Pingtung County

Pingtung (Wade–Giles: Pʻing²-tung¹) is a county located in southern Taiwan. It has a warm tropical monsoon climate and is known for its agriculture and tourism. Kenting National Park, Taiwan's oldest national park, is located in the county. The county seat is Pingtung City.

The name Pingtung means "east of Banping mountain", referring to a nearby mountain known as Banping mountain (Chinese: 半屏山; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Pòaⁿ-pêng-soaⁿ).

Aboriginal inhabitants of Liuqiu Island (13 km [8.1 mi] southwest of Taiwan, and now part of Pingtung County) killed Dutch sailors on two occasions. In response, in the spring of 1636, Dutch sailors carried out a punitive campaign that became known as the Lamey Island Massacre.

Modern-day Pingtung County and Kaohsiung City were part of Banlian-chiu (萬年州; Bān-liân-chiu) during the Kingdom of Tungning (1661–1683) and Fongshan Prefecture (鳳山縣; Hōng-soaⁿ-koān) during Qing dynasty rule (1683–1895).

Until the seventeenth century, this area of Taiwan was a place of exile for Chinese criminals and the occasional landing point for international mariners. Only the settlements near present-day Checheng Township existed. In 1664, the Hakka settlers arrived from mainland China and farmed under a homesteading system introduced by Zheng Jing.

Pingtung City, the biggest city in Pingtung County, also known as "A-Kau" (阿猴; A-kâu, English: the forest), was the home of Taiwanese Plains Aborigines.

In 1684, settlers from China's southern Fujian region created the first Han Chinese villages near Pingtung. By 1734, most of the Pingtung Plain was cultivated, and Pingtung was expanded in 1764. In 1836, the government and locals worked together to build the city's four walls (the North Gate, the East Gate, the West Gate, and the South gate), and the roads were completed.

In March 1867, fourteen American sailors were killed near Kenting by local aborigines in the Rover incident, which lead to the failed American Formosa Expedition three months later. In 1871, local aborigines killed 54 sailors from Ryukyu in the Mudan Incident. The Japanese carried out a punitive campaign against the local aborigines in the 1874 Japanese invasion of Taiwan.