Tainan – 臺南

We took the very comfortable High Speed Train from Taipei to Tainan. Tainan literally means “Tai South”, just like Taipei means “Tai North” and Taitung means “Tai East”. With a population of almost two million, it is Taiwan’s fifth largest city and the third largest I have been to (after Taipei and New Taipei City). It’s also Taiwan’s oldest town and was its capital for more than 200 years. It remained a capital under the Dutch, who first built Fort Zeelandia, the Ming, who under the command of Koxinga removed the Dutch, and the Qing until 1887. Several remains of these eras can be visited in Tainan.

Apart from historical places, Tainan is famous for nightmarkets with a great variety of Taiwanese specialties. It is also a big and densely populated city without a sophisticated public transport system (particulary, no subway). This results in very high individual traffic with all its inconveniences. I found the air to be significantly more polluted than in Taipei (where it is quite ok).

Our couchsurfing host lent us two bikes and we headed off to Anping, which would have been an about 30-min. ride if I hadn’t been so terribly scared of the traffic. We finally made it, visited the fortress and headed back into town to see the Confucius Temple. We also went to the nightmarket, but unfortunately I forgot the camera.

Anping fortress

View from the tower

Swedish guy serving for the Dutch East India Company, who surrendered Fort Zeelandia to the Ming

Koxinga, the national hero who drove the Dutch out of Taiwan

One of many temples in Tainan (Anping)

A god

One of the buildings of the Confuzius Temple

I wished I could read this!

Inside Confuzius Temple

Erhu, a traditional Chinese string instrument

A wall of wishes to the gods

A child’s wish in English…

… and in Zhuyin

包子 for dinner