Xinhua Dist.

The original Sinhua District Public Hall was built in 1937 during the Japanese period as a public meeting place for the local people. It was registered as a historical building in 2008 and was refurbished by the Tainan City Government to become the Youth Library in 2018. It is the first library in Tainan City to be located within a historical building and the original timber structure was preserved. The library focuses on providing a reading space for young people so the collection includes books on popular science, literature, art, lifestyle and motivation.

Xinhua Old Street is located at Zhongzheng Rd. in Tainan’s Xinhua District. It was once a “Sanchiaoyung” (delta) formed by the intersection of two old streets, Zhongshan Rd. (Xibian St.) and Zhongzheng Rd. (Nanbian St.). In the past, farmers from the hills set up a market here. “Sanchiaoyung” stood for how prosperous Xinhua Old Street once was. The convenience of its location meant a market naturally sprung up within a hundred-meter radius. Business was so good that it was known as the “Ximending of Xinhua” among the older generation.

There are several houses that are more than one hundred years old in Lane 341 on Zhongzheng Rd. in Xinhua District. No. 19 was once the home of Su You-jhih, a hero in the Anti-Japanese Resistance. The oldest as well as the best preserved in terms of building materials and layout is the No. 31 and 33 “Ancestral Shrine of the Su Family” built in 1840. The ancestors of the Su family were very rich so their house was quite magnificent as well. The beams and pillars in the historic house were all built from high-quality Chinese Fir.

Xinhua was once the home of the Siraya-Pingpu Tribe. Its old name of “Damujiang” is a transliteration of the Siraya name “Tavocan.” The Siraya were the earliest recorded inhabitants of Tainan. They played an important role in the history of greater Tainan and the shaping of the local culture. Tavokan Cultural Area was previously used as a police dormitory. After the restoration it became a mixed-used district with a number of sights including the Martial Arts Hall, Japanese dormitories, Japanese garden, Story House, and Tavokan Plaza.

Mujiashan has sometimes been referred to as the Southern Taiwan’s Qingtiangang. The undeveloped wildness became an Internet sensation because of its resemblance to the default grassland wallpaper used by the Windows operating system.  The Mujiashan grassland is quite remote and hard to find. It is used by the military for target practice during the week, so the best time to visit is on weekends and holidays. Silver grass grows wild here creating an open expanse of green grassland in summer. In winter it becomes a withered brown color and the desolation has its own wintry beauty.

"Don't worry about leaving sweet potatoes to rot, the wind and the sun will make the roots spread more" On the path that leads to the Ecomuseum of Sweet Potato Story House (瓜瓜園地瓜生態故事館) you can see a whole row of sweet potato-related Taiwanese idioms; the shape of the sweet potato very much resembles the island of Taiwan. It is often said that Hsinhua (新化) has three treasures: bamboo shoots, pineapples and sweet potatoes. The view of the factory's entire sweet potato pile from the high point of the tourist trail is impressive.

When visiting Xinhua (新化), as well as the old street (老街), there are three other locations which are worth paying a visit to in order to truly understand the culture and history of the Xinhua area. These are Yang Kuei Memorial Hall (楊逵紀念館), Ou Wei Movie House (歐威電影館), and Xinhua Street Town Hall (歐威電影館). Ou wei was an actor, born in 1937 as Huang Huang-ji(黃煌基), he starred in over 80 popular films such as Execution in Autumn (秋決) and Beautiful Duckling (養鴨人家).

Xinhua Wude Temple (新化武德殿) was constructed between 1925-1928, and was used as a Kendo and Judo training hall during the Japanese Colonial Era. Since its renovation, it combines with Xinhua Old Street (新化老街), Xinhua District Council House (新化街役場), Yangkui Literature Memorial Museum (楊逵文學館) and the newly renovated Tavokan Cultural District (大目降文化園區) to form a very rich cultural zone.

Built in 1807, Xinhua Chaotian Temple(新化朝天宮) features in a few legendary stories. It is said that downtown Xinhua was once judged by fengshui experts to be a ba gua spider’s nest(八卦蜘蛛穴). When the temple was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1862, the spider goblin took advantage to emerge and cause trouble by making the local women behave in a promiscuous way, greatly disturbing the local residents. Mazu instructed that the temple be rebuilt, then her statue was carried around the local area in a procession to drive away the spider goblin.

Hou-tou Pei (虎頭埤) was Taiwan’s very first reservoir, and over the one hundred years that it has been in existence it has been an object of praise and admiration from scholars and the literati. It was even one of the settings for the Jay Chou (周杰倫) movie The Rooftop (天台). The Huyue Suspension Bridge (虎月吊橋), built in 1905, added an even greater sense of charm to the site, and as it has stretched over the water surface for the past one hundred years, it has been a place to catch the first rays of morning sun or multicolored afterglow of dusk.