Fort Provintia Audio Guide

Chihkan Tower: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Chihkan Tower

   Welcome to Chihkan Tower, in the Zhongxi District of Tainan, right on Minzu Road Section Two. Today the ticket office and the plaza face this busy road, and that entrance is itself part of the story, as you will hear shortly. Locals know the site by its Chinese name, 赤崁樓, and for centuries they also called it the Fanzai Tower, a nickname that goes back to the Dutch. Here is the first surprise. What visitors usually photograph as the tower is not what the Dutch built. The graceful curved roofs belong to a Chinese sea god temple and a literary pavilion, which were raised on top of the ruins of a Dutch fortress. The original fortress was called Provintia, and its heavy walls and arches still lie underneath. Over the next few stops we will peel the layers apart: the Dutch fort, the Chinese temples above it, the legends of stone turtles and a one-legged horse, and the twentieth-century rebuilding that gave the site the face you see today. Take a slow breath, look up at the roofs, and let's begin.

2. 02

   Chihkan Tower and the Dutch Fort Provintia

   Rewind to the 1620s. In January 1625 the Dutch laid out a new market quarter on this side of the water, which they called Provintia. Then, in 1653, they began building a European-style fort in the middle of that quarter. It was completed in 1655 and named Fort Provintia, which simply means the provincial fort. The fort had a partner. Across the bay at Anping stood Fort Zeelandia, the seat of the Dutch governor and the center of their rule. Provintia was the administrative and commercial center, and the two forts stood facing each other, like a pair of bookends guarding the coast. In its day this place was the commercial heart of the whole island. The design was unusual. Three roughly square platforms were joined together, and each was topped with a Western-style building. The walls were laid mostly in red brick and stone, and the binder was a mixture of oyster shell lime with sugar water and sticky rice juice. It worked remarkably well. More than 300 years later you can still see thick walls and arches from the original construction. Local people called the fort the Fanzai Tower, and also the Red-Haired Tower.

3. 03

   Chihkan Tower Through Ming-Zheng, Qing and Japanese Rule

   In 1661 Zheng Chenggong, whom many people know as Koxinga, took over the Dutch stronghold and turned Provintia into the seat of Chengtian Prefecture. In those days, before the Taijiang lagoon silted up, waves rolled in almost to the foot of the tower. Chihkan Sunset became one of the celebrated eight views of Taiwan. In the Qing period the fortress slowly fell into ruin, hurt by uprisings and by neglect. Chinese-style buildings were added on top of the Dutch base, and for a time the deities worshipped up there included Guanyin. Then Shen Baozhen asked the court for permission to build a Sea God Temple on the ruins, in thanks for the sea god's protection. So if you ever wondered who built the temple, it was not the Dutch. Beside it stands the Wenchang Pavilion, which honors Kuixing, the deity of scholarship, and students still come here to pray for success in their studies. Both buildings have double-eaved hip-and-gable roofs. Under Japanese rule the site served as an army garrison hospital. In 1942 the Daishi Hall and the Five Sons Shrine were demolished entirely, and only the gatehouse of the old Penghu Academy was left standing.

4. 04

   Chihkan Tower: Wells, Turtles and Legends

   Between the Sea God Temple and the Wenchang Pavilion lies a half-moon-shaped old well, said to date from the days of the Dutch fortress. In December 1935, when the Japanese colonial government designated the site a first-class historic site under the name of the Provintia fort ruins, the well was cleared out. The Tainan historian Lu Jiaxing was lowered to the bottom in a bamboo basket, and he confirmed that it was Dutch-built. Now for the legends. In front of the tower stand nine stone turtles carrying steles on their backs, from the Qing period and brought here from elsewhere. Legend says the turtle is one of the dragon's nine sons, who loved carrying heavy loads and so took the shape of a turtle. Then there is the stone horse with a broken leg. The story goes that it turned into a monster at night and tormented the townspeople, so its legs were broken. Historians do not vouch for any of this, but it makes a wonderful tale to tell while you stand in front of it. Keep an eye out for the courtyard steles too. More than 20 ancient steles gathered here after the war, earning the site the nickname of the small stele forest.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   The Chihkan Tower you see today is the work of the twentieth century as much as the seventeenth. After the war, the Tainan history museum, whose building had been destroyed in the bombing, moved in here, and the exhibition opened on the first of May in 1946. In 1965 a major restoration led by Professor He Chenci of National Cheng Kung University rebuilt the main wooden frames of the Sea God Temple and the Wenchang Pavilion in reinforced concrete and laid out the garden. The main entrance was also turned around to the Minzu Road side, where you came in. One last curiosity is hidden in the name itself. For years the second character was written one way, then in March 2003 the Tainan documents committee voted ten to four to write it with the other character in all official documents. Look at the signs around you and see which version they use. Before you go, wander back to the Sea God Temple. Its ground floor presents the history and construction of the site, and a nearby wall shows the bottle-shaped door and the jade rabbit carved above it. Which layer will you spot first: Dutch, Chinese, or modern?