Chiayi.

Chiayi sits on the Chianan Plain in southwestern Taiwan, with the mountains of Alishan rising to the east. It was the Hoanya settlement of Tirosen, became a Qing county seat, and was renamed Chiayi in 1787. A severe earthquake destroyed much of the town in 1906, and the Japanese rebuilt it around the railway. That railway, built to haul cypress from the mountains, still starts here and still climbs to 2,216 metres.