乙未保台和平紀念公園

October 6th, 2025

Baguashan (八卦山) was the site of the largest battle of the Yiwei War (乙未戰爭), a bloody conflict between the Empire of Japan and the short-lived Republic of Formosa (臺灣民主國) from May to October 1895. The battle took place on August 27th, 1895, after Japanese forces crossed the Dadu River (大肚溪) under cover of darkness, splitting into three columns. The Taiwanese forces, a mix of Black Flag Army (黑旗軍) soldiers under Wu Peng-nian (吳彭年) and Hakka militia led by Wu Tang-hsing (吳湯興), were outnumbered three-to-one and critically short of ammunition. By nightfall the defenders had been routed, and the Japanese marched into Changhua City and continued to consolidate their control of central Taiwan.

The gateway to the park from the street.

This monument was originally established in January 1983 as Baguashan Anti-Japanese Martyrs’ Memorial Park (八卦山抗日烈士紀念碑公園) after approximately 679 bodies were discovered in mass graves at nearby Kengzineishan (坑子內山). It was renamed in 2008, presumably to soften the sentiment. A plaque just outside the entrance to the park reads:

Looking down from the Bagua Plateau you can see the Dadu River estuary, a strategic north-south transportation hub that soldiers struggled since antiquity to control. The Qing court ceded Taiwan to Japan after being defeated in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, and the 1895 Anti-Japanese Campaign took place the following year. The Japanese moved to occupy the Bagua Plateau and were resisted by anti-Japanese militia volunteers led by Wu Peng-nian. They held out for three days and nights; they finally had to yield to the vastly superior forces facing them, however, and Mt. Bagua and Changhua feel to the Japanese. Several thousand martyrs lost their lives. The Baguashan Memorial Park was established to commemorate this incident, the largest battle in the history of Taiwan’s resistance against Japan.