Taichung Port: How a Single Truckload of Stones Pushed Wūqí Toward the Sea and Rewrote the Coastline

30-Second Overview: On October 31, 1973, the first truckload of stones was dumped at the Wūqí North Breakwater of Taichung Port. On October 31, 1976, the first phase was completed; six naval fast boats, three warships, and five merchant vessels entered the new port, with approximately 300,000 people in attendance. This port was expected to become a modern city accommodating 500,000 people, yet by 1981, the population was only around 210,000. It successfully brought cargo into central Taiwan, but also altered the living conditions of Wūqí’s old town, sandy shores, and marine life. ^{1 2 3}

Before the First Truckload of Stones, Wūqí Was Already a Port

Wūqí was not a place that suddenly connected with the sea only after the emergence of Taichung Port. Local historical records from the National Taiwan Document Institute indicate that Wūqí already had sailing boat traffic during the Qing Dynasty, with its market streets repeatedly shifting southward in response to changes in the port’s location. Residents fished, dried nets, and built sheds; cargo was unloaded at cart sheds and then moved to shops along Wūqí Road. A port is not a fixed line, but a place pushed by sediment, tides, and ships. This variability means port history must be read through engineering drawings, local maps, and human migration patterns; otherwise, one is left only with a coastal facility that appears stable but is constantly being reshaped. ⁴

The Taiwan Ports and Ports Administration’s historical overview preserves another toponymic clue. Wūqí was formerly known as "Zhúfáxué" (Bamboo Raft Cave) and also as "Wǎnggǔliáo" (Net Shack) because residents relied primarily on fishing. These names are not mere decorations for tourism commentary; they indicate that the port city was originally composed of small boats, fishing nets, and local markets, only later being reimagined as an international port capable of accommodating large merchant vessels. ²

2022 Wuqi Fishing Port. Photo: Taiwankengo, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: Archive Page. ⁵

The vessels, shoreline, and buildings in the background of this photo belong to a different era than the Qing Dynasty Wūqí port’s sailing boat markets, yet they show that "port" remains a scale of life, not merely an import-export facility for large ships. Taichung Port connected Wūqí to the global freight system, while the Wūqí Fishing Port preserved the close relationships between people and boats, fish catches, and neighborhoods. The coexistence of these two ports is evidence that the local port city was not entirely replaced by a single engineering project. ^{2 4 5}

In the 1930s, the Japanese Governor-General’s Office included Wūqí in the "Xīngāo Port" (New High Port) plan, attempting to develop a commercial, industrial, and fishing port simultaneously. The war caused engineering stagnation. In 1946, post-war, the Taichung Port Construction Office was established to prepare for reconstruction, and Wūqí briefly resumed trade with Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Shantou. However, financial difficulties and cross-Strait tensions after 1949 caused reconstruction to halt again. The port’s earliest failure was not a lack of engineering technology, but rather it being put on pause by state finance and geopolitics. ^{1 3 4}

📝 Curator’s Note
The starting point of Taichung Port was not a grand blueprint, but a memory of a port city repeatedly pushed from its original position by sediment and politics.

Central Taiwan Needed a Door, but the Question Was Where to Open It

In the 1960s, Taiwan’s import-export trade increased rapidly, and Keelung Port and Kaohsiung Port gradually became congested. The historical overview of the Taichung Port Affairs Sub-bureau indicates that the government launched a new port site survey in 1968, completed the report the following year, and the Executive Yuan designated Taichung Port as a comprehensive international new port combining commerce, industry, and fisheries. This decision moved Wūqí from a local port city into the island-wide resource allocation problem. ²

Archives from the National Archives Administration show that in 1966, two United Nations port consultants visited Taiwan. The consultants argued that Keelung was limited by topography, with insufficient space for expansion, making a new port necessary. Local gentry not only stated that central Taiwan needed a port, but also cited reasons such as central Taiwan’s cargo volume, land prices, hinterland, and power supply, attempting to prove that building a port in Taichung was an issue of balancing the island’s north and south. ¹

Here is a detail often obscured by the "Ten Major Construction Projects" narrative. Taichung Port was not simply a port placed on the map by the central government unilaterally; local figures also organized symposiums, presented research, and lobbied. This does not mean local actors subsequently controlled the construction direction, but rather that the port’s birth involved both state planning and local advocacy, with the two not fully overlapping. ^{1 4}

On February 1, 1971, the Taichung Port Engineering Bureau was established. On October 31, 1973, Chen Shu-hsi, Deputy Director of the Taiwan Provincial Taichung Port Construction Committee, dropped the first truckload of stones at the North Breakwater, officially starting the main engineering works. This action was later recorded as a groundbreaking ceremony, but it also marked a geomorphological shift: from this day forward, the sandy shore was no longer just a seaside waiting for ships to dock, but an engineering site requiring reorganization via breakwaters, channels, and piers. ^{1 2}

Source: National Archives Administration, Taiwan Ports and Ports Administration, National Cultural Memory Bank

Engineers Were Not Building a Wall on the Sea

The hardest part of Taichung Port was not drawing piers on a nautical chart, but keeping a port located on the western sandy shore usable. The National Archives Administration’s port construction article notes that the port area must face the northeast monsoon, tidal ranges, and sand drift. The three-phase engineering project constructed a total of 14,045 meters of breakwater and 27 deep-water piers. These numbers are not merely a competition of scale; they indicate that the port must first keep waves and sediment within controllable ranges before ships can enter. ¹

Port construction adopted caissons. Caissons can be manufactured on land and then towed to sea for positioning, connecting like building blocks to form breakwaters. Since the season suitable for construction is limited each year, the engineering team did not simply push outward along the coast; instead, they adopted "island-hopping" construction, first placing isolated caissons in the sea, then connecting them from multiple points outward. This method negotiated the construction rhythm with the monsoon, rather than pretending the monsoon did not exist. ¹

Research from the Institute of Transportation Studies of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications shows that sand drift and flying sand near Taichung Port are not old problems that disappeared after port construction. The study used long-term topographic data and on-site monitoring to analyze siltation, erosion, flying sand volume, and air quality around the port area. The abstract notes that sand-fixing walls, windbreak fences, and woven sand-fixing fences can stabilize flying sand in designated areas, reducing the chance of it entering channels and harbor basins, but these facilities themselves mean the port must invest in long-term maintenance. ⁶

Another 2022 hydraulic model study simulated changes in sand drift inside and outside the port after the completion of the remote outer breakwater. The study observed accumulation north of the north breakwater’s tip, scouring pits west of the tip, and slight scouring in the south breakwater area. These results cannot directly replace a complete engineering assessment, but they are sufficient to remind readers that breakwaters do not end with keeping waves out; they change the way sand moves. ⁷

📝 Curator’s Note
The most architectural part of a port is the breakwater; the least architectural part is also the breakwater, because after it is built, the sea continues to construct.

1976: 300,000 People Came to See a New Port Open

On October 31, 1976, the first phase of Taichung Port was completed and officially opened for navigation. The opening video preserved in the National Cultural Memory Bank makes this date more than a line in an engineering chronicle. The video records six naval fast boats performing water displays first, followed by a celebration fleet led by water-spraying ships, with three warships and five merchant vessels carrying corn, groceries, and cloth slowly entering the port. ³

The ceremony had a political ritual aspect. The port opening was arranged as a gift for Chiang Kai-shek’s 90th birthday, and engineering personnel received certificates of appreciation. However, the same scene contained a public memory difficult to fully control. Archives and video descriptions show that approximately 300,000 people flooded the port area, causing external traffic blockages for several hours; over three days of open visits, approximately 500,000 person-times attended. This port was, on one hand, a stage for the state to display modernity, and on the other, a public site where central Taiwan residents first approached large-scale port engineering. ^{1 3}

The first phase included seven piers, with a planned annual operational capacity of 2.8 million tons. Subsequent second and third phases extended to 1983, when the first phase of construction was considered complete. Port administration data places the 1976 opening in a longer institutional turning point: Taichung Port opened private investment for warehousing and loading/unloading businesses, becoming an early case of introducing privatization into port operations. ^{2 3}

This means "port opening" was not completion, but the start of transitioning from engineering to operation. A port requires cargo sources, shipping routes, warehousing, loading/unloading operators, management rules, and hinterland industries. Without these, no matter how long the breakwater, it is merely an expensive coastal shape. ²

Taichung Port Area and Breakwaters. Photo: Mnb, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: Archive Page. ⁸

Why the Port City Dream Did Not Grow According to the Blueprint

The 1972 Taichung Port Specific Area Plan incorporated Wūqí, Qingshui, Shalu, and Longjing into an imagined port city development, aiming to create a modern port town accommodating 500,000 people. This planning believed the port would bring factories, housing, roads, and service industries, with population following industry into the area. ¹

But data compiled by the National Archives Administration indicates that in 1981, the specific area’s actual population was approximately 210,000, still far from the 500,000 target. The port was completed, but the port city did not grow at the speed on the map. This is not simply a planning failure; it also illustrates that a port’s economic benefits do not automatically distribute evenly to every neighborhood. ¹

Articles from the National Taiwan Document Institute write this gap closer to life. The port construction process extracted sea sand to fill agricultural land and cemeries east of Wenhua Road, forming a new development area. After the town hall, household registration office, police station, and vegetable market successively relocated, Wūqí’s old town population and foot traffic moved outward, and the original cart sheds and river channels were altered. The old town did not regain its Qing Dynasty prosperity due to the large port; instead, it lost its original central position between the new development area and the port city imagination. ⁴

The port brought new business, but also new controls. The Document Institute records that in the mid-1970s, a "foreign goods street" formed around Wūqí and Qingshui, with goods entering the market via crew members of ships docked at Taichung Port or "runners" (smugglers/traders). During the Martial Law period, shopkeepers might face inspections by intelligence, tax, health, and public monopoly agencies. This history cannot be written only as "the port brought prosperity," because the flow of prosperous commodities was simultaneously framed by foreign exchange, import, and political security rules. ⁴

📝 Curator’s Note
A port can make goods cross the sea more easily, but it does not guarantee that the old town’s foot traffic will return along the same path.

After 921, the Port Changed from Heroic Engineering to Maintenance Site

The 1999 921 Earthquake caused Taichung Port piers to sink, and facilities such as grain conveyor belts were also damaged. If the port’s history stops at the 1976 opening, it miswrites infrastructure as a one-time work. Archive data shows that after the earthquake, the port area continued reconstruction, with business and loading/unloading equipment gradually recovering. ¹

The National Archives Administration’s article describes this reconstruction with a contrasting number: cargo throughput in the early port construction phase was approximately 6,000 tons; ten years after the earthquake, it reached over 30 million tons annually. This number is suitable for understanding the long-term changes in port scale, but one cannot directly infer that all surrounding residents benefited equally. Between increased cargo volume and improved local life, industrial, employment, pollution, traffic, and land distribution data are still needed to make separate judgments. ¹

Taichung Port’s institutions also changed. In 2012, the former Taichung Port Affairs Bureau was restructured into the Taiwan Ports and Ports Administration Taichung Port Sub-bureau, moving the port from agency management into the operational framework of a state-owned company group. This is not simply changing signs; it is a redivision of port governance between navigation administration, public power, and operational efficiency. ^{2 3}

Increased port cargo volume does not mean all local industries rose along the same curve. Wūqí documents record the foreign goods street changing from about 20 shops in the mid-1970s, to over 200 at its peak in 1975–1976, to about 30 still operating in 2010. This rise and fall is related to outbound tourism, foreign exchange controls, import opening, and industrial relocation. The port brought the world to the street; when world market rules changed, it also took away the street markets that relied on scarce goods for survival. ⁴

Therefore, the local history of Taichung Port cannot be summarized merely as "the port brought prosperity." To port administration agencies, the port is throughput, piers, and shipping routes. To old town shopkeepers, the port might be tea, clothing, and groceries brought ashore by crew members. To merchants in the Martial Law period, the port might also mean tax inspections, intelligence monitoring, and the risk of cargo seizure. Different people standing by the same port see not the same world. ^{2 4}

The port also continues to face sand. Reports from the Institute of Transportation Studies of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications indicate that flying sand and sand drift in Taichung Port’s north siltation area require monitoring, sand-fixing, and harbor basin maintenance. Recent engineering pages of the Taiwan Ports and Ports Administration list sand drift and flying sand control as continuous port area work. The port does not operate only after excluding nature; it continuously pays maintenance fees for natural conditions during operation. ^{6 9}

When "Reclaiming the Sea" Becomes Present Tense Again

A 2026 Public Television Our Island report covered Taichung Port’s new reclamation area seawall engineering. Public data from the Ports Administration shows engineering costs of NT$10.463 billion, with a schedule from May 31, 2023, to September 2027, planning to complete 50 hectares of reclaimed land, using caissons, cofferdams, and dredging/reclamation engineering to provide space for energy facilities and port area earthworks. ^{10 11}

The PTS report, however, pulls the question back to the sea outside the port. The Taiwan white dolphin is an endemic subspecies of the western coast; Taichung Port was reported as an important activity hotspot. Civil groups questioned whether the reclamation engineering involved white dolphin habitats and presented different legal and environmental claims against the "inside existing breakwater" environmental impact assessment determination. The port authority stated the reclamation area is inside existing breakwaters, constituting port engineering. Both sides’ statements should be preserved here, because the report itself presents a controversy in progress, not a completed judicial verdict. ¹⁰

The historical sting lies in the fact that 1970s Taichung Port used breakwaters and caissons to turn the coastline into a governable port area, while the 2020s use cofferdams and caissons to handle energy transition, dredging earthworks, and land demand. The engineering vocabulary looks similar, but society’s questions have changed. Early questions were mainly "can it be built"; now we must also ask "who bears the cost after completion," "which species and lives are counted in the planning," and "at what stage should environmental procedures occur." ^{1 10 11}

This does not mean early engineering was only destructive, nor that today’s environmental questions automatically negate the port. A more accurate statement is that Taichung Port condensed Taiwan’s modernization problems onto a single coastline: the state needs energy, freight, and industrial hinterland; the local area needs jobs, transportation, and living space; the coast is not blank land, but an environment with sediment, fish schools, fisheries, and long-term memory. ^{10 4 6}

This coastline has another time scale. Port administration data connects the 1976 opening, 2010 increase in cargo loading/unloading volume, and 2012 corporatization into an operational history. Local historical materials place Qing Dynasty sailing boats, post-war short-term trade, the rise and fall of the foreign goods street, and the outward shift of old town population into another living history. Both timelines are true, but they do not naturally merge into the four characters "construction success." The former answers whether the port can continue to operate; the latter asks whether the port’s operation allows existing neighborhoods to keep their own positions. ^{2 4}

If one only looks at the opening ceremony, Taichung Port seems like the state bringing the world in. If one also looks at the old town and sandy shores, it seems like the state rearranging who can approach the sea, which land can be reclaimed, and which industries are worth keeping. This is not about blaming all consequences on a single engineering project, but acknowledging that the completion of large-scale construction is often merely the date when different interests begin to coexist. ^{1 10 4}

Looking at a Port, Not Just at Cargo Ships

Taichung Port’s history can start with the 1973 truckload of stones, or it can start with the Qing Dynasty Wūqí cart sheds. The former lets us see how state engineering connected the sandy shore to international trade; the latter reminds us that the port was never the first place named by engineers. It first had fishermen, cargo-moving shops, changing channels, and lives redirected by sediment. ^{2 4}

The 1976 opening ceremony packaged the port as a door to the world. 300,000 people attended, merchant vessels sounded horns, and warships and water-spraying ships lined up to enter the port. But whether the door can truly open depends on whether cargo, institutions, industries, and the local area can collectively catch it. The 500,000-person port city blueprint was not fully realized, and the old town did not return to its original appearance due to the new port. ^{1 3 4}

Looking at Taichung Port today, one can first look at the breakwater, then at the sand. The breakwater tells us how people fixed the coast; the sand tells us the coast was never truly fixed. Looking further out, if one can see the white dolphin issue, one will understand that Taichung Port is not a completed "Ten Major Construction Projects" segment, but a public engineering project still deciding how to use the sea. ^{10 7 6}

One can also look again at Wūqí streets outside the port area. Roads, piers, and cofferdams inside the port bring large-scale elements into the local area; the old town’s temples, old houses, and storefronts preserve small-scale time. The two need not be arranged as one representing progress and the other backwardness. Together they illustrate that infrastructure leaves new paths, but also makes old paths less visible. If historical articles only leave the port area, they miss those not written into the engineering completion report. ^{1 4 11}

📝 Curator’s Note
What is most worth remembering about Taichung Port is not that people finally turned the sea into a port, but that after the port was built, people still must learn to live with the sea.

References

Further Reading

Taichung Port remains suitable for continued reading along three routes. The first is Wūqí local history, tracking how the port’s location, old town, cart sheds, and foreign goods street changed. The second is engineering history, reading breakwaters, caissons, sand drift models, and earthquake reconstruction. The third is coastal governance, comparing how port engineering, white dolphin habitats, and environmental impact assessment procedures propose different imaginations of ocean use.