Published : 02/01/2026
When one speaks of Chaozhou, many people think of Chaozhou City in the Chaoshan area of eastern Guangdong. But do you know that on the other side of the strait, in Taiwan Province, there is also a Chaozhou.....
A large township of 50,000 people in Pingtung County
Taiwan's Chaozhou is in Pingtung in the south, and it is a township with a population of about 50,000. The area is rich in fruit and vegetables, and is particularly famous for its pineapples.
There are many identical place names in China. Is it a coincidence that Guangdong's Chaozhou and Taiwan's Chaozhou share the same name? No, it should be said that the place name of Taiwan's Chaozhou was copied from Guangdong's Chaozhou.
The Qing Dynasty reclaimed Taiwan during the Kangxi Emperor's reign. After that, people from Fujian and Guangdong, in search of a livelihood, successively crossed the strait to the east to reclaim land on the island of Taiwan, which was under the jurisdiction of Fujian Province at the time.
Read more: Is There a City Called "Chaoshan"? No! ｜ Chaoshan Part One
Settlers copied hometown's place names
At that time, many people from Guangdong who crossed the strait east to Taiwan came from Chaozhou Prefecture (roughly the area of the present-day prefecture-level cities of Shantou, Chaozhou, and Jieyang in eastern Guangdong).
Having left their homes, they inevitably missed their native place, so they copied their hometown's place name to their new settlement, and this is the origin of today's Chaozhou Township in Pingtung.
There are quite a few other place names in Taiwan that originate from the Chaoshan area of Guangdong, but for some reasons, many were incorrectly written using characters with similar pronunciations.
For example, Chenghaicuo in Yunlin originates from Chenghai in Chaozhou Prefecture. Pulingcuo originates from Puning, and Jiyanglun in Hsinchu originates from Jieyang, and so on.
As times have changed over several hundred years, the descendants of the early Chaozhou people who migrated to Taiwan have long since made a foreign land their home. The vast majority have completely integrated into the local Minnan or Hakka ethnic groups, and traces of Chaozhou culture are now hard to find.
The Three-Mountain Kings Originated in Eastern Guangdong
Today, the remaining historical traces of the Chaozhou people's eastern crossing to Taiwan are perhaps only place names like Chaozhou Township and the belief in the Three-Mountain Kings, which originated in the eastern Guangdong region.
In addition, under similar historical circumstances, there are many other examples of Taiwan copying mainland place names.
Reports have pointed out that many people in Taiwan Province have ancestral roots in Quanzhou, Fujian, so there are as many as nine places named Quanzhou locally. Residents with ancestral roots in Zhaoan and Dongshan, Fujian, are also numerous, thus there are place names such Zhaoan and Dongshan.
Of course, these are mostly small places with smaller populations and are not as well-known as Chaozhou Township in Pingtung.