Monday, May 24, 2010

Hongmaocheng.~

Today happened to be very sunny so when I looked out the window I was certain I should where shorts. But since we were going to the oceanside Joey insisted I wear jeans.. and I stupidly followed his advice. We had to walk in 30+ humid heat up a long hill to Fort Santo Domingo.

Fuerte Santo Domingo, or Fort San Domingo, was originally a wooden fort built by the Spanish in 1629 at Tamsui on the northwestern coast of Taiwan. On a night in 1636, a group of local people, angered by the taxes that the Spanish governor had imposed, successfully attacked the fort and demolished it. In 1637, the Spanish rebuilt the fort using stone and raised the walls' height to twenty feet or more. In 1642, the Dutch expelled the Spaniards from nearby Keelung. The Spanish fort in Tamsui had by then already been razed by the Spanish themselves. The Dutch built a new fort on the site, called Fort Anthonio.

In 1644, they replaced it by the structure still standing today, also called Fort Anthonio. The locals called the Dutch "the red-haired people", which led to the compound's Chinese name, Hongmaocheng ("fort of the red-haired"). From 1683 to 1867 the Qing Dynasty Chinese government controlled the fort and during this time (1724) built a stone wall with four gates around it, of which only one (main) gate survives.

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