A Staggering Number
How did Taiwanese people learn to live with earthquakes and typhoons?
The Revised Taiwan Provincial Chronicles contains a set of numbers that might leave you speechless:
Between 1909 and 1982, Taiwan recorded 17,564 felt earthquakes and 62,542 unfelt tremors.
That’s an average of two felt earthquakes every three days. You read that right.
On April 21, 1935, an earthquake killed 3,276 people. 12,053 were injured. 17,907 buildings were completely destroyed.
This isn’t tall tale—it’s the real living environment of Taiwanese people.
Taiwan’s “Hell Mode” Starting Point
If you treated Taiwan’s geographic location as a game starting point, you could call it “hell mode”:
First, it sits at the collision zone of two tectonic plates. The Eurasian Plate and Philippine Sea Plate are “squeezing and grinding” under Taiwan every day. This directly causes frequent earthquakes.
Second, it sits right on the main Pacific typhoon track. Between 1897 and 1979, 291 typhoons struck or passed near Taiwan. August was the most frequent month, with 91 occurrences.
Third, it rains incredibly much. Huoshaoliao in Pingxi, Taipei, receives 6,569 mm of annual rainfall. That’s like dumping water every single day.
Facing such “hell mode,” how did Taiwanese people survive?
From “Divine Punishment” to “Data”
Ancient people didn’t understand these natural phenomena, so they called them “divine punishment.”
But the compilers of the Revised Taiwan Provincial Chronicles did something more important: they started counting.
They recorded earthquake frequencies, death tolls, and collapsed building counts. They recorded typhoon paths, landing locations, and economic losses.
This wasn’t theology—it was data thinking.
During the Qing Dynasty, the government’s best response was post-disaster “exemption”—tax relief and grain distributions. Passive, but better than nothing.
By the modern era, with weather stations and seismological observatories, the governance logic shifted: from “post-disaster relief” to “pre-disaster prevention.”
1935: The Earthquake That Changed Everything
The 1935 Hsinchu-Taichung earthquake was a turning point in Taiwan’s disaster history.
3,276 deaths. This number shocked the entire island.
From then on, Taiwan began taking building seismic standards seriously. Building codes established during Japanese rule became the foundation for the later Measures for Natural Disaster Prevention and Reconstruction.
Disasters themselves have no meaning—only the changes they bring about matter.
What Typhoons Taught Taiwan
291 typhoons taught Taiwanese people three things:
First, not all typhoons are the same. Path 2 (landing from the east) caused the most severe agricultural damage, with economic losses reaching NT$13.9 billion. Path 3 (crossing through the south) was the most frequent, accounting for 30.9%.
Knowing where the danger is highest allows limited disaster prevention resources to be used where they matter most.
Second, extreme wind speeds can be measured. In 1955, Lanyu recorded a gust of 65.7 m/s. This number became an important parameter for Taiwan’s wind-resistant engineering standards.
Data isn’t just for recording history—it’s for designing the future.
Third, Sun Moon Lake isn’t just scenic. It’s a massive water infrastructure project that generates electricity while balancing flood control and drought mitigation. Multi-functional infrastructure is a powerful tool for climate adaptation.
The Tsunami Warning
What Taiwanese people should never forget is the 1867 Keelung tsunami.
That tsunami, triggered by an offshore earthquake, affected the coastal area from Keelung to Jinshan, killing over 100 people.
This reminds us: coastal cities must have multi-layered evacuation routes. Tsunamis triggered by offshore earthquakes can be more deadly than the earthquakes themselves.
But such disasters may have return periods exceeding a century. If we ignore ancient records in local chronicles, modern sea-wall designs will have fatal blind spots.
Historical data is the best disaster prevention guide.
The disaster data in the Revised Taiwan Provincial Chronicles isn’t meant to scare you—it’s meant to tell you:
Taiwanese people survived in such an environment, not by luck, but by resilience.
Disaster mitigation isn’t about conquering nature—it’s about using every data point from history to correct our over-extension onto the land.
To respect disaster data is to build a breathable, flexible city of survival for future generations.