Qualla: Hengchun Old City Wall

Hengchun Old City Wall: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 阿道, CC BY-SA 4.0. It took a shipwreck, a massacre, and a Japanese military expedition before the Qing Dynasty built a proper walled city at the bottom of Taiwan. Hengchun — the name means "constantly spring" — was named for its weather, but what prompted its fortification was anything but tranquil. The walls went up between 1875 and 1879, designed by Liu Ao, who would later turn his hand to the Walls of Taipei. They enclosed 2.6 kilometers of perimeter, four gates, a moat, and an entire town that the empire had spent two centuries mostly ignoring.

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Image: 阿道 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hengchun Old City Wall: Why the Qing Finally Paid Attention

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit WEI, WAN-CHEN, CC BY-SA 4.0. For most of the Qing period, the Hengchun Peninsula — Taiwan's remote southern tip — was governed theoretically and administered barely. It fell under Fengshan County, but enforcement at such distance from the administrative center was thin. The indigenous Paiwan people held effe...

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Image: WEI, WAN-CHEN | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hengchun Old City Wall: A Town Inside Walls

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fcuk1203, CC BY-SA 3.0. The fort Liu Ao designed followed the conventions of Chinese walled cities, scaled for a southern frontier town. Four gates faced the four cardinal directions — roughly; the west gate actually faced northwest. Each had a gatehouse and cannons. The walls enclosed the entire civili...

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Image: Fcuk1203 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hengchun Old City Wall: What Typhoons, Wars, and Roads Did to It

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Orbital, CC BY-SA 3.0. The walls had barely settled before the weather started in on them. A typhoon in 1908 damaged the wooden gatehouses severely. World War Two brought further structural losses, and the 1959 Hengchun earthquake — a significant seismic event in southern Taiwan — took more of the fabr...

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Image: Orbital | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hengchun Old City Wall: Four Gates Still Standing

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter in s, CC BY-SA 4.0. What is remarkable about Hengchun is that all four original gates remain. Typhoons, earthquakes, war, and road construction have stripped away most of the connecting wall, but the gates themselves — the carved stone archways that once marked the official entries to the city — hav...

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Image: Peter in s | CC BY-SA 4.0