Enjoying Tainan's historic sites - Asia Books and Travel

As Taiwan’s oldest city with almost 400 years of history, Tainan features the most historical sites out of all of Taiwan’s cities. There are a lot, with the most prominent being two former Dutch forts, but here I’ll feature four other interesting historical places. Of these four, two are former Japanese colonial buildings, while the “treehouse” is from the mid-19th century, an often overlooked period of Taiwan’s history.

As the city’s best preserved pedestrian street, Shennong Street features an old-time ambiance that takes you back two centuries. During the Qing Dynasty period, Shennong Street was the entrance to the city’s major shopping district. Nowadays, it’s a place for travelers rather than traders, though there are several art and craft stores with local artisans selling their hand-made items. At night, the street is lit up with old-style lanterns, so it’s a good place to drop by in the day or night.

Anping Tree House is a unique building in Tainan’s western coastal area. First, it’s not an actual treehouse but an abandoned warehouse that became covered with and entangled by a banyan tree’s massive roots and branches. Next to the “treehouse” is a museum that used to be the office of Tait and Co, a British trading company that ran the warehouse. It’s rare to come across traces of the British presence in Taiwan, as one associates them more with their former colonies Hong Kong and Singapore.

Apparently, Tait was allowed to come to Taiwan in 1865 after British and French victory in the Second Opium War, which forced the Qing to grant more trading concessions the British and several other Western powers. Tait was forced to leave after the Japanese obtained Taiwan after defeating the Qing (who ruled China during that time) in the Sino-Japanese War in the late 19th century.

The warehouse was then used by the Japan Salt Company. When Japan lost World War II and was forced to cede Taiwan to the Republic of China, the warehouse was then used by a Taiwanese salt company, but they then stopped using it soon after, making the warehouse abandoned for roughly 70 years, during which the banyan tree sprouted and grew all over the building. In the 21st century, the authorities decided to renovate the warehouse into a tourist attraction.

Closer to the center of Tainan, Hayashi is a Japanese department store that was opened in 1932, closed after World War II and the end of the Japanese colonial period, then re-opened in 2014. The elegant five-story building features Taiwan’s first elevator and despite renovations, still maintains the look from when Hayashi was first opened. It is possible to go all the way up to the roof, enjoy a drink at a cafe, and take a look at a little Japanese shrine and the surrounding streets.

Near Hayashi, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature is dedicated to Taiwanese authors and books. The museum is housed in an exquisite European-style building that housed Tainan’s Japanese colonial administration. Damaged in World War II, the building was heavily renovated. While there is little English as all of the exhibits are in Chinese, it’s worth it to take a look around, especially as admission is free.