Beigang 北港 (and Bengang 笨港, Wanggang 魍港 and Vasikan 貓兒干)

Beigang: (北港; lit. “North Port”; c.f. Nangang 南港; “South Port”)

Over the last four centuries, “north harbor” (北港; Hoklo Pak-kang; Mdn. Beigang) has referred to a number of places, even, as missionary/writer Rev. Wm. Campbell explains, to the whole of Taiwan:

“According to early Chinese accounts, the name Pak-kang […] was first given to what is now known as Kelung, this name afterwards coming to mean the whole of Formosa […] and it is easy to understand how junk-men would come to speak of crossing to Pak-kang when they really intended to call in at other little landing-places.”
- (Explanatory Notes to “Formosa under the Dutch”; 1903)

Other possible locations therefore include,
i) Keelung, as well as
ii) Danshui,
iii) the whole of northern Taiwan,
iv) Wanggang (魍港) an area now in today’s Tainan, and,
v) the town of Beigang in southern Yunlin County, the only one to bear this name today.

Beigang (北港; lit. “North Port”), is one part of former Bengang (笨港; lit. “Stupid Port”), formerly the Hongya (洪雅) aboriginal area of Vasikan (貓兒干) .

Bengang was the location of the first mass immigration of Han Chinese into Taiwan, when Yan Siqi (顏思齊) from Zhangzhou (漳州) and Koxinga’s father, Zheng Zhilong (鄭芝龍) from Quanzhou (泉州) brought around 3,000 Fujianese to ‘open land for cultivation’, early in the Tianqi reign period (天啟; 1620–1627) toward the end of the Ming dynasty.

Early in the Qing dynasty (1683-1895 on Taiwan), the city, twinned with Fujian’s Xiamen, was the sole officially sanctioned port for import and export of goods, and so prospered greatly; hence the expression “First Fu, second Ben” (一府二笨 ; as Bengang was second in importance to Fu-cheng, the island’s government-capital, now Tainan; also c.f. the later, 19th-century expression “First Fu, second Lu[gang], third Manga [now Taipei’s Wanhua] (一府二鹿三艋舺).

Flooding and realignment of the Bengang (now Beigang 北港溪) River led to the division of the city into two parts, one on the north bank, one on the south. When ethnic tension between between immigrants and their descendants from the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou areas of China’s Fujian Province, descended into fighting between clans with the family names of Wu (吳) and Cai (蔡), it resulted in the Quanzhou people occupying the northern Benbeigang (笨北港; whence today’s Beigang), and the Zhangzhou people taking southern Bennangang (笨南港; which today is Chiayi County’s Xingang: 新港; “New Port”).



Bengang (笨港; lit. “Stupid Port”) is the former name of the twin towns of Beigang (北港) and Xingang (新港) straddling the Beigang River at the border of Yunlin (雲林) and Chiayi (嘉義) counties.

It appeared on 17th-century Dutch maps as “Pongkang” (and similar spellings), and is conjectured to derive from a local Plains Aboriginal name, probably at a nearby but not identical location. This was transliterated to Chinese characters as 笨港, for which the Hoklo pronunciation is now pūn-káng (and Mdn. Beigang).

Conclusion:
i) Most likely an aboriginal tribe name [MC: why not Vasikan?] became
ii) Pongkang on Dutch maps and Pun-kang in Hoklo Chinese;
iii) this split into northern (Pun-pak-kang) and southern parts;
iv) Pun-pak-kang was shortened to Pak-kang;
v) Mandarin pronunciation of Hoklo Pak-kang is Beigang.


Wanggang (魍港; lit. “Wang [a kind of monster] Harbor), an area around today’s Beimen (北門) District in Tainan).



Vasikan (貓兒干) Culture is a prehistoric archaeological culture from the Metal Age (or Iron Age) approximately 800-400 years ago. The culture was mainly distributed in Lunbei (崙背) and the Mailiao (麥寮) alluvial plain along the river in Yunlin (雲林) County on the south bank of the the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪). Major sites include the Vikisan (Kanding, 崁頂) , Fengrong (豐榮), Leicuo (雷厝), and Shicuoliao (施厝寮) sites, all of which are clustered together.



Text and photos copyright Jiyue Publications