Tainan is the oldest city in Taiwan. The town was initially established by the Dutch East India Company as a ruling and trading base called Fort Zeelandia during the period of Dutch rule on Taiwan. After Dutch colonists were defeated by Koxinga in 1661, Tainan remained as the capital of the Tungning Kingdom until 1683 and afterwards the capital of Taiwan prefecture under the rule of the Qing Dynasty until 1887, when the new provincial capital was moved to Taipei.

Koxinga (Lord of the Imperial Surname) is the customary Western spelling of the popular appellation of Zheng Chenggong, a Chinese military leader who was born in 1624 in Hirado, Japan to Chinese merchant/pirate Zheng Zhilong and his Japanese wife, and died in 1662 on the Island of Formosa (Taiwan).

A Ming loyalist and the chief commander of the Ming troops on the maritime front for the later emperors of the withering dynasty, Koxinga devoted the last 16 years of his life to resisting the conquest of China by the Manchus.