Aug. 14 to Aug. 20
On Aug. 15, 1978, the first Tzechiang-class express train (自強號) made its official maiden voyage, traversing the newly electrified route between Taipei and Taichung. It was a British EMU100 train, a model that was used by the Taiwan Railway Company until June 2009.
It was a major milestone in Taiwan’s railroad history, which stretches back to the construction of the first railroad in 1887 under the supervision of the Qing Empire’s governor of Taiwan, Liu Ming-chuan (劉銘傳). Liu is often considered the “father of Taiwan’s railways,” but a quick Google search will reveal that there is another contender for the title — Japanese national Hasegawa Kinsuke, who was the chief engineer behind the completion of the Taiwan Trunk Line (縱貫線) in 1908, which connected Kirun (Keelung) and Takao (Kaohsiung).
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Liu was Taiwan’s first governor when the Qing decided to separate it from Fujian Province in 1885. Long considered a backwater province, the Qing only began to take an interest in developing Taiwan in the latter half of the 19th century.
The idea of building a railroad in Taiwan was first proposed in 1877 by Fujian governor Ting Jih-chang (丁日昌), who saw Taiwan as a key defensive location — but it never materialized due to technical and financial issues.
Liu officially submitted a requested to the imperial court in April 1887 to build a north-south railroad. The court approved it a month later. Liu quickly set up the government-run Taiwan Railway Business Administration (全台鐵路商務總局) and recruited British and German engineers. Construction reportedly began June 9, the birthday of George Stephenson, who built the first public railway in the world — some dispute this claim, but the date is still officially observed as the anniversary of Taiwan’s railroad.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The first tunnel, from Taipei to Keelung, took about three years and resulted in many deaths and accidents. Upon its completion, Liu wrote a couplet which ended with “human power triumphs over God’s work” (居然人力勝神工). The first car made a test journey from Dadaocheng (大稻埕) to Xikou (錫口, today’s Songshan District, 松山) area in July 1888, drawing thousands of spectators.
Qing era railway construction ended in Hsinchu in 1894. Liu had left his post three years earlier, and his successor Shao Yu-lien (邵友濂) stopped most of Liu’s modernization programs soon after.
THE JAPANESE EFFORT
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
A year later, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan. Historian Tai Pao-tsun (戴寶村) writes in the book Around the Island: The History of Taiwan’s Railway (縱貫環島:台灣鐵道) that the railroad was already in pretty bad shape when the Japanese took over and the situation was exacerbated when the retreating Qing troops sabotaged the tracks and facilities.
By July 1895, the Japanese had restored the entire railroad to working condition, using it to transport supplies in their campaign south against local resistance. Tai finds it ironic that the railroad, which was built to protect Taiwan, ended up being used by the invaders against the local population.
In the first few years, the Japanese uprooted sections of the old railroad, even abandoning the Taipei-Keelung tunnel and building a new one that was easier to traverse.
In 1899, construction began to extend the railroad further south, employing Japanese engineers and cheap Taiwanese labor. Books on Taiwanese history barely mention Hasegawa, who began his railroad career as a technician in 1877 and arrived in Taiwan in 1899 as the project’s chief engineer.
Shinpei Goto, minister of civilian affairs, wrote later in an official railroad publication, “I was the head of the railway project in name only. In fact, everything related to railroad construction was taken care of by Hasegawa. All I did was stamp paperwork.”
Hasegawa deemed the original Qing Dynasty line too steep and planned a new line south from Taihoku (Taipei). At the same time, he ordered construction to start north from Takao (Kaohsiung). During this time, he also helped build stations, branch lines (such as one to Tamsui) and connections to various ports.
The two construction camps finally met in the middle on April 20, 1908, and Hasegawa left Taiwan shortly after, having completed Liu’s vision 20 years later. A statue of Hasegawa stood in front of then-Taihoku Station from 1910 until the end of Japanese rule.
Taiwan in Time, a column about Taiwan’s history that is published every Sunday, spotlights important or interesting events around the nation that have anniversaries this week.
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this
For the authorities that brought the Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道) into existence, the route is as much about culture as it is about hiking. Han culture dominates the coastal and agricultural flatlands of Tainan and Chiayi counties, but as the Greenway climbs along its Tribal Trail (原鄉之路) section, hikers pass through communities inhabited by members of the Tsou Indigenous community. Leaving Chiayi County’s Dapu Village (大埔), walkers follow Provincial Highway 3 to Dapu Bridge where a sign bearing the Tsou greeting “a veo veo yu” marks the point at which the Greenway turns off to follow Qingshan Industrial Road (青山產業道路)
RSS