Douliu

Dǒuliù (斗六), formerly Dǒuliùmén (斗六門), is the county seat and most populous city in Yunlin. The name is a Hokkien transliteration of a word from the Hoanya Plains Indigenous community that originally inhabited the area. Quanzhou merchant Yang Zhongxi (楊仲熹) established the commercial district in the 1750s, and in 1893 the county seat was relocated here from Zhushan after repeated flooding of the Zhuoshui River rendered the original site of what was to be Yunlin City impractical. Taiping Old Street, a 600-meter stretch of neo-Baroque shophouses near the train station, is the city’s most prominent heritage streetscape. Other Japanese colonial landmarks include the Xingqi Memorial Hall (1927), built to commemorate Crown Prince Hirohito’s 1923 tour of Taiwan (臺灣行啟), and Douliu Sugar Factory (1912), now a registered cultural landscape. The Shuangzixing Theater, Douliu’s last operating cinema until its closure in 2012, was among nearly 10 movie theaters once scattered around the city.