Wuquan City Pioneer Monument

Date CapturedApril 2nd, 2017 at 07:32 UTCCameraNIKON D3100LensAF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IIApertureƒ / 8Shutter Speed1/250 secFocal Length18.0 mmISO200Exposure Value14.0 EVOriginal Size3600 × 2400

A monument marking the site of Wuquan City (吳全城), a walled Han settlement founded in 1825 when Wu Quan (吳全), a wealthy man from Tamsui, led some 2,800 settlers recruited in Kavalan (modern-day Yilan) into the plains of Hualien. Walls were raised to protect against raids by Taiwanese Indigenous resistance groups but disease and disaster emptied the settlement within a few years.

The site was later claimed for Kada Immigrant Village (賀田移民村) in 1899, when the entrepreneur Kada Kinsaburō (賀田金三郎) cleared the abandoned site for sugar cane and camphor. The venture was later absorbed by Ensuikō Sugar Manufacturing (鹽水港製糖株式會社), who constructed this marble stele before its farm office in 1940, crediting Wu Quan, Kada, and itself with the successive development of the area.

Hualien County registered the monument as a historic site in 2012, over objections from the state-owned Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖), which contested the boundaries of the protected area in a failed lawsuit. The inscription casts the plain as wilderness made productive by Han and Japanese hands, making no mention of the Sakizaya (撒奇萊雅) and Amis (阿美族) communities dispossessed in the process.