How it Became Taipei | History and Urban Development

Taipei is a city that

you want to get lost in.

With its cacophony of scooters,

its intoxicating street food aromas, and its tunnel-like streets.

It plays host to a variety of cultures that have come together

to form a unique Asian identity.

But getting here wasn't easy.

Over the past 150 years, Taipei has gone from a walled city, to a Japanese

colonial city, to the modern capitalist powerhouse that it is today.

And all of these changes can be traced on the map.

So let's go.

So before we can jump

in, I need to explain a little bit of Taiwan's history to you.

The whole island.

Even though today most of Taiwan is ethnically Han Chinese,

the island has been inhabited by many different cultures.

And that's why a lot of places will have three or four different historical names.

And often a place will be spelled one way in English and pronounce another way.

The first people to inhabit Taiwan are known as

Taiwanese indigenous peoples but also, Austronesians.

Now you might find Austronesians in places like Fiji, New Zealand, Madagascar.

That's because these people started in Taiwan and then ended up

sailing all across the Indo-Pacific.

So for ancient Taiwan, think less of Mulan and more of Moana.

There were at least 26 Indigenous languages spoken on the island of Taiwan

and some of them are even being spoken today.

Taiwan got the name Formosa, which means beautiful in Portuguese,

when a bunch of Portuguese sailors sailed past the island and we were like “Wow,

what a beautiful island.” Since then, the island's been colonized by Dutch

and Spanish merchants, Ming pirate lords,

Qing imperialists, Japanese colonists,

and finally Chinese nationalists fleeing a civil war.

And that's a lot of history that we don't have time to cover in this video.

The point is that all of these people brought their own cultures and influences

to the island, and traces of them can be found all over the city of Taipei.

Okay, so let's zoom back in.

This area here is known as the Taipei

Basin, an ancient lakebed surrounded by hills, mountains and volcanoes.

In fact, there are 241 named mountain peaks