Taipei
Beitou
A volcanic valley north of central Taipei, where hot-spring bathhouses line the lanes and a 1913 public bath has become a museum.
Taiwan through its ports, coasts and streets
Taiwan.
Follow the cargo, the stone, the timber and the lanes that hold a place together.
Begin in Dadaocheng, where a river port left its shape in shop-houses and tea stores. From there, four reading threads move through Taiwan by specific objects and places: cargo at old ports, materials given another use, coasts lived beside, and temples woven into street life.
Taipei
Dadaocheng
The tea and cloth trade left its mark on Dihua Street’s shopfronts. Begin here to see how commerce, worship and daily life share the same street.
Explore placePlaces to begin
River streets, mountain rails and island shores.
Changhua
Lukang
A Qing-era harbour town of narrow lanes, old temples and craft shops, preserved by its own decline.
Penghu
Magong
The capital of Penghu, built around a Mazu temple that may be the oldest in Taiwan.
Chiayi
Alishan Forest Railway
A 71.6-kilometre narrow-gauge line from Chiayi to the Alishan resort, built for cypress logging and now a tourist railway.
Hualien
Taroko Gorge
A marble canyon cut by the Liwu River, with trails, shrines and cliffs inside a 92,000-hectare national park.
Kaohsiung
Pier-2
A row of 1973 harbour warehouses in Kaohsiung, reopened as galleries, studios and a railway museum.
Four ways into the stories
Follow a subject that catches your interest, or open a city to browse all its stories.
Ports, cargo and the changing shore
Tea and cloth passed through Dadaocheng, while Lukang’s harbour gradually silted up. Forts above the water tell other port histories. Follow the places where cargo, streets and daily life met.
The tea street by the river
Dadaocheng turned a riverbank into Taipei's tea and cloth market in the 1860s. Dihua Street still sells the goods, and the City God still watches over its lanes.
The port that lost the sea
Lukang was Taiwan’s second-largest city in 1800. Its harbour silted up, and its old lanes remain.
The river mouth at Tamsui
A fort, a consulate, a missionary's schools and an old street face the sea where the Tamsui River ends.
A port between hills
Keelung's harbour is a deep bay with the city packed into the few flat streets behind it. The temple night market is the old core's kitchen.
The fort at the edge of the map
The Dutch built a headquarters on a sandbar at Anping. The sea has since retreated, leaving a fort, a tree house and a street of food stalls.
Materials made useful again
Paper workshops in Puli, railway buildings in Taitung and cypress dormitories in Chiayi reveal how familiar materials and old structures find new uses.
Paper, after the earthquake
The 1999 earthquake flattened much of Puli. Taomi Village rebuilt around a paper church, and the town's paper mills turned toward visitors.
The station that became a studio
Taitung moved its railway out of the city centre and kept the old station. The platforms, warehouses and tracks are now an art village.
The forest officers' quarter
A block of Japanese cypress dormitories in Chiayi has been restored as a village of craft shops, small museums and tea rooms.
The warehouses that outlived the cargo
Pier-2's sheds were built for shipping in 1973. When the port moved on, artists moved in, and the city turned the row into an art centre.
Coasts, rock and the people who live beside them
Marble, basalt, tidal flats and steep sea cliffs shape distinct lives and landscapes. Read each coast on its own terms, from the eastern gorge to the western wetland and the islands offshore.
The gorge cut through marble
The Liwu River has cut a canyon through marble in eastern Taiwan. Taroko is both a national park and a Truku homeland, with roads shaped by the challenges of the terrain.
The road under the wall
The Suhua Highway passes below Qingshui Mountain, whose summit is 2,408 metres above sea level. The coastal cliff has an elevation difference of about 800 metres.
The island across the bridge
Heping Island is a short bridge from Keelung, with a wave-cut platform of mushroom rocks and the site of a seventeenth-century Spanish fort.
The flat that the tide keeps remaking
Gaomei is a tidal wetland built from river silt and sorted daily by the sea. A boardwalk now carries visitors over the mud.
The fish traps of Wang'an
On a small island group in southern Penghu, farmers built stone walls across the tidal flats to trap fish. Some are still repaired each year.
Temples threaded through streets
Mazu temples watch over harbour towns, lanterns light old trading lanes, and towers rise beside Lotus Pond. Explore the worship and daily life that surround them.
The goddess who kept the harbour
Lukang Tianhou Temple is among Taiwan's oldest Mazu temples. Its halls, carvings and statues record three centuries of a seafaring town.
The lane above the buried canals
Shennong Street was a trading lane on the Five Channels. The water is gone, but the wooden shophouses and the dockworkers' temple remain.
The lake of seven-storey towers
Lotus Pond in Zuoying is ringed with temples. The Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, built in 1976, are entered through a dragon's mouth and left through a tiger's.
Basalt, wind and the sea goddess
Penghu is a volcanic archipelago of ninety islands, with columnar basalt, a temple older than most of Taiwan's, and a wind that never stops.
Explore all twelve cities
Enter a city to discover its places and complete article library, from riverside streets to mountain forests and offshore islands.
Taipei
A basin city of river ports, temple lanes and museums, ringed by hills and joined to the coast by two rivers.
Browse all storiesNew Taipei
The municipality around Taipei holds river mouths, gold-mining hills, ceramic towns and a long rocky coast.
Browse all storiesKeelung
A rainy harbour city pressed between hills, with a night market around a temple and an island in the harbour mouth.
Browse all storiesTaichung
A basin city laid out on a Japanese grid, with old markets, restored waterways and wetlands at the river mouth.
Browse all storiesNantou
A mountain county of lakes, tea slopes and paper villages, with the island's geographic centre in a basin.
Browse all storiesChanghua
A coastal plain county south of the Dadu River, with an old port town that kept its lanes by losing its trade.
Browse all storiesTainan
The island's oldest city, with Dutch forts, a Qing academy, temple lanes and a harbour that silted into streets.
Browse all storiesKaohsiung
Taiwan’s largest port, where former warehouses have become cultural spaces and lakeside temples remain places of worship.
Browse all storiesChiayi
A city on the plain at the foot of Alishan, where the forest railway begins and cypress dormitories have become a craft village.
Browse all storiesHualien
A long county on the Pacific coast, between a marble gorge and the sea, with the island's steepest mountain wall behind it.
Browse all storiesTaitung
A sparsely settled county of rice valleys, indigenous communities and a coast facing the Pacific.
Browse all storiesPenghu
An archipelago of ninety islands in the Taiwan Strait, with basalt cliffs, old temples and a wind that shapes everything.
Browse all storiesPhoto credits and rights
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The shop-houses of Dihua Street, with their patterned brick fronts.Supanut Arunoprayote · CC BY 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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The Beitou Hot Spring Museum, the 1913 public bath the Japanese authorities built over the sulfur springs.Allervous / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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The courtyard of Lukang Longshan Temple, with its bronze incense burner.Zairon / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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Inside the Penghu Tianhou Temple in Magong, with the red lanterns and the incense urn.舟集 Boattoad / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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A station on the Alishan forest railway, its wooden platform under the trees.CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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The red suspension bridge crosses the Liwu River at Taroko Gorge.CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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The warehouse lane of the Pier-2 art district, with the old sheds on both sides.ABOVE THE SKY / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗