Tainan, Kaohsiung & the South

The Siraya and other lowland Austronesian peoples lived on the south-western plains when the Dutch East India Company arrived in 1624 and built Fort Zeelandia at Anping and later Fort Provintia across the lagoon. The Dutch brought in Han labourers from Fujian to grow rice and sugar. In 1662 the Ming loyalist Koxinga besieged Zeelandia and expelled them, and his family ruled from Tainan until the Qing took the island in 1683.

Tainan remained Taiwan's capital for two centuries, which is why it holds the island's densest concentration of old temples, including the Confucius Temple, founded in the 1660s. Dagou, today's Kaohsiung, was opened to foreign trade in the 1860s. In 1871 shipwrecked Ryukyuan sailors were killed by Paiwan villagers in the south, and Japan used the incident to launch an expedition to Pingtung in 1874.

Under Japanese rule Kaohsiung became a planned harbour and industrial city, and the Alishan Forest Railway was built to carry cypress timber down to Chiayi. After 1945 Kaohsiung grew into Taiwan's heavy-industry and shipping centre, and the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979, a crackdown on a pro-democracy rally, became a turning point for the opposition movement. The south has since been the stronghold of the Democratic Progressive Party.

The south is the heartland of Taiwanese Hokkien, spoken more widely and naturally here than in the north, and southerners are often characterised as warmer, more traditional and more attached to a Taiwanese identity. Religion is visible everywhere: Tainan has temples on nearly every block, and the calendar is full of processions, spirit mediums and temple theatre.

Some festivals are famous across Taiwan. The Yanshui beehive fireworks during the Lantern Festival fire rockets into crowds wearing helmets and protective clothing. Donggang in Pingtung and Xigang in Tainan hold boat-burning festivals for the Wangye plague gods, in which a large wooden ship is paraded and set on fire. Around Meinong and the Liudui area of Kaohsiung and Pingtung, Hakka communities keep their speech, tobacco-curing houses and oil-paper umbrella making.

The mountains of Pingtung and Kaohsiung are home to the Paiwan and Rukai, known for glass beads and carved wood, and the Bunun and Tsou live in the highlands of Kaohsiung and Chiayi's Alishan.

Kaohsiung, with about 2.7 million people, is the south's largest city and a major container port, with steel, shipbuilding and petrochemicals along its harbour. It has reinvented much of its waterfront with the Pier-2 district, a light rail and a concert centre. Tainan has about 1.8 million people and a growing chip industry at the Southern Taiwan Science Park, alongside its role as a cultural and university city.

Pingtung, with around 800,000, is agricultural — fruit, pigs, fish farms and the tuna port of Donggang — while Chiayi City, with about 260,000, is the market town for Chiayi County's rice, fruit and mountain villages.

Life is slower and less expensive than in Taipei. Tainan starts early, with beef soup and milkfish breakfasts, and families go out for evening snacks. Air pollution from industry and the ageing of rural areas are the south's main issues, along with water shortages in dry years and flood risk in typhoon season.

Tainan is widely regarded as Taiwan's food capital, and its cooking is sweeter than in the north. Breakfast is niu rou tang, raw sliced beef scalded with hot broth, or shimuyu, milkfish, in congee. Danzai noodles are small bowls of noodles topped with minced pork and a shrimp, and guan cai ban, "coffin bread", is a hollowed toast box filled with creamy seafood stew. Anping sells shrimp rolls and shrimp crackers, and mango shaved ice is a summer ritual, with Yujing's mangoes the most prized.

Kaohsiung is known for seafood and for its night markets, and Meinong's Hakka kitchens serve ban tiao, flat rice noodles. Pingtung is famous for Wanluan pig's knuckle, braised and served with garlic sauce, for Donggang's bluefin tuna and sakura shrimp, and for wax apples.

Chiayi's signature is huoji rou fan, rice topped with shredded turkey and a gravy of turkey drippings and soy sauce. Alishan's slopes produce high-mountain oolong and some coffee.

Tainan's old capital temples are the core: the Confucius Temple, the Grand Mazu Temple, the Official God of War Temple and Chihkan Tower on the site of Fort Provintia, with Shennong Street and the old canal district nearby. In Anping stand the brick remains of Fort Zeelandia and the banyan-covered Anping Tree House. The Qigu salt mountain and lagoon lie on the coast north of the city.

Kaohsiung's harbour has the Pier-2 Art Center in old warehouses, the ferry to Cijin Island, the former British consulate above the harbour mouth, and the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas on Lotus Pond. Fo Guang Shan monastery and its Buddha Museum sit inland, and Meinong's Hakka countryside lies to the north-east.

From Chiayi, the Alishan Forest Railway climbs through tropical, temperate and alpine forest to the Alishan recreation area, with giant red cypresses, sunrise over the sea of clouds and tea hills; the full line reopened in 2024 after long repairs from Typhoon Morakot. The National Palace Museum's Southern Branch is at Taibao.

In Pingtung, Kenting National Park at the southern tip of Taiwan has the beaches of Nanwan and Baisha, coral coast, the Eluanbi lighthouse and the sand slopes at Fongchueisha, while Little Liuqiu island, off Donggang, is known for sea turtles.