Songshan (Taipeh) 4.32

Songshan District is a district of Taipei, Taiwan. The name of the district is historically spelled Sungshan. The Songshan Airport and the Taipei Arena are located here.HistorySongshan was originally named Malysyakkaw, a lowland Ketagalan word meaning "Where the river twists". Its written form was abbreviated in 1815 during Qing rule.During Japanese rule (1895-1945) the area served as a prime tea-growing area in northern Taiwan. In 1920 the area's settlements were established as Matsuyama Village, Shichisei District, Taihoku Prefecture. The village, named after Matsuyama City in Japan, was incorporated into Taihoku City (modern-day Taipei) in 1938.At the outset of one-party rule by the Kuomintang (1945-1990) the Mandarin Chinese reading of the kanji characters 松山 (i.e. Sung-shan) was adopted as the name of the district which in 1946 officially comprised 26 municipal villages (里). In 1949 the area's tea estates gave way to military housing for lower-income Kuomintang refugee families. The bodies of many residents and political victims from Taiwan's martial law period are buried in hillside cemeteries that now overlook the Taipei 101 shopping district. By 1980 Songshan was the most populous area of the city.