Anping District is a

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

Tainan Tainan (), officially Tainan City, is a Special municipality (Taiwan), special municipality in southern Taiwan, facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and commonly called the "Taiwan Prefecture, ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

. In March 2012, it was named one of the ''Top 10 Small Tourist Towns'' by the Tourism Bureau of Taiwan. It is home to 64,408 people according to the 2020 census.

Name

The older place name of Tayouan derives from the ethnonym of a nearby

Taiwanese aboriginal Taiwanese indigenous peoples, formerly called Taiwanese aborigines, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recognized subgroups numbering about 600,303 or 3% of the Geography of Taiwan, island's population. This total is incr ...

tribe, and was written by the Dutch and Portuguese variously as ''Taiouwang'', ''Tayowan'', etc. In his translations of Dutch records, missionary William Campbell used the variant ''Tayouan'' and wrote that ''Taoan'' and ''Taiwan'' also occur. As Dutch spelling varied greatly at the time (see:

History of Dutch orthography The history of Dutch orthography covers the changes in spelling of Dutch language, Dutch both in the Netherlands itself and in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in Belgium. Up until the 18th century there was no standardization of grammar or s ...

), other variants may be seen. The name was also transliterated into Chinese characters variously as , , , , and . After the Dutch were ousted by

Koxinga Zheng Chenggong (; 27 August 1624 – 23 June 1662), born Zheng Sen () and better known internationally by his honorific title Koxinga (, from Taiwanese: ''kok sèⁿ iâ''), was a Southern Ming general who resisted the Qing conquest of Chin ...

, Han immigrants renamed the area "Anping" after the Anping Bridge in

Quanzhou Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, wi ...

Fujian Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...

. Soon after Qing rule was established in 1683, the name "Taiwan" () was officially used to refer to the whole island with the establishment of

Taiwan Prefecture Taiwan Prefecture or Taiwanfu was a prefecture of Taiwan during the Qing dynasty. The prefecture was established by the Qing government in 1684, after the island came under Qing dynasty rule in 1683 following its conquest of the Kingdom of Tun ...

History

The history of Anping dates back to the 17th century, when the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( ; VOC ), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered company, chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States Ge ...

occupied a "high sandy down" called ''Tayouan'' and built Fort Zeelandia. The Dutch moved their headquarters to Tayouan after leaving the Pescadores in 1624. Due to silting, the islet has joined with mainland Taiwan.

's army brought an end to the Dutch colonial period via the

Siege of Fort Zeelandia The siege of Fort Zeelandia () of 1661–1662 ended the Dutch East India Company's rule over Taiwan and began the Kingdom of Tungning's rule over the island. Prelude From 1623 to 1624, the Dutch had been at war with Ming China over the Pescad ...

. In the Japanese period, the history of trade between China and Japan unfolded at Anping. According to the 1904 census, the city's population was 5,972.

Administrative divisions

The district consists of Jincheng, Yuguang, Jianping, Yiping, Huaping, Pingtong, Wenping, Guoping, Yuping, Yizai, Pingan, Tianfei and Wangcheng Village.

Government institutions

* Tainan City Government * Tainan City Council

Tourist attractions

* Anping Old Street * Anping Small Fort * Anping Tree House * Canal Museum * Eternal Golden Castle * Former Tait & Co. Merchant House * Fort Zeelandia * Haishan Hall * Tianhou Temple * Anping Oyster Shell Cement Kiln Museum * Miaoshou Temple * Yanping Street Old Well * ROCS Te Yang museum ship

Name

History

Administrative divisions

Government institutions

Tourist attractions

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links