Taiwan imports almost all of its energy. That fact can make the island’s own oil history feel easy to forget. In Miaoli County, ChuHuangKeng is Taiwan’s most important early oil site. Local sources sometimes refer it as the first modern oil well area in East Asia. Labels can be disputed, but the place significance is without any doubt. It tells Taiwan’s main petroleum story for more than a century, from the 1861 discovery in the late Qing period, through Japanese rule, and all the way into the s...