Sister Cities: Tainan, Taiwan
There is a popular anecdote passed around Gwangju’s community of English-speaking expats about a native English teacher who visited Taiwan during his summer vacation. The teacher returned to Korea, but only long enough to pack up all his belongings and move back to Taiwan.
My brother’s recent move to the island gave me the only excuse I needed this summer to check out claims about Taiwan for myself, but I had additional motivation anyway: Tainan was also the first city to strike a “sister city” alliance with Gwangju, way back in 1968.
More than Gwangju’s oldest “sibling,” Tainan is actually the island’s oldest city, period. The original name given to it by Chinese tradesmen, Tayouan, may even be the source of the name Taiwan itself. A coastal city, its shores became the site of Taiwan’s first European presence in 1624. Before the Dutch traders imported large numbers of Chinese laborers to serve in “Fort Zeelandia,” Taiwan was primarily populated by aboriginal tribes of headhunters.
The Dutch fortifications can still be visited today, as can the great shrine of the Chinese military leader who beat them, Xochinga. In 1662, the Chinese commander’s army drove out the Dutch colonists and turned the island into a refuge for loyalists to the Ming Dynasty, which had just lost mainland China to the Manchus. Xochinga’s fame is probably due to how nicely his life parallels that of Chiang Kai-shek, who founded modern Taiwan after fleeing mainland China in 1950.
One of Tainan’s most charming attractions celebrates a more recent milestone. I arrived less than two months after the reopening of the nationally famous Hayashi Department Store, a grand little piece of history. One of only two such stores on the island when the Japanese authorities built it in 1932, the beautiful three-story building became an instant attraction on the strength of its working elevator alone. American bombers disrupted business during World War II, but Hayashi has made lemonade out of that particular lemon by transforming the damage into another sightseeing opportunity. The historic site is worth a visit, as indeed is the city.
Depending on your temperament, actually, Tainan may truly be worth relocating to; I left the city feeling like I understood why some expats rave about the island. Warmer, cheaper and far more informal than Gwangju and Korea in general, Taiwan certainly jives more with what many Westerners think of as the “Asia experience,” and many English academies also offer light schedules to native English speakers who only want to work minimal hours. For a certain type of easygoing, adventurous personality often attracted to English teaching in Asia, Taiwan may well be a dream. My own luggage, however, remains in my closet.