Where Taiwan Began — The Name "Tayouan"

Four hundred years ago, this very spot where you now stand had no name. Or rather, it was the island itself that had none. Pause here a moment, and look down the street ahead of you. The roads of Tainan's old town never run straight for long. Somewhere along the way, they always curve gently. This is what sets it apart from the grid-patterned streets of Taipei or Kaohsiung. That curve traces the shape of a waterway that once flowed through here. The city was not built upon the water — rather, after the water receded, the city remained, still remembering the water's form. In the early seventeenth century, this sandbar was known as "Tayouan." The word is believed to have come from the language of the Siraya people, who originally inhabited this land. A clerk of the Dutch East India Company heard the sound with his own ears and wrote it down in the alphabet. Merchants who had crossed over from Fujian rendered it in Chinese characters. Officials of the Qing dynasty copied it into official documents. Each time the name passed through human hands, the area it referred to grew a little wider. At first, it meant only the sandbar before the harbor. Then the bay. Then the surrounding plain. And finally, the entire island. In other words, the word "Taiwan" is a name that set out from these few square kilometers where you now stand, and gradually spread all the way to the island's furthest edges. The places you are about to walk through are the layers that accumulated, one upon another, in the course of that name's expansion. A Dutch fortress. The royal court of Koxinga. The walls of a Qing dynasty citadel. A Japanese department store. And today's night market stalls. All of them lie stacked upon the very same ground, none of them erased. Whenever you find a street that curves, remember only this: water once flowed there. As for the rest — the city itself will tell you.