Alishan

Alishan (阿里山) is a mountain Indigenous township in Chiayi County and traditional territory of the Tsou people. Oral histories describe ancestral migrations into this region between Yushan and the Chianan Plain, with a settlement at Tfuya forming around 1600. Each village maintains a thatched-roof men’s assembly hall or kuba (庫巴); the recreated Tfuya Kuba and Tapangu Kuba remain in use today. The Tapangu 228 Monument (1996), Taiwan’s highest memorial to the 228 Incident, commemorates Tsou leaders executed during the White Terror for providing support during the uprising.

Japanese colonial authorities began surveying the mountains in 1900 and completed the Alishan Forest Railway to Zhaoping in 1913 to extract cypress and Taiwania timber. The narrow gauge railway climbs from Chiayi City to Alishan Station at 2,216 meters, passing through tropical, subtropical, and temperate forest zones via switchbacks, tunnels, and wooden bridges. The main line, damaged by typhoons in 2009 and 2015, fully reopened in July 2024 and is listed as a potential World Heritage Site. Beyond the railway terminus, the Yushan West Peak Shinto Shrine (1934) sits at 3,518 meters on Taiwan’s highest mountain, a remnant of Japanese alpine worship recently reconstructed.

From 1945 to 1989 the township was named Wu Feng (吳鳳鄉) after a Qing merchant whom Han Chinese legend credited with ending Tsou headhunting. Indigenous protests after the lifting of martial law led to the demolition of Wu Feng statues and the township’s renaming to Alishan in March 1989.