Anping District

This article is about the district of Tainan in Taiwan. For the country itself, whose name is spelled Tâi-oân in Hokkien, see Taiwan.

Anping
安平區
An-peng
District
Anping District
Decorative walls in the back streets of Anping
Decorative walls in the back streets of Anping
Anping within Tainan City
Anping within Tainan City
Country Taiwan
Special municipality Tainan
Government
 • District chief Lin Guo-ming (林國明)
Area
 • Land 11.07 km2 (4.27 sq mi)
Population
 (March 2023)
 • Total 68,465
Time zone UTC+8 (National Standard Time)
Postal code
708
Area code 06
Website web.tainan.gov.tw/tnanping/ (in Chinese)
Anping
Anping District office
Chinese 安平

Anping District is a district of Tainan, Taiwan. In March 2012, it was named one of the Top 10 Small Tourist Towns by the Tourism Bureau of Taiwan. It is home to 64,408 people according to the 2020 census.

Name

The older place name of Tayouan derives from the ethnonym of a nearby Taiwanese aboriginal tribe, and was written by the Dutch and Portuguese variously as Taiouwang, Tayowan, etc. In his translations of Dutch records, missionary William Campbell used the variant Tayouan and wrote that Taoan and Taiwan also occur. As Dutch spelling varied greatly at the time (see: History of Dutch orthography), other variants may be seen. The name was also transliterated into Chinese characters variously as 臺窩灣, 大灣, 臺員, 大員, 大圓 and 梯窩灣.

After the Dutch were ousted c. 1661 by Koxinga, Han immigrants renamed the area "Anping" after the Anping Bridge in Quanzhou, Fujian. Soon after Qing rule was established in 1683, the name "Taiwan" (臺灣) was officially used to refer to the whole island with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture.

History

Fort Zeelandia painted around 1635, The Hague National Bureau of Archives

The history of Anping dates back to the 17th century, when the Dutch East India Company occupied a "high sandy down" called Tayouan and built Fort Zeelandia. The Dutch moved their headquarters to Tayouan after leaving the Pescadores in 1624. Due to silting, the islet has joined with mainland Taiwan.

Koxinga's army brought an end to the Dutch colonial period via the Siege of Fort Zeelandia.

In the Japanese period, the history of trade between China and Japan unfolded at Anping. According to the 1904 census, the city's population was 5,972.

Administrative divisions

The district consists of Jincheng, Yuguang, Jianping, Yiping, Huaping, Pingtong, Wenping, Guoping, Yuping, Yizai, Pingan, Tianfei and Wangcheng Village.

Government institutions

Tourist attractions

The remains of Fort Zeelandia
Gate of the Eternal Golden Castle