Tainan City Museum opens as Tainan sets to mark 400th birthday

Taipei, Dec. 22 (CNA) The Tainan City Museum, formerly the Koxinga Museum, opened in its new form Friday morning, ahead of Tainan marking its 400th birthday in 2024.

After nearly three years of renovations, The Koxinga Museum has been transformed into the Tainan City Museum which consists of four sites: the Tainan City Museum, the Tainan City Zuojhen Fossil Park, the Tainan Shan-Shang Garden and Old Waterworks Museum, and the Tapani Incident Memorial Park.

Deputy Culture Minister Sue Wang (王時思) said at the opening ceremony that the integration of the sites will bring culture into people's lives and that she hopes to see cultural governance being prioritized in every Taiwanese city and country.

Wang added that exploring culture allows Taiwanese people to learn more about their homeland and that knowledge leads to a sense of identity and confidence.

The museum houses around 5,500 artifacts spanning from prehistoric to modern times, with the collections telling numerous stories, including the interactions between the Dutch and Indigenous people, how the Qing Empire extended its reign over Taiwan, and the transformative changes brought by the arrival of the Japanese people, according to the Tainan City Government.

Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) and the Director of the National Palace Museum Hsiao Tsung-huang (蕭宗煌) were also in attendance.

Huang said the transformation of the Tainan City Museum and the inclusion of different sites and museums is an act of cultural heritage preservation, and gives citizens the chance to interact with cultural relics.

In the museum's opening permanent exhibition "Creating Tainan: Our History" and a special exhibition titled "Traditional Grocery Stores," the story of Tainan's development over the past 400 years is told, including how diverse groups of people arrived in the country and the resulting range of cultures.

In addition to curating exhibitions, the museum is also starting its own brand "南博ONE," (similar pronunciation to "number one") in a bid to make Tainan the first museum city in Taiwan, the Tainan City Government said.