Paotaishan

A strategic hilltop overlooking the port of Su’ao. It was fortified with two cannon emplacements by Qing general Chen Huihuang (陳輝煌) in 1889, a direct response to the Sino-French War of 1884. The site was co-opted by the Japanese in 1927 for the Kotohira Shinto Shrine. The original guns are now displayed at the Su’ao Township Office; one of the two emplacements was rebuilt for tourism in 1992 while the other was sealed in concrete and topped with a two-storey lookout and public toilet. Only the shrine’s stone name pillar, lanterns, and platform survive on the hilltop; the structure was listed as a county monument along with the remains of the Shinto shrine in 2010.