ALIEN Art Centre — From Military Waystation to Artistic Sanctuary

A military building constructed in 1967 that for thirty-one years watched countless soldiers board ships bound for Kinmen and Matsu. After sleeping for twenty years, it was awakened by a father-daughter team and is now Lonely Planet's "top choice art museum in Kaohsiung."

The Counter-intuitive Beginning

Standing at the entrance of 111 Gushan 1st Road in Kaohsiung, you see a gray building embraced by Shoushan forest, light filtering through its square courtyard corridors, exhibition halls displaying retrospectives of Italian Op Art masters. You probably wouldn't guess that sixty years ago, these same corridors were filled with twenty-year-old soldiers about to board ships to frontline outposts, their mothers crying and waving goodbye at the entrance, while military vessels rocked for thirty-six hours to reach Kinmen.

This is Taiwan's last surviving Cold War-era Kinmen-Matsu Guest House. The one in Keelung has been demolished; only Kaohsiung's remains standing—not because anyone deliberately preserved it, but because it was forgotten long enough for a hotel group founder to pass by and decide not to let it disappear.

A Building's Three Lives

First Life: Farewells and Reunions (1967-1998)

In 1959, the year after the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, Kaohsiung City government decided to build a guesthouse specifically for soldiers serving on the Kinmen and Matsu frontlines. But the construction site was filled fish ponds, requiring time for the foundation to stabilize—this wait lasted eight years.

On September 26, 1967, the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House, built by the Military Dependents' Association for NT$12 million, officially opened. It opened simultaneously with its counterpart in Keelung—one north, one south—serving the same purpose: providing temporary lodging for ROC military personnel who drew the "Kinmen-Matsu lottery"—three words that carried enormous weight for any young man doing mandatory service.

"Kinmen" (金門) referred to Kinmen Island, "Matsu" (馬祖) to the Matsu Islands. On the Cold War map, these belonged to the same era as the Berlin Wall and the 38th parallel.

Soldiers from across Taiwan would gather at Kaohsiung's Kinmen-Matsu Guest House, waiting for clear weather to set sail. On the road to the harbor, shop assistants would hawk their wares: "The boat ride takes a day and a half, there's no food on board—buy now if you need it!" The young soldiers would rush to purchase bread, soft drinks, and seasickness medicine. Then, at what is now Glory Pier—then Pier 13—they would board military vessels with trembling legs.

For thirty-one years, the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House witnessed countless farewells and reunions. These separations could last one year, two years, or longer. After parting, some lost their loves, others returned safely. Kaohsiung Port quietly observed it all.

Second Life: Forgotten (1998-2016)

In 1998, as cross-strait relations eased, the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House completed its mission. The building was transferred to the Ministry of Transportation's Railway Reconstruction Bureau, becoming headquarters for Kaohsiung's railway underground project. After the bureau moved out in 2012, this building that carried half a century of memories was left at the foot of Shoushan, weeds creeping up its corridors.

The Keelung Kinmen-Matsu Guest House was demolished during this period. Kaohsiung's survived only because its turn hadn't come yet.

Third Life: Light in the Ruins (2016-2018)

In 2016, Kaohsiung's Urban Development Bureau opened public bidding to attract private investment to revitalize this idle space. When Yu-Meng Group chairman Shaw Yung-tian (邵永添) and his daughter Shaw Ya-man (邵雅曼) first entered the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House, they saw an "almost ruined" building. All facilities had deteriorated, the entire structure virtually forgotten.

But Shaw Ya-man was captivated by the play of light and shadow.

"Looking out from the museum windows, the interweaving of forest and blue sky makes you feel as if you're in deep mountains far from the noise," she later said in a VERSE magazine interview. This military building, because of its proximity to Shoushan, possessed the natural environment that most urban museums could only dream of.

Yung-tian Art began restoration with the principle of "restoring the building's historical significance." They hired master craftsmen to use traditional methods, restoring the building's original terrazzo and pebble-dash textures. They even sourced discontinued white tiles to rebuild the corridors. But the biggest transformation wasn't renovation—it was opening. They converted the originally enclosed U-shaped military barracks into an open square-shaped courtyard, allowing wind and light to flow freely, letting exhibition spaces dialogue with Shoushan forest.

On November 28, 2018, the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House reopened as a contemporary art museum.

Why "ALIEN"?

The English name ALIEN Art Centre sounds like an extraterrestrial museum, but the naming inspiration came from Steven Spielberg's "E.T."—that moment when fingers touch. The management team explains: "ALIEN means facing the unknown."

This naming perfectly echoes the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House's history. The soldiers standing in this building in 1967 also faced the unknown—the unknown across the strait, the unknown of war, the unknown of whether they would return safely. Fifty years later, visitors to the same building face a different unknown: the perceptual boundaries opened by contemporary art.

One Building, Three Curatorial Layers

The Kinmen-Matsu Guest House's three floors each have distinct identities, like a book read backwards from future to history:

The first floor focuses on experimental art and diverse artistic experiments, responding to contemporary issues, frequently featuring new media art and sculpture.

The second floor is an applied arts space suitable for artists' career retrospectives, combined with the restaurant ALIEN All-Day Lounge—drinking coffee and eating Fujian-style sesame cakes with osmanthus honey soymilk (paying homage to Kinmen breakfast culture) in front of floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded by Shoushan greenery is one of this museum's most luxurious experiences.

The third floor offers the widest views, overlooking forest and sky, mostly displaying works with strong design sensibility and rich light-shadow variations.

Father-Daughter Partnership: From Wild to Zen

Behind the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House is an unusual father-daughter team. Father Shaw Yung-tian, founder of Yu-Meng Group, began painting at sixty and in just over a year explosively released creative energy accumulated over fifty years, painting more than two hundred works and even creating his own brushes and painting tools. Daughter Shaw Ya-man became CEO of Yung-tian Art in her twenties, aiming for international-standard curation.

The 2020 annual exhibition "Wild・Zen" was this father-daughter duo's first joint show. Spanning both the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House and Silks Club Hotel, the father's "wild"—business philosophy, worldly wisdom, explosive energy—formed a cross-generational dialogue with the daughter's "zen"—introspection, tranquility, pursuit of beauty.

Through his transformation from entrepreneur to artist, Shaw Yung-tian embodied the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House's core philosophy: art isn't a privilege for the few, but energy that can burst forth at any stage of life.

International Recognition and Challenges

Less than two years after opening, the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House won Shopping Design magazine's 2019 "Taiwan Humanistic Landscape Award." In 2020, the world's largest travel guide Lonely Planet rated it "Kaohsiung's top choice art museum." For a private museum without public or major corporate backing, this was extraordinary recognition.

Major exhibitions have included: collaboration with French curator Jérôme Neutres on "Arman: Thinking Objects" (2022-2023), featuring a complete retrospective of emerging artist Arman in East Asia; Italian Op Art master's first Taiwan exhibition "Responsive Visions: Getulio Alviani" (2023-2024); and "Infinite・Endless: Shaw Yung-tian" combining AI-generated imagery with musical interaction, co-curated by Shaw Ya-man and Lo He-lin.

But challenges are real. A private museum operating in Kaohsiung—not Taipei—faces sustainability questions. At NT$250, admission isn't cheap for southern Taiwan, and the viewing population base is far smaller than the capital's. Shaw Ya-man's response is to reach outward: actively collaborating with art institutions in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Amsterdam, London, and New York, exporting Taiwan's curatorial energy internationally.

The Building Itself is an Exhibit

Perhaps the most special thing about the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House isn't the works hanging on the walls, but the building itself.

Its facade combines three styles: Western modernist minimalist lines imported during the 1965 economic takeoff, shadows of Japanese colonial-era classical eclecticism, and Chinese classical architectural symbols. The fluid horizontal and vertical lines, arrayed columns, and positive-negative spatial interactions created by ribbon design—architectural historians would say its structure "resembles Mies van der Rohe's geometric compositions."

During restoration, Yung-tian Art chose formaldehyde-free paints, hormone-free building materials, and recycled wood display cases, making this sixty-year-old building a demonstration of low-carbon green architecture in Kaohsiung. The plantings established at opening have now merged with Shoushan forest, isolating urban noise outside.

From farewell waystation to artistic sanctuary, the Kinmen-Matsu Guest House's story is itself the finest artwork—about memory, forgetting, and rebirth.

References

1. Yung-tian Art・ALIEN Art Centre Official Website — Building History (Primary source: includes Kaohsiung History Museum archives, original 1959/1967 United Daily News and Economic Daily News reports)
2. Wikipedia — ALIEN Art Centre
3. VERSE Magazine — ALIEN Art Centre: Military Waystation's Metamorphosis into Artistic Palace (Shaw Ya-man interview)
4. Kaohsiung Pictorial — ALIEN Art Centre Integrates with Mountain Forest, Demonstrates Low-Carbon Green Aesthetics (2024, includes Lonely Planet recommendation, green building, three curatorial axes)
5. Shopping Design — Recommended by Lonely Planet! ALIEN Art Centre Revitalizes 1960s Military Site (2020)
6. Lonely Planet — ALIEN Art Centre (English source, international travel guide selection)
7. Shopping Design — Interview with Shaw Ya-man, the Force Behind Kaohsiung's ALIEN Art Centre (2021, three-tier curatorial structure)
8. 500 Times — Outstanding Person: Shaw Ya-man, Confident 28-Year-Old CEO (2021, Shaw Yung-tian's creative career)
9. 500 Times — ALIEN Art Centre "Wild・Zen" Shaw Yung-tian and Shaw Ya-man Joint Exhibition (2020)
10. Tatler Asia — Yu-Meng Group's Shaw Yung-tian and Shaw Ya-man: Father-Daughter Team Bringing Cultural Vitality to Kaohsiung (2024)
11. Harper's BAZAAR — 13 Must-Visit Cultural Buildings in Kaohsiung (2025, ALIEN Art Centre rated as must-visit)
12. ELLE — ALIEN Art Centre "Responsive Visions" Italian Op Art Master's First Taiwan Exhibition (2023, Jérôme Neutres curation)
13. Yu-Meng Group Official Website — Yung-tian Art・ALIEN Art Centre