Shiweiqiang Ruins

Remnants of stone walls that once protected a Hakka settlement established in 1817 by Wu Linfang (吳琳芳). The walls were built two meters high with north and south palisade gates, intended both as a forward outpost for inland Hakka expansion and a defense against flooding and conflict with Indigenous communities. The fortified village stood at the heart of a five-village alliance that took shape after the Wu Alai Incident of 1875, a violent dispute over irrigation rights. Most of the walls came down in the 1935 Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake, with the rest gradually quarried for post-war housing; only two short fragments remain.