's Presidential Office. Its location has not changed in 107 years.

On October 1, 1920, the eighth governor-general, Den Kenjiro, launched a "major adjustment of Taiwan's administrative divisions."

"In 1920, the major adjustment of Taiwan's administrative divisions and place names thoroughly changed Taiwan's grassroots administrative divisions since the Ming and Qing. Taipei City was also established at this time; its administrative rank was a city under a prefecture, equivalent to a district. At that time Taiwan had only three cities: Taipei, Taichung, and Tainan."¹³ Taipei Prefecture was also established at the same time. Taipei City was formed around the core of the three market towns of the walled city, Dadaocheng, and Bangka. "The walled city was inhabited mainly by naichijin, Japanese people, while Dadaocheng and Bangka were inhabited mainly by hontojin, Taiwanese Han people."¹³

This was the birth moment of Taipei City as it would be known in 2026, pushed back 106 years. Bangka's temple of 1738, Dadaocheng's tea of 1860, and the walled city's walls of 1884 -- three market towns that had originally operated separately -- were from this day placed into the same administrative container called "Taipei City". The Japanese merger of the three market towns was not merely a name change. They also integrated the population, taxes, police, schools, garbage, water supply, and electricity of the three districts into one city office. Beitou also changed at this time: in 1896 the Osaka native Hirata Gengo first opened the "Tengu-an" hot-spring inn in Beitou, bringing Beitou's hot springs into commercial use;¹⁶ at its height the area had as many as 25 hot-spring inns, and Crown Prince Hirohito stayed here during his 1923 visit to Taiwan.

That Packet of Cigarettes in 1947: Lin Jiangmai, Fu Xuetong, and Tianma Tea House

At the moment Japanese rule ended, Taipei was transferred to another regime.

On October 25, 1945, the Nationalist government accepted Japan's surrender at Taipei Public Hall, today's Zhongshan Hall. One year and four months later, on the evening of February 27, 1947, a packet of illicit cigarettes in Taipei ignited the deepest wound in postwar Taiwan. The site was Tianma Tea House, "today's No. 189, Nanjing West Road, Taipei City, opposite Taipei Fazhugong Temple,"¹⁷ a cafe in Dadaocheng.

"On February 27, 1947, six investigators from the Taipei Branch of the Taiwan Provincial Monopoly Bureau caught Lin Jiangmai, a 40-year-old widow with children, selling illicit cigarettes in front of Tianma Tea House. In the process they illegally seized, in addition to the illicit cigarettes, her tax-paid legal cigarettes and personal property, and struck the female cigarette vendor's head heavily with a rifle butt, causing her head to bleed and her to fall unconscious. This provoked the indignation of bystanders, and they then fired wildly, causing one civilian death and one injury."¹⁷ This was the first shot of the February 28 Incident. Investigator Fu Xuetong opened fire and accidentally killed the passerby Chen Wenxi.

The next day, February 28, 1947, residents of Dadaocheng marched in protest from Tianma Tea House to the plaza in front of the then Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office, today's Executive Yuan. They were "swept with machine-gun fire by guards, causing many deaths and injuries." Residents then occupied the plaza of nearby New Park, today's 228 Peace Park, and the Taiwan Radio Station inside the park, today's site of the 228 Memorial Museum, broadcasting news of the incident to the whole island. Broadcasting was the key to the incident's loss of control. What happened in Taipei spread rapidly across Taiwan through radio, and protests broke out from Keelung to Pingtung. Island-wide repression began in early March; Kaohsiung Fortress commander Peng Mengji ordered massacres.¹⁸ According to various studies, the death toll is estimated between 18,000 and 28,000.

"The Taipei 228 Memorial Museum is located inside Taipei City's 228 Park. It officially opened on February 28, 1997, symbolizing the 50th anniversary of the February 28 Incident."¹⁹ The building's predecessor was the Taipei Broadcasting Station Performance Hall of the Taiwan Broadcasting Association, completed on November 8, 1930, during Japanese rule. It was the physical location of the broadcast on February 28, 1947. On May 14, 2020, the Department of Cultural Affairs of Taipei City Government designated it a municipal historic site.

Taipei 228 Memorial Museum, 2019. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

📝 Curator's note: The standard memorial narrative of the February 28 Incident focuses on "how many people died," "who gave the order," and "the central government's responsibility." But the way the physical location of the first shot, No. 189 Nanjing West Road in Dadaocheng, is embedded in Taipei's streets is deeper than any monument. Beside the former site of Tianma Tea House today is a small stone marker bearing three names: Lin Jiangmai, Fu Xuetong, and Chen Wenxi. Most passersby do not stop to look. Between this small stone marker and the 228 Memorial Museum lies an internal contradiction Taipei has carried since 1947: this city is both the starting point of the incident and the place where the Nationalist government later pressed the incident down beneath history. For the 38 years of martial law after 1949, Taipei residents could not say these three characters in public. Three generations of Taipei residents reconstructed their knowledge of the February 28 Incident step by step, from silence, to whispers, to a memorial museum.

The 1.2 Million People in 1949, and the 1967 Upgrade to Special Municipality

Two years after the February 28 Incident, Taipei's urban form changed again.

On December 7, 1949, a presidential order announced that the government would move to Taipei. Chiang Kai-shek himself flew from Chengdu to Taipei on December 10, 1949, "arriving in Taipei at 8:30 p.m."²⁰ From that day through 2026, Taipei has been the capital of the Republic of China.

What arrived with the Nationalist government was not only administrative agencies. Between 1949 and 1950, about 1.2 million people entered Taiwan from mainland China with the central government and the Nationalist army. Taipei City's population surged from a prewar 270,000, 274,157 people in the 1935 statistics. "After the war the population surged to one million, exceeding the population accommodated by the original urban plan,"¹³ and by 1966 it had reached 1,174,883 people. The five yuans -- Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Examination, and Control -- together with the Presidential Office were all concentrated in Taipei City's Zhongzheng District, forming the physical structure of postwar Taiwan's highly centralized politics. Looking 60 years forward from this structure, all the consequences of Taipei becoming "political Taipei" -- the gathering of the five yuans, dense diplomatic residences, the hub of protest marches, the concentration of media headquarters, and top schools such as National Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University, and National Chengchi University all in Taipei -- grew out of that winter decision in 1949.

The upgrade came with it. "In 1967, provincial Taipei City was further elevated to a yuan-administered Taipei City, that is, a special municipality, at the same level as Taiwan Province."²¹ On July 1, 1967, Taipei City became the first special municipality in the history of the Republic of China, 12 years earlier than the second special municipality, Kaohsiung City in 1979,²² and 43 to 47 years earlier than the other cities, Taichung, Tainan, New Taipei, and Taoyuan, upgraded in 2010-2014. A year later came major administrative expansion: "The following year, Nangang Township, Jingmei Township, Muzha Township, and Neihu Township from Taipei County, and Beitou and Shilin towns from the Yangmingshan Administrative Bureau, were incorporated into Taipei City."²¹ On July 1, 1968, Taipei City's administrative area expanded from 72 square kilometers to 272 square kilometers. But this expansion had a tail: StoryStudio notes that "the dispute continued until 1974, when Shilin and Beitou districts truly came under the direct jurisdiction of Taipei City Government."¹³ The Executive Yuan order came first; the actual handover was delayed six years before completion.

Taipei City's expanded boundaries remained unchanged through 2026. From Wanhua on the west bank of the Tamsui River, to Neihu north of the Keelung River, to Beitou and Shilin at the foot of Yangmingshan, to Wenshan in the Muzha hills, all were placed within the same coordinates of "Taipei City." That 1968 expansion pressed mountain towns, suburbs, old streets, and new districts that had operated separately into a single city.

Seven Days and Six Nights Sitting in Front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in 1990

Twenty-two years after the 1968 expansion, in March 1990, the city's largest civic movement took place in front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall was completed in 1980. The background to the 1990 student movement runs back to October 25, 1971, when the Republic of China withdrew from the United Nations; January 1979, when the United States severed diplomatic relations with the Republic of China; September 28, 1986, when the Democratic Progressive Party was founded; and July 15, 1987, when martial law was lifted. Over those 19 years, Taiwanese society's dissatisfaction with the National Assembly's "permanent representatives" and "old thieves who would not die" accumulated year by year.

On March 16, 1990, nine students from National Taiwan University held banners and began a sit-in at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Plaza. Within one hour they became 200 people; that night they became 800. "From March 16 to March 22, 1990, seven days and six nights," "nearly 6,000 university students from across Taiwan and its municipalities" gathered at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Plaza.²³

The four major demands were as follows: "1. Dissolve the National Assembly and rebuild a unified National Assembly system. 2. Abolish the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist Rebellion and rebuild a new constitutional order. 3. Convene a National Affairs Conference so that all citizens may jointly seek a solution to the institutional crisis. 4. Propose a timetable for political and economic reform in response to the trend of public opinion."²³

This was the largest student protest movement since the Republic of China government moved to Taiwan. Then-president Lee Teng-hui met 53 student representatives on March 21 and promised to convene a National Affairs Conference. The following year, 1991, the Temporary Provisions were abolished; in 1992, the "permanent" national legislature was reelected. Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Plaza during those seven days and six nights in March 1990 was the physical starting point for Taiwan's constitutional system to move from wartime mobilization back onto a normal democratic track.

That same March, Taipei City also quietly carried out an internal reorganization. On March 12, 1990, Taipei City's administrative districts were redrawn from 16 districts to 12: Chengzhong District plus the central part of Guting District became Zhongzheng District; the eastern side of Guting District plus the central and western parts of Songshan District became Da'an District; Longshan District plus Shuangyuan District plus the western side of Guting District became Wanhua District; Jiancheng District plus Yanping District became Datong District; Jingmei District plus Muzha District became Wenshan District; and today's Xinyi District was also adjusted out of the restructuring.²⁴ This 12-district structure remained unchanged through 2026: Zhongzheng, Datong, Wanhua, Zhongshan, Da'an, Xinyi, Songshan, Neihu, Nangang, Shilin, Beitou, and Wenshan. Twelve districts, each carrying a different age.

The 1996 Muzha Line, Xinyi 101 in 2004, and the Sunflower Movement's 24-Day Occupation of the Legislative Yuan in 2014

After the 1990s, Taipei's urban infrastructure came online at large scale.

On March 28, 1996, "Taiwan's first MRT line, the Muzha Line, sent its first train from Zhongshan Junior High School Station at 6 a.m. on March 28, 1996. It ran south from Taipei Zoo Station and north to Zhongshan Junior High School Station, with a total length of 10.9 kilometers and a full-trip travel time of 22 minutes."²⁵ The Muzha Line used France's Matra VAL-256 medium-capacity rolling stock. Its opening was delayed by five years because of two 1993 train-fire accidents, one before Xinhai Station and one between Liuzhangli and Linguang stations. Later, because the name "Zha-Hu Line" sounded like "fraudulent win" in mahjong, the city spent NT$1.1 million to rename it the Wenhu Line. By 2026, the MRT's total length exceeded 150 kilometers and daily ridership exceeded 2 million.

The story of the Xinyi Planning District is longer. The key year for this area was 1980. "1980 was an important year in the launch of the Xinyi Planning District."²⁶ More precisely, the concept for this district already appeared in a 1977 urban-design study by Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences. In 1980, when Lee Teng-hui was Taipei mayor, he commissioned the Japan-based architect Kuo Mou-lin to conduct the "Urban Design Study for Taipei City's Xinyi Planning District," establishing a modern subcenter plan of superblocks, separation of pedestrian and vehicular circulation, and plaza axes. It became the first area in all of Taiwan to implement urban-design controls and review. The detailed plan was announced in 1981, and the "Second-phase Songshan District Land Readjustment" was conducted from 1981 to 1986. The land had once been farmland in the Qing-era village of Xingya; under Japanese rule, part of it was designated the Japanese Army's Songshan Warehouse; after 1947 it became the 44th Arsenal, or Combined Service Forces 44th Arsenal, producing weapons until it was gradually relocated after the 1980s. From farmland, to Japanese-era military facility, to postwar arsenal, to the 1980 planning project, to Taipei 101 in 2004, this parcel's political character changed five times.

"Taipei 101 is a supertall skyscraper located in Xinyi District, Taipei City, Taiwan. The tower is 508 meters high, with 101 floors above ground and 5 basement floors. It was completed on December 31, 2004."³ On the day of completion, it replaced Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Twin Towers as the tallest building in the world, until it was surpassed by Dubai's Burj Khalifa on January 4, 2010, holding the record for about five years. President Chen Shui-bian, Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou, and Legislative Yuan president Wang Jin-pyng jointly cut the ribbon.

Taipei 101, 2014. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

But Taipei 101 was not the end of this area's story. On March 17, 2014, Kuomintang legislator Chang Ching-chung announced in 30 seconds that review of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement was complete and sent it directly to committee. The next day, around 9 p.m. on March 18, civic groups and students stormed the Legislative Yuan chamber, and about 300 protesters successfully occupied it.²⁷ This occupation lasted 24 days. On March 24, students also attempted to occupy the Executive Yuan and were forcibly cleared by police, the "324 crackdown." On March 30, the "Oppose the Service Trade Agreement, Defend Democracy" mass rally on Ketagalan Boulevard drew an organizer estimate of 500,000 people. On April 6, Legislative Yuan president Wang Jin-pyng entered the chamber and announced that before legislation of a Cross-Strait Agreement Supervisory Act, he would not convene review of the service trade agreement. The students withdrew from the chamber on April 10.

The Sunflower Movement's sites were all in Taipei City: the Legislative Yuan on Jinan Road in Zhongzheng District, the Executive Yuan on Zhongxiao East Road in Zhongzheng District, and the plaza in front of the Presidential Office on Ketagalan Boulevard in Zhongzheng District. From the Wild Lily movement at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in 1990 to the Sunflower Movement at the Legislative Yuan in 2014 was exactly 24 years. This city held the two largest student movements in postwar Taiwan, and both occurred in Zhongzheng District.

📝 Curator's note: The standard narrative of student movements focuses on "what the students won" and "what the government conceded." But the deepest connection between these two movements is spatial. Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the Legislative Yuan are 1.5 kilometers apart, a 20-minute walk; from one end of Ketagalan Boulevard to the other takes five minutes. This 1.5-square-kilometer Zhongzheng District is the densest physical coordinate of postwar Taiwan's democratic transition. The 1990 departure of permanent national representatives, the 2014 anti-service-trade movement, and, in between, the 2008 Losheng Sanatorium movement and the 2013 anti-media-monopoly movement: the physical sites of each movement overlap in this small district. Taipei residents do not need to look up history to walk to these places. But this also brings a countereffect: other counties and cities see Taipei as "the place where movements all concentrate, because this is the capital," and do not treat these events as their own history. The Taipei-centeredness of democratic movements and the Taipei-centeredness of political power are two sides of the same structure.

Twelve Districts, the Morning of Three Million People

In April 2026, Taipei City's population was 2,429,429, across "the 12 districts of Songshan, Xinyi, Da'an, Zhongshan, Wanhua, Wenshan, Shilin, Beitou, Zhongzheng, Neihu, Nangang, and Datong."²⁸ Its area is 271.7997 square kilometers. Compared with Keelung's 132 square kilometers, it is a little more than twice as large; compared with Kaohsiung City's 2,951 square kilometers, it is one-eleventh. But this city's particularity lies not in area, but in density and layering.

The differences among the 12 districts are so large they resemble different cities. Wanhua District has Longshan Temple from 1738, Bopiliao Historic Block, and Youth Park; its average age is among Taipei's oldest. Datong District has Dihua Street, Xiahai City God Temple, and Dadaocheng Wharf; it is an extension of the tea era. Zhongzheng District has the five yuans, the Presidential Office, and National Taiwan University's College of Law; it is the core of "political Taipei." Da'an District has National Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University, Yongkang Street, and Dongmen Market; it is the core of "educational and cultural Taipei." Xinyi District has Taipei 101, City Hall, ATT, and 44 South Village; it is the core of "financial Taipei." Neihu District has Neihu Technology Park, lake and mountain scenery, and Dahu Park; it is the core of "technology Taipei." Shilin and Beitou lie below Yangmingshan, Wenshan is in the Muzha hills, Nangang has the software park, Songshan District has Songshan Airport, and Zhongshan District has the tiaotong commercial area along Zhongshan North Road. The 12 districts run from 1738 to 2026, pressing a 288-year timeline into a 271-square-kilometer basin. In Wanhua live the descendants of that generation of Han immigrants from 1738; in Xinyi live the Taipei professionals of the 1980 generation. The same administrative coordinate contains three ages.

The population structure is also layered. Indigenous peoples, with most Ketagalan already Sinicized and integrated into Hoklo groups; Hoklo Minnan people; Hakka; mainlanders who moved to Taiwan after 1949, with military dependents' villages concentrated in Dazhi, Beitou, Xinyi, and Wenshan; and new immigrants. Taipei Main Station's Southeast Asian food streets on Sundays, Japanese tourists on Yongkang Street, Hong Kong visitors in Dadaocheng, European and American expatriates in Xinyi District: the city's mornings speak six or seven languages at once.

Outsiders mostly see Taipei through Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum, Din Tai Fung, Ximending, Shilin Night Market, and Yongkang Street. The Taipei lived by locals follows another axis: Huannan Market at four in the morning, traffic stuck on Dunhua South Road at dusk, the old Dihua Street cloth shop in Dadaocheng that has been open since the 1860s, temple-front stalls in Wanhua, and technology commuters in Neihu. Twelve districts stack into one city, but this city has never been something a single narrative can finish telling.

At Four in the Morning, Between 1738 and 2004

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At four in the morning, under the lights of Huannan Market, vegetable farmers move produce brought today from Yilan, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Yunlin onto the stalls. Three kilometers away, Wanhua Longshan Temple has already opened its first round of incense burners, and the first elderly person has already sat on the stone steps in front of the temple. Another five kilometers away, Xinyi District has not yet awakened. Another ten kilometers away, only the security guards on duty remain in the office buildings of Neihu Technology Park. Another twenty kilometers away, the MRT stations in New Taipei have not yet opened.

From that temple in Wanhua in 1738, that tea street in Dadaocheng in 1885, that wall inside the city in 1884, and that Taipei 101 in Xinyi in 2004, this basin places 288 years side by side within 271 square kilometers. Every day, three million people walk, drive, take the MRT, buy groceries, go to work, eat, and go home among these four times. Most do not raise their heads to see how many centuries they are walking through.

The Wild Lily movement sat at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall for seven days and six nights; the Sunflower Movement occupied the Legislative Yuan for 24 days. The two student movements were 24 years apart but physically separated by 1.5 kilometers. The first shot of the February 28 Incident in 1947 was fired at No. 189 Nanjing West Road in Dadaocheng; the Lin family murders of 1980 occurred at No. 16, Lane 31, Section 3, Xinyi Road. The two sites are 8 kilometers apart, with a time gap of 33 years. The winter when the Nationalist government brought 1.2 million people to Taipei in 1949, the summer when Taipei was upgraded to a special municipality in 1967, and the March when administrative districts were redrawn from 16 to 12 in 1990: this city holds the densest political timeline in postwar Taiwan.

The Taipei others see is Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum, and Din Tai Fung. The Taipei that Taipei residents live is the three parallel lines of time extending through Wanhua, Dadaocheng, and Xinyi. When you stand on Ketagalan Boulevard looking toward the Presidential Office, your position in 1884 was East Gate Street of Taipei Prefecture City, in 1946 was Jieshou Road, and since 1996 has been Ketagalan Boulevard. The same concrete ground has changed names four times, from the Qing, to Japanese rule, to martial law, to democracy.

Next time you go to Taipei, do not only visit Xinyi 101 and Shilin Night Market. Try leaving your hotel at four in the morning and walking to the forecourt of Wanhua Longshan Temple to watch elders offer the first incense. Or walk to Dihua Street in Dadaocheng at 5:30 a.m. to see what the old houses from the 1860s look like in the dawn light. Or take the Wenhu Line to Taipei Zoo Station, then walk to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall from 1990 and see how the plaza where students sat in March 1990 looks now. Then you will remember one thing: in Taipei City's 12 districts live three ages of Taipei residents, all living simultaneously in some slice of 1738, 1885, and 2004.

This city, from the Ketagalan Patauw, to Dajiala in 1709, to Longshan Temple in 1738, to the establishment of Taipei Prefecture in 1875, to the establishment of Taipei City in 1920, to the February 28 Incident in 1947, to the move to Taiwan in 1949, to special municipality status in 1967, to the 12 districts in 1990, to Xinyi 101 in 2004, to the Sunflower Movement in 2014 -- one basin over three hundred years contains a complete miniature of Taiwan's modernization. Wanhua 1738 looks at Xinyi 2004; the two ends of 266 years gaze at each other within the same coordinate system.

Further Reading

• Keelung City -- 22 Cities and Counties Series pilot: the port closest to Taipei, Taipei's mother port; in 1949 the Nationalist government landed at Keelung Harbor before going to Taipei
• New Taipei City -- the satellite city surrounding Taipei City; every day more than 1 million people commute from New Taipei to Taipei for work
• Taoyuan City -- in 1979, Taoyuan Chiang Kai-shek International Airport opened, shifting Taiwan's passenger gateway to the outside world from Keelung to Taoyuan; Taipei lost its maritime gateway
• Kaohsiung City -- the second special municipality, upgraded in 1979, 12 years after Taipei; the 1980 Lin family murders occurred at No. 16, Lane 31, Section 3, Xinyi Road, Taipei City
• Taichung City -- upgraded to a special municipality in 2010, 43 years after Taipei; two forms of division of labor between a central Taiwan city and Taipei
• Tainan City -- the early Qing capital from 1683 onward; established as a city in 1920 at the same time as Taipei and Taichung
• February 28 Incident -- the first shot at Tianma Tea House on Nanjing West Road, Taipei, on February 27, 1947; postwar Taiwan's deepest political wound
• Wild Lily Student Movement -- March 16-22, 1990, seven days and six nights in front of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall; 6,000 students and four major demands
• Sunflower Student Movement -- March 18, 2014, occupation of Taipei's Legislative Yuan for 24 days

Image Sources

This article uses five Wikimedia Commons CC-licensed images:

• Hero (frontmatter): Taipei skyline cityscape at dusk -- Taipei City skyline at dusk, viewed from the direction of Xinyi District, with Taipei 101 as the visual center. Photo: peellden, CC BY-SA 3.0.
• Scene §1738 Longshan Temple: Longshan Temple 2017 -- Bangka Longshan Temple, 2017. Built in 1738 by pooled funds from people of the three Quanzhou counties, elevated to a national historic site in 2018. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA.
• Scene §1884 North Gate: North Gate, Taipei 2017 -- Taipei Prefecture City North Gate, Cheng'en Gate, completed in 1884; the best-preserved of the five gates of Taipei Prefecture City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA.
• Scene §1947 February 28 Incident: Taipei 228 Memorial Museum 2019 -- Taipei 228 Memorial Museum, 2019. The building's predecessor was the Taipei Broadcasting Station Performance Hall of the Taiwan Broadcasting Association, completed in 1930 during Japanese rule; it officially opened in 1997. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA.
• Scene §2004 Xinyi 101: Taipei 101 2014 -- Taipei 101, 2014. The site was the Japanese-era Songshan Warehouse, the postwar 44th Arsenal, and the Xinyi Planning District from 1980. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA.

License terms: CC BY-SA 3.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0.

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