Fort Zeelandia

Put your hand flat against the old red wall. The bricks are rough and warm, and the mortar between them is pale and crumbly. Above you, banyan roots hang down over the brick like grey ropes. Some roots have pushed straight into the wall and split it open. Nearby a cicada starts up, and somewhere beyond the trees a scooter hums through the lanes of Anping. This wall is the oldest thing around you. It is one of the last original pieces of a Dutch fortress built here almost four centuries ago.

This is Fort Zeelandia, known in Mandarin as the Anping Old Fort. In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company came to this coast looking for a trading base. The company was a powerful trading corporation from the Netherlands, with its own ships, soldiers and governors. Construction began in the 1620s. At first the fort was called Fort Orange. Later it was renamed Zeelandia, after Zeeland, a coastal province in the Netherlands. The work took about a decade, and the walls rose layer by layer from imported and local brick.

Here is the first surprise. When the Dutch arrived, this spot was not on the mainland at all. It sat on a long, narrow sandbar, with a wide lagoon behind it and open sea in front. The local name for this sandbar sounded like Tayouan. Many historians believe that name, used by Europeans and Chinese traders alike, slowly spread to the whole island. So the name Taiwan may have started right here, on a strip of sand under your feet.

Take a moment to look around and picture that older landscape. Today you see streets, shops, temples and houses in every direction. Over the centuries, rivers carried silt into the lagoon, and the land slowly filled in. The coastline moved west, away from the fort. A ship captain from the seventeenth century would not recognise this place. The fortress that once guarded a harbour mouth now stands in a quiet neighbourhood, some distance from the waves.

The Dutch built Zeelandia as a square fortress with bastions, the pointed corners that let defenders fire along the walls. There was an inner castle and a lower outer town. Inside lived soldiers, merchants, officials and their families. Trade moved through here in deer hides, sugar, silk and porcelain, linking Japan, China and the Dutch base in Batavia, which is today Jakarta. For a few decades, this sandbar was one of the busiest corners of the East Asian sea trade.

Now look closely at the mortar again. Local guides often say the builders mixed it from sugar water, sticky glutinous rice and ash from burned oyster shells. This kind of mixture was used in parts of East Asia, and it explains the pale, chalky look of the joints. Whatever the exact recipe, it held. The brick you are touching has survived typhoons, earthquakes, war and centuries of salty air.

The fort's most dramatic chapter came in 1661. A Ming loyalist commander named Zheng Chenggong, better known in the West as Koxinga, sailed across the strait with a large fleet. He was fighting the new Qing dynasty, which had taken power in China, and he needed a new base. His forces surrounded Zeelandia. The Dutch, led by governor Frederick Coyett, held out behind these walls for many months.

The siege was long and hard on both sides. Food ran low inside the fortress, and disease spread. Help from Batavia came, but it could not break the blockade. Early in 1662, the Dutch surrendered and sailed away. It was a rare moment in that era, when a European colonial power lost a fortified base in Asia to a local army. Koxinga renamed the area Anping, after his home district in Fujian province. That is the name the neighbourhood still carries today.

After this, the fort slowly lost its purpose. Under the Qing dynasty, which later took Taiwan, the seat of power moved inland, toward what is now central Tainan. The great walls were left to weather. Over time, people carried away bricks for other buildings and defences. Here is the second surprise: much of Zeelandia did not fall to cannon fire. It was quietly taken apart, brick by brick, and reused across the area.

When Japan ruled Taiwan in the early twentieth century, the site changed again. The Japanese cleared the top of the old inner fort and built a Western-style house there, with steps leading up to it. Later, under the Republic of China, the site was restored and a white observation tower was built on the high ground. So when you look at this place, you see layers. Dutch brick at the base, Japanese terraces above, and a modern tower on top.

If you climb up toward the tower, pause on the way and look at the ground level. The terraces are built on the platform of the old inner castle. From the top, on a clear day, you can see across the low rooftops of Anping toward the coast. Try to trace where the lagoon once lay. Inside the small museum, models and maps show the fort at its full size. They help a lot, because so little of the original structure is left to see.

When you leave, the lanes of Anping are only a short walk away. This is one of the oldest settled parts of Tainan. The narrow streets are lined with old shophouses, small temples and stalls selling shrimp crackers, candied fruit and cool bowls of tofu pudding. Many families here trace their roots back for generations. Look for the small stone lion figures, called sword lions, on some doorways. Locals say they protect the household from bad luck.

Before you go, stand once more beside the southern wall. Listen to the leaves of the banyan moving above you. The roots and the brick have grown together now, and it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins. Dutch traders, Koxinga's soldiers, Qing officials and Japanese administrators all passed this spot. Now it is your turn. As you walk away, notice how the old red brick appears again in the lanes around you, a quiet reminder of where it may have come from.