Central Taiwan's basin city built to be a provincial capital
Taichung, Taiwan's second-largest special municipality with more than 2.86 million residents, fills a central basin once dotted with Indigenous hamlets. Planners raised it as Taiwan Province's new capital after Qing and Japanese chapters reshaped Toatun settlement.
The plains were first home to the Atayal and several lowland peoples, including the Taokas, Papora, Pazeh, Hoanya and Babuza, who moved from hunting and gathering to growing millet and taro. In the 17th century four of these groups formed the Kingdom of Middag across the western part of today's city. Chinese administration arrived with Zhuluo County in 1684, the settlement of Toatun, meaning large mound, appears in 1705, and in 1721 Lan Ting-chen set up a garrison near what is now Taichung Park.
Qing rule was contested. Indigenous people on the Dajia River revolted in 1731 against forced labour, and the uprising spread south as far as Changhua before troops drove the rebels into the mountains in 1732. The Lin Shuangwen rebellion of 1786, which aimed to restore the Ming, degenerated into looting and was crushed by Qing troops with Hakka, Fujianese and Indigenous allies. When Taiwan became a separate province in 1887, officials chose central Toatun for the new capital and took the title Taiwan-fu from Tainan, which had held it for over two centuries. Liu Ming-chuan oversaw works including a railway, but the capital ended up in Taipei.
After Japan took Taiwan in 1895 the city became Taichū, a showcase for modern planning with roads, dams and levees. The town had 6,423 residents in 1904. Its park opened in 1903, a market still trading today in 1908, the railway station in 1917 and the city hall in 1924 after 11 years of building. Local gentry led by Lin Hsien-tang founded a Taiwanese middle school in 1915, and the Taiwanese Cultural Association moved here in 1927, making the city a centre of Taiwanese cultural nationalism.
Under the Republic of China from 1945, it briefly hosted the exiled Jiangxi provincial government in 1949. The provincial city merged with Taichung County on 25 December 2010, and the combined municipality of over 2.86 million now anchors Taiwan's second-largest metro area, with the National Museum of Natural Science, the National Taichung Theater and the Lin Family Gardens among its attractions.
Source: Taichung
