Tamsui Submarine Cable Landing Station

Taiwan was first connected to the outside world by submarine telegraph cable in 1888, when the Qing governor Liu Mingchuan (劉銘傳) laid a cable across the strait from Shalunzai (沙崙仔庄) in Tamsui to Chuanshi Island (川石島) off Fuzhou, formally known as the Hobe-Fuzhou Telegraph Line (滬尾至福州電線). Following the Japanese takeover of Taiwan a second line was laid from Naha to Tamsui by way of Ishigaki. The Japanese colonial government bought the Tamsui-Fujian cable from the Qing in December 1898, and the shore facilities were presumably rebuilt when the long-haul Nagasaki-Tamsui cable opened in October 1910, by which time the original Qing landing room had been superseded and its land transferred to Taihoku Prefecture (臺北廳). A second cable was laid from Motegi (茂木) in Nagasaki to Tamsui in 1917. Whether anything survives remains unknown; the area has undergone waves of redevelopment over the years, and telecommunications infrastructure relocated to a more modern gated compound to the southwest at some point.