Fengshan

Fèngshān (鳳山), still romanized as Fongshan in many contexts, is the most populous district in Kaohsiung and former seat of Kaohsiung County. It served as a county seat from 1788, when the administration relocated here from Zuoying after the Lin Shuangwen Rebellion, and a walled city was subsequently built to defend it. The Minor East Gate (同儀門) is the last surviving gate of the original six, while three Qing-dynasty artillery forts remain scattered around the old perimeter. Fongyi Academy (鳳儀書院), established in 1814, is the largest and best-preserved Confucian academy in Taiwan, and Fongyi Chenghuang Temple (鳳邑城隍廟) has stood at the heart of the old walled city since around 1800.

In the Japanese colonial era the Imperial Navy built the Fongshan Communication Center (鳳山無線電信所) in 1919, a national monument that later served as a detention center for political prisoners during the White Terror. After the war Fengshan became a major military base, and the surrounding area filled with military dependents’ villages, of which Huangpu New Village (黃埔新村), now a protected cultural landscape, is the most significant.