Travel – Emerging Kaohsiung City (高雄) (Part 1)

Kaohsiung City is by no means a pretty city, but it has made great leaps in the last couple of decades. It has even made the New York Times’ “52 Places to Love in 2021”. Kaohsiung is where my family and I were based during our time away from home and it is also where I spent the first seven formative years of my life. Much has changed since those days, but the city still retains the relaxed (and laxed) attitudes of the locals and deep-rooted traditions of the Taiwanese version of Taoism. Temples large and small can be found in every corner of the city, some dating back three and four hundred years.

Kaohsiung was one of the busiest ports in the world at one time as massive freight ships delivered anything and everything “Made in Taiwan,” for those old enough to remember that period. Nowadays, its shipping prowess has waned somewhat as Taiwan focuses more on high tech than manufacturing.

The city has always played the ugly sister to the more cosmopolitan Taipei to the north. That has started to change as the local government has undertaken ambitious construction projects to improve the city’s image and cultural venues. These include the two latest music venues, Weiwuying Arts Center and the Pop Music Center, that were completed in 2019 and 2020 respectively (however inopportune the timing), a dramatic exhibition hall and the National Stadium with a beautifully arranged solar system across the roof, reminiscent of scales along the spine of a dragon.

The city also has added a subway system, a tram, efficient bike share system and revitalized its dilapidated warehouse and harbor area into a cultural center for the arts–all within the last two decades.

I found out recently that Kaohsiung was called “Ta-kau” (打狗) all the way up to the Japanese occupation, having derived the name phonetically from the original aboriginal name for the area. Interestingly, the name literally means “Hit a Dog,” which is disconcerting to see in a city name. The current name of 高雄 was adopted during the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan (pronounced “Takao” in Japanese and “Kaohsiung” in Mandarin) at the turn of the 19th century.

Like many revitalization efforts of industrialized cities, there’s been a focus on installing more public art to the city which can be seen at Pier 2 and all around the city in the form of large-scale graffiti art and sculptures. The metro stations themselves are beautiful feats of architecture and so are many of the new event spaces.

Along with the public art installations, the city is also trying to appeal to the Instagram crowd with Instagram-ready installations and interactive art.