【Introduction】

Because of deposits of sediment, the Taijiang river was finally clogged in 1823, and gradually the blockage transformed the water area into dry land. This exposed local residents to land-bound threats; thus, local residents began moving to Mainland China. To ease the residents’ worries, Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang, Cheng Zuluo, worked together with Taiwan district government and the local gentry to launch a project to build an outer wall; the wall started from the Small West Gate encircling the Small North Gate and stretched to Laogushi. Three gates were set up along the wall - the small west gate (Diankun), the large west gate (Duiyue), and the small north gate (Gongqian). Thorny bamboo was planted with the wall and a moat was dug around the wall with water sluices installed. In addition, an artillery battery was built. Construction of the Duiyue Gate started in 1835 and was completed in the first month of the next year. Because the gate was located on the west side of the city, it was named Duiyue after the western direction of“Dui" in the eight Daoist trigrams. The base of the gate was built with cut coral stone and was therefore popularly known as the Coral Stone Outer Gate. Built with red bricks, the gate is four meters high and three meters deep. The gate entrance is three meters wide with a round arch at its top. A stairway for accessing the top of the wall was installed in the inner side of the gate. Starting in the Japanese colonial period, urban development led to the demolition of most of the wall gates. Only the Duiyue Gate remains today, along with a Stone Lion God and a stone inscription chronicling the road construction in Laogushi. It is also the only gate still open to pedestrians and motor traffic in the old Taiwan Prefecture City. The wall remains as a concrete testament to the city's outward expansion in response to the changes caused by the shift in maritime and land perimeters.

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