Taoyuan City: Taiwan's Gateway for Imports and Exports, the Largest Hakka Population, the Most Migrant Workers — All on This Tableland

30-second overview: On the evening of November 19, 1977, allegations of ballot fraud emerged from Taoyuan County's Zhongli City, Polling Station No. 213. Tens of thousands of people surrounded the Zhongli Police Station. Police opened fire from elevated positions into the crowd. National Central University student Chiang Wen-kuo and 19-year-old Chang Chih-ping were shot and killed. That evening, Hsin-liang Hsu was elected Taoyuan County Magistrate by a landslide of "230,000 votes to 140,000" — the first spontaneous mass street protest in postwar Taiwan. One year and three months later, on February 26, 1979, Taoyuan's Chiang Kai-shek International Airport began operations, and Taiwan's gateway to the world moved from Keelung Harbor to this tableland. Thirty-five years after that, on December 25, 2014, Taoyuan was upgraded to a special municipality — the sixth and last of the six. Today 2.35 million people live on this 1,221-square-kilometer tableland. The Hakka population exceeds 800,000, the most of any county or city in Taiwan, and the migrant worker population of 132,158 is also the highest in the nation. Each year, 44.92 million international passengers pass through this tableland. Taoyuan is Taiwan's most diverse border.

At 4 a.m., Terminal 3 is still under construction

At 4 a.m. in Terminal 1 of Taoyuan Airport, ground crew push luggage carts past the concrete pillars built in 1979. Those gray-white columns were part of the original batch — construction began in 1974, completed at the end of 1978, and the terminal opened on February 26, 1979¹.

A 1979 article in Taiwan Panorama titled "A Towering Gateway to the Nation" captured the moment: "The largest international airport in the Far East — Taoyuan Chiang Kai-shek International Airport — after four and a half years of painstaking work by engineering personnel, has borne abundant fruit — officially commencing operations on February 26 of this year, opening another modern aerial gateway for our country"¹. The article noted that this 1,200-hectare airport "is 135 hectares larger than Tokyo's Narita Airport in the suburbs of Japan"¹. Forty-seven years ago, this was the largest in the Far East.

Aerial view of Taoyuan International Airport Terminal 2. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Forty-seven years later, Terminal 3 is still under construction.

In 2024, Taoyuan Airport handled 44.92 million passengers (92% of the pre-pandemic 2019 figure), 248,000 flights, ranking 13th globally for international passenger traffic and 10th for cargo volume². Over 95% of Taiwan's international travelers — Taiwanese going abroad, foreign visitors, business transit passengers, migrant workers entering Taiwan, and Taiwan businessmen returning home — pass through this tableland.

But this article is about the tableland beneath the airport.

📝 Curator's note: When people in Taiwan think of Taoyuan, the first thing that comes to mind is usually "the airport." But Taoyuan simultaneously has the largest Hakka population in Taiwan, the most migrant workers in Taiwan, the last of the six special municipalities to be upgraded, the site of the 1977 Zhongli Incident, 2,800 ponds on the tableland, the traditional territory of the Atayal people in the Fuxing mountain area, and the mausoleums of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo — all layered onto one tableland. Reducing Taoyuan to "the airport county" functionalizes it into a transit stop. Beneath that transit stop is a diverse tableland home to 2.35 million people.

The last to be upgraded to a special municipality

On January 3, 2013, the Executive Yuan's 3330th meeting announced that "Taoyuan County would be upgraded to a special municipality on December 25, 2014"³. One year and eleven months later, on Christmas Day 2014, Cheng Wen-tsan held his inauguration ceremony in front of Taoyuan City Hall, becoming the first Mayor of Taoyuan City.

The order of the six special municipalities: Taipei in 1967, Kaohsiung in 1979, New Taipei/Taichung/Tainan in 2010, and Taoyuan in 2014. Taoyuan was the last of the six. After the upgrade, the original 14基层 administrative units were reorganized into 13 districts: Taoyuan, Zhongli, Pingzhen, Bade, Yangmei, Daxi, Luzhu, Guishan, Longtan, Dayuan, Guanyin, Xinwu, and Fuxing³. The area is 1,220.9540 square kilometers, and as of April 2026 the population is 2,356,795, with the highest population growth rate in Taiwan for several consecutive years³.

The name "Taoyuan" is far older than the special municipality. During the Qianlong era of the Qing dynasty, Quanzhou immigrant Chi Ch'i-lung and others settled the area. Because peach trees were planted everywhere, it was called "Peach Garden" (Táozǐyuán). The Taiwan Prefecture Gazetteer of 1774 already recorded "Peach Garden Village" (Táozǐyuán Zhuāng). It was not until 1920, during Japanese rule, that the name was formally changed to "Taoyuan"³. From the Qing-era "Peach Garden" to the 2014 "Taoyuan City," this name has lived for 240 years.

The day the Zhongli Police Station caught fire

Thirty-seven years before the upgrade, this tableland witnessed an election that changed the course of modern Taiwan's history.

November 19, 1977, was election day. Taoyuan County's Zhongli City Polling Station No. 213 was set up at Zhongli Elementary School. On that day, the election monitor, Fan Hsin-lin (principal of Zhongli Elementary School at the time), was accused by witnesses including Chiu I-pin of ballot fraud — deliberately defacing ballots for opposition candidate Hsin-liang Hsu to render them invalid⁴. Prosecutor Liao Hung-ming's response was to have the witness Chiu I-pin sent to the police station, while the accused election monitor remained on duty.

Word spread, and hundreds of people came to the polling station to protest. By evening, more than ten thousand people had surrounded the Taoyuan County Police Department's Zhongli Station⁴. At 7 p.m., police fired tear gas into the crowd. In the dark, shots were fired from elevated positions: "In the dark, police opened fire on the crowd from elevated positions. National Central University student Chiang Wen-kuo (a native of Yuanli) was shot in the head and died. Another 19-year-old, Chang Chih-ping (a native of Zhongli), also died"⁴. Sixteen-year-old Liu Shih-jung was seriously wounded. The crowd set fire to the Zhongli Police Station.

The election results were announced that evening. Hsin-liang Hsu was elected Taoyuan County Magistrate by a landslide of "230,000 votes to 140,000"⁴, "defeating the KMT-nominated Ou Hsien-yu by nearly 100,000 votes" (in the words of The Reporter)⁵. In the same "five-in-one election," the opposition camp won 4 county/city mayoral seats, 21 provincial council seats, and 146 county/city council seats.

Forty years later, Hsin-liang Hsu gave an interview to The Reporter and left these words: "Even with ballot fraud, I would have found a way to beat him. I was absolutely confident." "To catch the bandit, first catch the chief. There were many agents in Zhongli at the time. If I hadn't left, I would have been detained immediately." "I went to shake hands with the police. When they saw me, they turned their heads away, and some even spat. But they couldn't do anything to me — I had already been elected County Magistrate."⁵

The Zhongli Incident was the first spontaneous mass street protest against election fraud in postwar Taiwan. From the 1947 February 28 Incident to the 1977 Zhongli Incident, Taiwanese people had not taken to the streets in thirty years. After the Zhongli Police Station caught fire, the Qiaotou Incident of January 1979 and the Formosa Incident of December 10, 1979, followed.

📝 Curator's note: The standard narrative is that "the Formosa Incident launched Taiwan's democratization." This narrative skips the two years of the Zhongli Incident. Restoring the causality: the moment the Zhongli Police Station caught fire on November 19, 1977, was the starting point of postwar Taiwan's mass movement. The 1979 Formosa Incident was its downstream consequence. Zhongli Elementary School, Zhongli Junior High School, and the Zhongli Police Station — these places are where Zhongli residents eat lunch, pick up their children, and ride past on Google Maps today. But on the evening of November 19, 1977, these points were the physical coordinates of Taiwan's opposition movement. Chiang Wen-kuo was 22. Chang Chih-ping was 19. Liu Shih-jung was 16.

Three months after the Zhongli Police Station fire, on February 26, 1979, Taoyuan Chiang Kai-shek International Airport began operations, and Taiwan's gateway to the world moved from Keelung Harbor to this tableland¹. Terminal 2 opened in 2000. In 2006, "Chiang Kai-shek International Airport" was renamed "Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport"⁶. On March 2, 2017, the Airport MRT officially opened, stretching 51.95 kilometers — the longest in Taiwan⁷. From Taipei Main Station to Airport Terminal 2 takes 38 minutes.

Over 800,000 Hakka, lined up along the southern edge of the tableland

Drive 20 minutes south from the airport, and you arrive in Zhongli.

Zhongli District is the second most populous district in Taoyuan City, with a Hakka population of approximately 50%. The total Hakka population of Taoyuan City was surveyed by the Hakka Affairs Council at nearly 800,000 in earlier counts, and a 2022 report by the China Times stated "over 850,000"⁸. Conservatively, "over 800,000" — Taoyuan is the county or city with the largest Hakka population in Taiwan.

The Hakka line up along the southern edge of the tableland: Zhongli, Pingzhen, Longtan, Yangmei, Xinwu, Guanyin — six districts in southern Taoyuan, forming the largest Hakka settlement belt on Taiwan's main island. Hakka immigrants moving north from Miaoli crossed the Fengshan River, the Touqian River, and the Hsinchu Plain, finally settling along the southern edge of the Taoyuan tableland. In 1751 (the 16th year of Qianlong), the five Fan-Chiang brothers crossed the sea from Huizhou, Guangdong, to settle in Xinwu, Taoyuan. In 1855 (the 5th year of Xianfeng), they built an ancestral hall and brought ancestral spirits from Guangdong for worship. The residents called it "building a new house" (chǐ xīn cuò), and these four words later became the origin of the place name "Xinwu" (New House)⁹. The Pingzhen Baozhong Shrine (Yimin Temple) is even older, established in 1791 (the 56th year of Qianlong), dedicated to the Yimin Ye (Righteous People deity), housing the first Yimin Ye golden statue in Taiwan⁹.

Taoyuan's Hakka are not only inland. The Xinwu and Guanyin districts form the only coastline in Taiwan dominated by Hakka villages. Yongan Fishing Port is "the only fishing port in Taiwan dominated by a Hakka village"¹⁰. The stone weir groups in Xinwu District are the most numerous and best-preserved on Taiwan's main island — approximately 10 weirs, of which 3 are still in use by fishermen today¹⁰. The term "Hakka of the Sea" (Hǎikè) describes the Hakka fishermen of Guanyin and Xinwu: in the Hakka-dominated coastal area, they developed maritime Hakka culture including "rope seine fishing, stone weirs, and conch-shell blowing"¹⁰.

📝 Curator's note: The standard narrative ties "Hakka" to "mountain areas," "tea," "leicha" (pounded tea), and "stubbornness" — images associated with Miaoli or Hsinchu's Emei. Taoyuan's Hakka went further than the Hoklo: from the Liutui in the north down to the Taoyuan-Hsinchu-Miaoli belt, lining up along the southern edge of the Taoyuan tableland, then crossing the tableland to reach the coastline at Guanyin and Xinwu. Yongan Fishing Port and the Xinwu stone weirs — these physical pieces of evidence of "Hakka of the sea" are still here today. Thinking of Hakka as only living in the mountains means missing this unique layer of Taoyuan.

In front of and behind Zhongli Station, signs from twelve countries line up together

East exit of Zhongli Station — the front side.

Look up as you walk out, and you see signs in Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, and Filipino (Tagalog). Grocery stores, restaurants, remittance shops, hair salons, karaoke bars — this is the "Taoyuan migrant worker commercial district," one of the largest migrant worker gathering areas in the country.

In the 1990s, the Taiwan government opened the door to foreign migrant workers. Zhongli was initially the most concentrated area for Thai migrant workers, originally called "Thailand Street"¹¹. After the 2000s, the migrant worker demographics shifted, and Vietnamese and Indonesian restaurants outnumbered Thai restaurants. Today, in the area around Zhongli Station (both front and back sides, along Yuanhua Road, Zhongping Road, and Xinxing Road), there are over a hundred Southeast Asian shops and vendors¹¹.

According to 2023 Ministry of Labor statistics: "At the end of 2023, the number of migrant workers in Taoyuan City reached 132,158, accounting for 17.5% of the national total of 753,430 migrant workers — the highest in the country"². Industrial migrant workers numbered 111,885 (the most in the country), predominantly Vietnamese; social welfare migrant workers numbered over 20,000, predominantly Indonesian; manufacturing migrant workers numbered 103,513, accounting for 92.5% of Taoyuan's industrial migrant workers. One in every six migrant workers in Taiwan lives in Taoyuan.

Why Taoyuan? A report by NCTU's Castnet interviewed an old Zhongli resident who left this remark: "Thirty years ago, the area in front of Zhongli Train Station was a world for soldiers. In the past, soldiers from the Hukou and Pingzhen military camps would come to Zhongli to catch trains and spend money when they were on leave. Later, the government downsized the military, and as factories began hiring migrant workers, the migrant workers replaced the troops."¹²

This sentence compresses three chapters of history. After the 1949 retreat of the ROC government to Taiwan, Taoyuan was home to major air force bases (the Black Cat Squadron was secretly established at Taoyuan Air Base in 1961) and army units (Hukou and Pingzhen military camps). In 2004, Taiwan had 879 military dependents' villages; Taoyuan had 80, the most in the country¹³. In the 1990s, the government downsized the military while the Taoyuan tableland simultaneously industrialized. The Guanyin, Luzhu, and Zhongli industrial parks were developed one after another, and factories needed labor. Taiwan's top 500 manufacturing companies — "over one-third have plants in Taoyuan" — and the city's industrial output value has "ranked first in the country for many consecutive years"¹⁴. After the opening to migrant workers in the 1990s, factory-hired migrant workers replaced the dwindling soldiers. The Southeast Asian commercial district in front of Zhongli Station is the most physical manifestation of this structure.

✦ "At the end of 2023, the number of migrant workers in Taoyuan City reached 132,158, accounting for 17.5% of the national total of 753,430 migrant workers — the highest in the country." (Taoyuan City Government press release verbatim¹⁵)

The reservoir rises to 133.1 meters; beneath the tableland lie 2,800 ponds

Water on the Taoyuan tableland was never evenly distributed.

On June 14, 1964, Vice President Chen Cheng presided over the completion ceremony of the Shihmen Reservoir¹⁶. Dam height: 133.1 meters; total storage capacity: 309,120,000 cubic meters — at the time, "the largest reservoir in the Far East"¹⁶. The construction cost "was approximately NT$3.2 billion, including NT$1.9 billion in U.S. aid funding"¹⁶. Counting from the start of planning in 1954 plus eight years of construction, over 7,500 workers were mobilized. The Shihmen Reservoir is located in Longtan District, Taoyuan City, at the border with Daxi and Fuxing districts. The Shihmen Main Canal was completed in June 1964, irrigating 22,000 hectares of farmland.

Shihmen Reservoir. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Before the reservoir was built, the Taoyuan tableland relied on ponds.

Taiwan Panorama's article "The Land of a Thousand Ponds" recorded this: "As the plane slowly descends toward Taoyuan Chiang Kai-shek Airport, what catches the eye are gleaming mirrors scattered across the landscape. These ponds (pí-táng), spread across the Taoyuan tableland like stars, are masterpieces of hydraulic engineering by early settlers who turned wasteland into fertile farmland. Their vast area and high density are rare in the world."¹⁷

The geographic origin of the Taoyuan tableland is this: the Dahan River originally flowed northward across the Taoyuan tableland. Thirty thousand years ago, river capture occurred: the Dahan River's water was stolen by the Tamsui River system and redirected eastward into the Taipei Basin. The tableland lost its main water source and became an arid highland¹⁷. Settlers could only dig ponds to store rainwater. "A single pond also represents a system of production, daily life, and ecology." (Professor Chen Ch'i-peng of Chung Yuan Christian University)¹⁷

Before the great drought of 1913, the number of ponds on the Taoyuan tableland reached its peak of over ten thousand. In the early Japanese colonial period, "the number of ponds and canals in Taoyuan Subprefecture was 6,685" — the highest density in all of Taiwan¹⁷. The Taoyuan Canal, begun in 1916 and completed in 1924, connected these ponds — 285 ponds with a combined storage capacity of 34 million metric tons, equivalent to one-third of the Shihmen Reservoir's capacity. After the Shihmen Reservoir was completed in 1964, some of the ponds' functions were replaced, and many were filled in:

"Over the past thirty years, due to urban and industrial development, the Taoyuan ponds that once numbered over ten thousand have been filled in one by one. Only 2,800 remain today"¹⁷.

From over ten thousand down to 2,800 — but the 2,800 are still there. Today, when a plane lands at Taoyuan Airport and you look out the window, those small reflective mirrors you see are the remnants of over 200 years of water culture. Beneath the airport are the ponds.

The battlefield of 1895, Cihu, and the Atayal mountains

The ponds are older than the wars. But the Taoyuan tableland was also a battlefield.

On May 29, 1895, Japanese forces landed at Keelung's Aodi. By the end of June, they had occupied Taipei. Moving south from Taipei, every kilometer forward met resistance from Hakka volunteer armies. On July 12, 1895, the Battle of Sānjiǒngxī (present-day Sānxiá, New Taipei City): a 35-man Japanese supply convoy was ambushed at Longenpu by volunteer forces and nearly wiped out. On the same day, another 894-man unit was ambushed at Fenshuilun — "the most brutal battle the Japanese fought after entering Taipei"¹⁸.

Also on July 12, the battlefield shifted to Daxi, Taoyuan. The Battle of Dàkěkàn (July 12–16, 1895) took place along the banks of the Dahan River in present-day Daxi District, Taoyuan City. Approximately 1,000 volunteer troops were led by martial arts scholar Chiang Kuo-hui as commander¹⁹. An important Japanese support unit was ambushed by volunteer forces while crossing the Daxi River. After several days of fierce fighting, only four men escaped by disguising themselves as beggars. Subsequent Japanese reinforcements captured Dàkěkàn and burned the villages. One of the "Three Heroes of the Anti-Japanese Resistance," Chiang Shao-tsu (1877–1895), a descendant of settlers from Lufeng, Guangdong, and a native of Beipu, Hsinchu, was only 19 when he recruited several hundred villagers to resist the Japanese. Along with Wu Tang-hsing and Hsu Hsiang, he was known as one of the "Three Hakka Heroes of the Anti-Japanese Resistance." On July 9, 1895, after Hsinchu City fell, he was captured. He refused to surrender and took poison to kill himself, aged only 19¹⁹.

Nineteen years old. The 19-year-old Chiang Shao-tsu of July 1895, the 19-year-old Chang Chih-ping of November 1977, and the 22-year-old Chiang Wen-kuo. Placed side by side, these numbers show that young people of different centuries on this Taoyuan tableland all died in this area.

Daxi was then called Dàkěkàn. In the late Qing period, it was the uppermost river port on the Tamsui River system. After Huwei (Tamsui) opened as a treaty port in 1863, Dàkěkàn became the most inland trading port in Taiwan, a distribution center for tea, camphor, and timber²⁰. In 1919, the Japanese colonial government's "city improvement" plan stipulated that "shops must adopt 'Baroque-style' architecture... Brothers Chen Wang-lai and Chen San-chuan, who had learned masonry skills from the Japanese, applied the cut-and-paste porcelain and Cochinchine pottery techniques commonly used to temples to the facades of their shophouse buildings"²⁰. ⚠️ Strictly speaking, these are "Taiwanese-style Western-influenced shophouse" facades, not orthodox European Baroque²⁰. The popular use of "Baroque" is a matter of convention. The area was designated a historic preservation district beginning in 1985.

The other half of Taoyuan is mountainous. Fuxing District is the largest and least populous of Taoyuan's 13 districts, covering approximately 351 square kilometers — two-sevenths of Taoyuan City's total area²¹. The population is only about 13,000, "approximately 70% of whom are indigenous peoples, predominantly Atayal"²¹ — making it the township/city/district with the largest Atayal population in Taiwan. Lala Mountain (Daguan Mountain) in the Atayal language is "R'ra," meaning "beautiful, awe-inspiring, a place to gaze and watch over"²¹. In 1975, the ROC government renamed it "Daguan Mountain." From the 2000s onward, the original Atayal name "Lala Mountain" has gradually been restored in common usage.

Lala Mountain. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Another historical trace in Fuxing District, unrelated to the Atayal: Cihu (Ci Lake). In 1955, the Lin family of Banqiao donated land to the government free of charge. Chiang Kai-shek lingered there, finding the scenery reminiscent of his hometown of Fenghua, Zhejiang. On June 13, 1959, the Dongkou Guesthouse was completed. Chiang Kai-shek named it "Cihu" (Lake of Maternal Love), in memory of his mother, Lady Wang²². On April 5, 1975, Chiang Kai-shek died, and his coffin was moved to the Cihu Mausoleum. In 1988, Chiang Ching-kuo died and was interred at the Daxi Mausoleum. In 2006, the "Two Chiangs Cultural Park" was established. The Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park concentrates bronze statues of Chiang Kai-shek removed from around Taiwan during the "de-Chiangification" campaigns — "the only memorial park in Taiwan dedicated to statues of a single individual"²².

📝 Curator's note: Treating Fuxing District as "Taoyuan's scenic backyard" is a misreading from a flatland perspective. Looking down from Lala Mountain, the prosperity of the 12 flatland districts is only one half of Taoyuan; the tribal life of the single mountain district is the other half. The Atayal have lived in these mountains for a thousand years, and their facial tattoo culture was suppressed during Japanese rule in the 1930s. After 1949, Chiang Kai-shek built Cihu at the foot of the mountain, and was buried there upon his death in 1975. The mausoleum of an outsider supreme power sits right beside the thousand-year traditional territory of the people who have lived here since time immemorial. Today, the "Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park" houses bronze statues of Chiang Kai-shek removed from public spaces across Taiwan. This land, in its own distinctive way, simultaneously shelters symbols of authoritarian power and indigenous traditional territory.

The first flight is about to take off

Return to the opening scene.

At 4 a.m. in Terminal 1 of Taoyuan Airport, ground crew push luggage carts past the concrete pillars from 1979. Forty-seven years ago, when this airport opened, it was "the largest in the Far East." Forty-seven years later, its passenger ranking has dropped to 13th globally. Terminal 3 is still under construction.

But the story of this tableland beneath the airport over these 47 years is far thicker than the airport's expansion history. On the evening of November 19, 1977, the Zhongli Police Station caught fire. Twenty-two-year-old Chiang Wen-kuo and 19-year-old Chang Chih-ping fell and died. It was the first spontaneous mass street protest in postwar Taiwan, and Taoyuan was the scene. Earlier, in July 1895, 19-year-old Chiang Shao-tsu refused to surrender and took poison; Chiang Kuo-hui set an ambush with 1,000 volunteer troops at Dàkěkàn; Wu Tang-hsing marched north from Miaoli to resist the Japanese. Later, after the opening to migrant workers in the 1990s, the Southeast Asian commercial district in front of Zhongli Station grew. Deeper still, 30,000 years ago, the Dahan River was captured by the Tamsui River system, the Taoyuan tableland became arid, and settlers dug over ten thousand ponds to store water. In 1964, the Shihmen Reservoir rose to 133.1 meters.

This Taoyuan tableland, 1,221 square kilometers, 2.35 million people, 13 districts: 12 flatland districts plus the mountainous Fuxing. Over 800,000 Hakka — the most in the country. 132,158 migrant workers — also the most in the country. 44.92 million international passengers pass through here each year²³⁸¹⁵.

Next time you land at Taoyuan Airport, if it's a clear day, look out the window. You will see those small reflective mirrors on the surface of the tableland — the 2,800 surviving remnants of over 200 years of water culture. As you taxi southward, the denser cluster of buildings you see is Zhongli — the heart of the Hakka villages, the gathering place for migrant workers, and the historical site of 1977.

Beneath the airport are the ponds. Beneath the ponds is the 1895 battlefield of the Japanese invasion. Beneath the battlefield is the land where the Ketagalan and Atayal peoples have lived for a thousand years. Taiwan's imports and exports, the most Hakka, the most migrant workers — all on this tableland. Taoyuan is the busiest border between this island and the world, and also the island's most diverse geographic layering of its own ethnic groups.

Next time you think of Taoyuan, don't just think of the airport. Think of the Vietnamese pho shops in front of Zhongli Station, the stone weir groups in Xinwu, the old Hakka villages submerged beneath the surface of Shihmen Reservoir in Longtan, the peaches and Atayal facial tattoo culture of Lala Mountain in Fuxing District, and the red-brick facades of the 1919 shophouse buildings on Daxi Old Street. All of this is on the same tableland.

Further Reading

• Keelung City — 22 Counties and Cities series pilot: In 1979, when Taoyuan Airport opened, Taiwan's gateway moved from Keelung Harbor to Taoyuan, and Keelung Harbor fell from 7th to 113th in the world
• Hsinchu County — Neighboring county on the southern edge of Taoyuan's Hakka belt: In 1895, Chiang Shao-tsu set out from Beipu, Hsinchu, to join the Battle of Dàkěkàn
• Hsinchu City — Together with Taoyuan, forms the center of the northern Hakka distribution belt; in 1875, the Taoyuan area was placed under Hsinchu County's jurisdiction
• Miaoli County — 22 Counties and Cities series batch 1 sibling: The starting point of the Hakka immigration belt from Miaoli north to Taoyuan; Wu Tang-hsing marched north to resist the Japanese in 1895
• Nantou County — 22 Counties and Cities series batch 3: The only landlocked county vs. Taoyuan's tableland gateway — a contrast of two kinds of "borders"
• Hakka Culture and Language — Taoyuan's Hakka population exceeds 800,000, the most in the country
• Migrant Workers — Taoyuan has 132,158 migrant workers, the most in the country
• Japanese Invasion of 1895 — In 1895, Chiang Shao-tsu, Wu Tang-hsing, and Chiang Kuo-hui resisted the Japanese at Dàkěkàn, Taoyuan
• Chiang Kai-shek — Died in 1975 and was buried at Cihu, Daxi, Taoyuan; today the Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park houses bronze statues of Chiang Kai-shek removed from across Taiwan

Image Credits

This article uses 4 Wikimedia Commons CC-licensed images, hot-linked from the Wikimedia upload server:

• Hero (frontmatter) + Scene §At 4 a.m.: Taoyuan International Airport Terminal 2 — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0. Taiwan's gateway to the world, opened in 1979; the physical site of 44.92 million passengers in 2024.
• Scene §Over 800,000 Hakka: Fan-Chiang Ancestral Hall, Xinwu — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Built in 1855 by the Fan-Chiang clan; "building a new house" is the origin of the place name "Xinwu"; a designated municipal historic site.
• Scene §The reservoir rises to 133.1 meters: Shihmen Reservoir — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 3.0. Completed in 1964; the largest reservoir in the Far East; dam height 133.1 meters.
• Scene §The battlefield of 1895, Cihu, and the Atayal: Lala Mountain — Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the Atayal language, "R'ra" means "beautiful, awe-inspiring, a place to gaze and watch over"; at the border of Fuxing District, Taoyuan, and Wulai District, New Taipei.

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

⚠️ Some image links are Wikimedia Commons category page placeholders; a subsequent polish session will replace them with specific hi-res files.

References