Kaohsiung

The harbour began as a settlement of the Makatao people, whose name for the place Chinese explorers wrote as Dagou and the Japanese authorities changed to Takao in 1920. Han settlers arrived in numbers in the 17th and 18th centuries and the Qing built a walled garrison town inland at Zuoying and later at Fengshan, while the lagoon itself stayed a modest anchorage. After the Treaty of Peking of 1860 the Qing opened Takau to foreign trade, and the British consulate moved there in 1864, taking a residence on the bluff above the harbour mouth; sugar, rice and camphor went out through the port.

Japanese rule made the modern city. From the early 1900s engineers dredged the lagoon, finishing the first stage of the works in 1908, built quays and breakwaters, laid out a grid on reclaimed land at Yancheng and connected the harbour to the west coast railway, turning Takao into Taiwan's southern port and an industrial base with cement, aluminium and sugar refining. Heavy American bombing in 1944 and 1945 destroyed much of it. Renamed Kaohsiung after 1945, the city became the engine of Taiwan's export economy: the China Steel works, shipyards, the petrochemical complexes and, from 1967, an export processing zone.

Growth brought pollution and political tension. On 10 December 1979 a rally organised by the Formosa magazine ended in clashes and mass arrests; the Kaohsiung Incident and the trials that followed became a turning point for the democracy movement, and several defendants and defence lawyers later led the country. Since the 1990s the city has reworked what heavy industry left behind — warehouses into the Pier-2 district, a cleaned-up Love River, an arts centre on a former military site, and an underground railway whose old tracks became a linear park.

Kaohsiung's culture is that of a working port: direct, informal and proud of having built things. Taiwanese Hokkien is heard everywhere, the pace is slower than Taipei's, and evenings are spent outdoors at markets, on the harbour walk or by the river. The city has a strong Democratic Progressive Party tradition and a political memory shaped by 1979, marked in museums and in the naming of streets and parks.

The arts have become central to how the city presents itself. Pier-2 fills old warehouses with studios and galleries, the music centre and the Weiwuying arts complex draw performances that once went only to the capital, and the film festival has a reputation for experiment. Large outdoor concerts and festivals in the harbour district are a fixture of the cooler months.

Religious life is as dense as elsewhere in the south. Temples to Mazu and to the Wangye plague gods are scattered through the harbour districts, Lotus Pond is lined with shrines, and Fo Guang Shan, whose monastery in the hills inland is the largest in Taiwan, was founded there in 1967. Hakka communities around Meinong keep their language, umbrella-making and paper crafts, and Indigenous Bunun and Rukai villages lie in the mountain districts that the municipality absorbed in 2010.

About 2.7 million people live in the municipality, which reaches from the coast into the mountains and includes farming districts as well as the port. The economy still rests on the harbour — one of the busiest container ports in the world — and on steel, shipbuilding, petrochemicals and machinery, with technology investment, shipping services and tourism growing. The naval base at Zuoying makes the city a military centre as well.

Life runs on scooters, the metro and the light rail. Breakfast shops open early with soy milk, rice rolls and egg pancakes; the working day ends with markets and food streets filling from six; and the waterfront is busiest after dark, when the heat drops. Housing is mostly mid-rise flats, cheaper than in Taipei, and many families live in the newer eastern districts and commute towards the harbour.

Heavy industry has left a legacy the city is still managing. Air pollution, petrochemical safety — gas explosions beneath city streets in 2014 killed dozens and reshaped the debate — and the cost of cleaning contaminated land are persistent issues, alongside an ageing population and the loss of young workers to the north. Typhoon flooding and water shortages in dry years affect the whole plain, and the closure or relocation of older plants remains a live argument about jobs against air quality.

Kaohsiung eats late, cheaply and outdoors. Night markets are the backbone: Liuhe near the centre and the bigger Ruifeng in Zuoying, along with neighbourhood markets that appear on set evenings. Grilled squid, oyster omelettes, fried chicken cutlets, stinky tofu, sausages wrapped in glutinous rice and papaya milk are the standard run, and southern seasoning is sweeter than in the north.

Seafood is the city's strength. The Cijin waterfront is the best-known place to eat it, with tanks of clams, crab, squid and fish cooked simply, and harbour districts sell milkfish, cured mullet roe and shrimp rolls. Local specialities include duck rice, meat-and-rice bowls with braised pork, sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves, and thick soups of fish or squid thickened with starch.

Inland districts bring their own food into the city. Meinong's Hakka kitchens serve ban tiao, flat rice noodles in broth or fried with pork and vegetables, along with preserved vegetables and stewed pork; Cishan is associated with sugar, with sweets made from it and with ice cream. Fruit is a constant — mangoes, wax apples, pineapples, custard apples and lychees from the surrounding plain — eaten fresh, blended into drinks or heaped onto shaved ice in summer.