KAOHSIUNG/TAINAN Station, is at the heart of a culturalcreative bloom underway in both district and city. The special zone has become one of Kaohsiung’s most popular cultural attractions. The numerous old, renovated Kaohsiung Harbor warehouses here, long abandoned, were formerly used to store such treasures as f ish meal and granulated sugar. Today they are dedicated to cultural-arts treasures, including exhibits, live shows, and largescale outdoor installation artworks and graff iti-style murals. In one warehouse is a museum dedicated to Kaohsiung labor. Half of another – roof torn down to allow for under-the-sky entertainment – is now the Kaohsiung base for The Wall, a keystone in Taiwan’s indie-music scene. There are also arts and craf ts boutiques showcasing independent Taiwan design talent. Hungry folk can dine at Pasadena, a place of pastelneon lighting, tiffany glass, dark wood, and Western family fare that looks as though airlif ted direct f rom some North American downtown district.
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Kaohsiung’s popular harbor-area bikeway rolls r ight by the art center and museum, the section here running where the trains that once ser ved these facil ities trundled along. There are a number of bike-rental facil ities close by. In 2010 CN N Travel declared Kaohsiung one of Asia’s f ive best biking cities.
The ref iner y is, at the same time, a cultural-creative complex. Bywood, a private initiative, leases a number of facilities. It runs an artist-inresidence program, w ith both local and international talent participating, and stages periodic arts happenings. You’ ll see artists at work in studios in var ying locations throughout the complex, including the warehouses, and see intriguing installation works. Bywood also has a galler y w ith a comf y café; admittance is f ree, w ith advance notice requested. The ref iner y also has a regular schedule of culturalarts performances at an attractive restaurant/theater in one of the warehouses, and the celebrated Taiwan performance troupe Ten Drum Percussion Art has set up a base here.
Ciaotou KMRT Station
Bywood (白屋) Add: 1, Lane 4, Xingtang Rd., Qiaotou District, Kaohsiung City (高雄市橋頭區興糖路4巷1號) Tel: (07) 611-4998
ng ta ng Rd
Qiaotou Sugar Refinery, in the city’s rural north area, conveniently has its very own KMRT station. The ref inery was opened in 1901 by the Japanese, introducing modern mass-production technique to the industry. Its f inal day of production was in 1999. A designated heritage site, on the sprawling grounds you f ind numerous colonial-style century buildings, including off ices, dormitories, and warehouses. The complex is a museum, and there is information on Taiwan’s sugar-manufacturing history, sugarcane cultivation, the aforementioned architecture, and other highlight attractions such as two original Belgian steam locomotives imported in 1948, Taiwan’s f irst sugarindustry narrow-gauge railway line
(also used for passenger travel), WW II above-ground bomb shelters, and restored production-line equipment.
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to the north of Pier-2’s north warehouse cluster is Takao Railway Museum. This was Kaohsiung’s f irst railway station, and long a key hub in south Taiwan’s landsea transportation. The station, Japanese in style with a Chinese hip-style roof,
was targeted and severely damaged by Allied bombing in WW II. Later rebuilt, it was f inally retired and became a museum in 2010. There are exhibit rooms, a railway-document archive, and a platform and track area.
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At Qiaotou Sugar Refinery you'll find numerous colonialstyle century buildings, including offices, dormitories, and warehouses