Wuzi Monument

The Wuzi Monument commemorates five Japanese pupils, aged four to ten, killed during the Beipu Incident (北埔事件) of November 1907, an armed uprising against Japanese rule in the hills south of Beipu. The children attended the nearby Taiping School (太平學堂), founded earlier that year through the efforts of Miyagawa Yasuyuki (宮川保之), a Japanese Christian who survived the attack and raised the distinctive hand-shaped monument three years later. Its front bears their names and the reverse a short poem of mourning. The clearing below, once the school grounds, also served as an execution site where more than a dozen victims of the Japanese reprisals were exhumed in 2006. Accessing the site is somewhat non-obvious, but a trail might exist near the ruins of Neifeng Elementary School.