Kaohsiung City: In 1979, the Year It Became a Direct-Controlled Municipality, Eight Kaohsiung People Were Imprisoned in Taipei

30-second overview: On July 1, 1979, Kaohsiung was upgraded into Taiwan’s second direct-controlled municipality, following Taipei in 1967. On December 10 of the same year, Human Rights Day, a Formosa Magazine speech at Dagangpu traffic circle turned into a clash under tear gas. On April 18, 1980, a military court delivered its verdicts: Shih Ming-teh received life imprisonment; Huang Hsin-chieh received fourteen years; Yao Chia-wen, Chang Chun-hung, Lin Yi-hsiung, Lu Hsiu-lien, Chen Chu, and Lin Hung-hsuan each received twelve-year prison sentences. In the early morning of February 28, 1980, at the Lin family home at No. 16, Lane 31, Section 3, Xinyi Road, Taipei, Lin Yi-hsiung’s mother and twin daughters were murdered. Three wounds, all connected to Kaohsiung, this newly upgraded municipality. Its 2.71 million people are spread across 38 districts, where sandbars, Bunun communities, steelmaking smokestacks, and aluminum-alloy roofs share the same municipal coordinates. This article argues that Kaohsiung is both a wound in Taiwan’s democracy and the physical mass of the island’s industrialization.

4:30 a.m., Qianzhen Fishing Port

If you ask someone from Kaohsiung when the city is at its most captivating, they will not say Liuhe Night Market. Liuhe Night Market is for tourists. They may tell you about Qianzhen Fishing Port at 4:30 a.m., or the Gushan Ferry at 5 a.m.

Qianzhen Fishing Port is in Qianzhen District, Taiwan’s largest distant-water fishing base. Tuna longliners set out from here to the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, and the South Pacific, returning only after six months to a year. Most fishery workers are Indonesian or Filipino; their speech mixes Taiwanese, English, and their own mother tongues. On unloading days, the port fills with frozen tuna, bodies larger than people, carried one by one onto the auction floor. The tuna a Taipei sushi restaurant will serve tonight may have been caught two weeks earlier off Madagascar.

The Gushan Ferry runs every three minutes. From Gushan to Cijin takes five minutes, and the fare is NT$40. The first ferry starts at 6 a.m., but before dawn office workers are already lining up. Cijin has 28,000 residents and no bridge to Taiwan proper; the cross-harbor tunnel carries vehicle traffic. The ferry is the only connection between this sandbar and Kaohsiung’s urban core.

This is the most contemporary evidence of Kaohsiung as a harbor city. The historic glory of being upgraded into a direct-controlled municipality in 1979, the industrial glory of China Steel’s establishment in 1971, and the shipping glory of ranking as the world’s third-largest container port for seven consecutive years from 1993 to 1999 are all in the past. But while the capital is still asleep, Kaohsiung has already begun moving things for the whole world.

Aerial view of the commercial district at the Port of Kaohsiung’s First Harbor, 2021. From the 1899 harbor-building plan, the 1968 arrival of the export processing zone, and seven consecutive years as the world’s third-largest container port from 1993 to 1999, to 2021, it remained Taiwan’s largest commercial port.
The commercial district at the Port of Kaohsiung’s First Harbor, 2021. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Takau, Takao, Kaohsiung: The 1920 Renaming

Four hundred years ago, beneath Takau Mountain, today’s Shoushan, there was a Makatao community. Bamboo groves surrounded the settlement. Its people called it “Takau,” rendered in Taiwanese as “Ta-kau,” meaning “bamboo forest”¹. Han Chinese settlers arrived gradually after the Qing court established Fengshan County in 1684. First it was a fishing village, then a port.

After the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin, Takau opened as a port in 1863. The British consulate was established at Shaochuantou, today’s Gushan, and the port became one of the Qing court’s treaty ports opened to foreign powers alongside Xiamen and Fuzhou. In 1899, Meiji 32, Gotō Shinpei, the fourth civil administrator under Japanese rule, inspected southern Taiwan and decided to develop Takau Harbor. Funding was insufficient, and the project did not formally begin its first phase of harbor construction until 1908².

In October 1920, Den Kenjirō, the eighth governor-general under Japanese rule, abolished the old local administrative offices and created prefectures, renaming “Takau Street” as “Takao Street,” written in Chinese characters as Kaohsiung. The two characters 高雄 were chosen for their Japanese near-homophone, Takao. Whether they were connected to Mount Takao in Kyoto remains disputed among scholars¹. But from that moment, the city was no longer called Takau.

In 1924, Taishō 13, Takao Street was upgraded into “Takao City,” now Kaohsiung City. The city office was located where Daitian Temple on today’s Gubo Street stands in Yancheng District. At the time of city establishment, the population exceeded 35,000; by 1940 it had grown to 160,000, making it Taiwan’s second-largest city after Taipei¹. Kaohsiung’s modernization under Japanese rule centered on Hamasen, a Taiwanese transliteration of the Japanese “hama-sen,” or “shore line.” Yancheng, Gushan, Zuoying, and Lingya were developed in succession, while the city office, banks, and trading companies clustered in Hamasen and Yancheng.

📝 Curator’s note: Most Kaohsiung residents today no longer use the name “Takau,” but it is embedded in the texture of place names and food. Shoushan, the later name for Takau Mountain, was renamed after Crown Prince Hirohito visited in 1923 during the Japanese period. Today’s Chaishan, known for its macaques, is another vernacular name for Shoushan. The sound “Takau” remains in early documents from the Tainan-Kaohsiung area, in the oral memory of the Makatao people before Han assimilation, and in the resurgence after the 2000s of local historians and cultural workers who used “Takau” as a brand, as in the Takau Historical and Cultural Association and the Takau Kaohsiung History and Culture website, to resist the Taishō-era naming. It takes a city a century to change its name once; changing that name back may take another century.

The Army Came Down from Shoushan: March 1947

After the events in Taipei on February 28, 1947 broke out, they spread to Kaohsiung in early March. Kaohsiung’s fortress commander at the time was Peng Meng-chi (1908-1997), from Wuchang, Hubei, a lieutenant general in the army whose base was on Shoushan.

“As early as March 4, Kaohsiung Fortress Command commander Peng Meng-chi had already decided to adopt military suppression”³. On the morning of March 6, Kaohsiung mayor Huang Chung-tu, city council speaker Peng Ching-kao, the father of surgeon Peng Ming-min, and five other negotiation representatives went to Shoushan as agreed to negotiate a peaceful resolution with Peng Meng-chi. “As soon as the group entered the meeting room, Tu Kuang-ming, Fan Tsang-jung, and Tseng Feng-ming were arrested”³.

“After seizing the negotiation representatives, Peng Meng-chi decided to move forward the suppression operation scheduled for the 7th, sending troops down the mountain at 2 p.m. that afternoon to suppress the city”³.

What happened after 2 p.m. was recorded in these passages:

“Troops besieged Kaohsiung Railway Station from Sankuaicuo. People and passengers in front of the station fled in panic, while the troops also strafed passengers hiding in the underpass, causing countless casualties”³.

“The troops attacking city hall first threw hand grenades, then killed anyone they saw. Representatives from all sectors and residents waiting in front of city hall for news of the negotiations... suffered heavy casualties, with roughly fifty to sixty killed”³.

The Battle to Defend Kaohsiung Senior High School was another dimension of this massacre. “On March 4, students formed a self-defense unit, the Kaohsiung Senior High School Self-Defense Unit, centered on Taiwan Provincial Kaohsiung First Senior High School, today’s Kaohsiung Senior High School... Its purpose was to maintain security near the school and to use the school as a temporary shelter to protect mainlander lives under threat”³. A group of high school students sheltered attacked mainlander neighbors inside their school while using books as shields to resist the army.

Tu Kuang-ming, Fan Tsang-jung, and Tseng Feng-ming were executed by firing squad at Kaohsiung Fortress on March 9. Afterward, Peng Meng-chi was promoted and entrusted with important posts by Chiang Kai-shek. In 1957, he became commander-in-chief of the army; in 1966, he rose to first-class general. In Kaohsiung in 1947, his title was “the Butcher of Kaohsiung.” The same person later climbed steadily through Taiwan’s military and political system.

This was the wound Kaohsiung already carried before the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident.

The 1968 Export Processing Zone, 1971 China Steel, and 1973 Linyuan Petrochemicals

Twenty years passed. By the late 1960s, Kaohsiung had become a different city.

“In December 1966, Taiwan passed the Statute for the Establishment of Export Processing Zones, selecting Qianzhen District in the Kaohsiung port area to establish the Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone”⁴. It was Taiwan’s first export processing zone and one of the earliest in the world, combining the functions of a free-trade zone and an industrial zone, with tax incentives, a single administrative window, and fast customs clearance. The first factory moved in in 1968. Most employees were young women workers from Tainan, Pingtung, and Chiayi, earning monthly wages of a little over NT$1,000 and living in dormitory rooms for four or eight. That cohort later came to be called the “export processing zone aunties.” Today their grandchildren work at TSMC.

The refinery came even earlier. CPC’s Kaohsiung Refinery was located at the foot of Banpingshan in Nanzi District, covering 262 hectares. Its predecessor was the Kaohsiung site of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Sixth Fuel Factory during World War II. In 1947, CPC took it over, repaired it, and put it into operation. “The first naphtha cracker, No. 1 Naphtha Cracker, began operation in 1968 and closed in 1990; the second naphtha cracker began operation in 1975 and closed in 1994; the fifth naphtha cracker began operation in 1994 and closed in 2015”⁵. The refinery “successively housed more than forty large plants, including No. 1, No. 2, and No. 5 Naphtha Crackers, and became the largest pollution area officially recognized by the government”⁵.

On December 3, 1971, China Steel Corporation was formally established⁶. The first oil crisis in 1973 crashed the global economy, and Chiang Ching-kuo responded by proposing the Ten Major Construction Projects, incorporating China Steel into the plan. The first-stage project was completed in 1977, and steel production began. China Steel remains in Xiaogang today, with annual crude steel production of roughly ten million metric tons; its main products are steel plate, bars and rods, hot-rolled steel, and cold-rolled steel⁶. The supporting Linyuan petrochemical zone was established in 1973. Together with the Nanzi refinery and China Steel in Xiaogang, it formed the three heaviest gears of postwar Taiwan’s heavy industry.

In 1965, the government formulated the “Guidelines for Encouraging and Assisting the Import of Old Ships for Processing,” and shipbreaking began in the Qianzhen and Caoya areas. “Roughly 20,000 workers dismantled ships at the docks every day, with as much as 10,000 tons of steel plate dismantled daily on average, earning Taiwan the global reputation of ‘kingdom of shipbreaking’”⁷. In 1973, Kaohsiung recorded the world’s largest shipbreaking volume. In 1986, a Canari tanker in the Daren Temple shipbreaking industrial zone exploded because of residual oil in the hold, killing 16 and injuring more than 100. “In 1989, the Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau reclaimed the Daren professional shipbreaking zone and converted it into the Fifth Container Terminal. In 1990, the shipbreaking industry was formally forced into an early exit”⁷. A global No. 1 industry vanished in twenty years.

✦ “It successively housed more than forty large plants, including No. 1, No. 2, and No. 5 Naphtha Crackers, and became the largest pollution area officially recognized by the government.” (The Reporter, “The Petrochemical Zombie That Would Not Die”⁵)

Kaohsiung residents’ memories of this history are sharply divided. From 1971 through the 1980s, heavy industry was Kaohsiung’s pride and also its wage packet. But during the same period, residents of Houjing began noticing that the dust falling on their roofs was especially thick, and fishers in Dalinpu began noticing fewer fish in their nets. Then came 1987.

The Houjing Vote: 61% to 39%

“In June 1987, CPC’s plan for the ‘Fifth Naphtha Cracker’ was formally announced in the media”⁸. After Houjing residents learned that the government intended to add No. 5 Naphtha Cracker on top of the existing No. 1 and No. 2 crackers, they immediately organized.

“On August 5, 1987, a villagers’ assembly was convened, establishing the ‘Self-Help Committee Against No. 5 Naphtha Cracker’”⁸. Beginning in August, residents mounted a long-term factory blockade, taking shifts to guard CPC’s gate and stop construction vehicles from entering. This movement unfolded in the same year martial law was lifted. It was postwar Taiwan’s first large-scale environmental protest.

“On May 6, 1990, Taiwan’s first referendum on the construction of No. 5 Naphtha Cracker was held. The result: a 66% turnout, with firm opponents of No. 5 Naphtha Cracker defeating those who agreed to negotiate by 4,499 votes, or 61%, to 2,900”⁸.

The referendum result did not stop No. 5 Naphtha Cracker.

“On September 14, 1990, Premier Hau Pei-tsun promised that CPC would relocate the plant twenty-five years later and provide Houjing residents with a NT$1.5 billion feedback fund, setting Taiwan’s highest record for anti-pollution compensation”⁸. Eight days later, “on September 22, 1990, Minister of Economic Affairs Vincent Siew announced that construction of No. 5 Naphtha Cracker would begin”⁸.

Twenty-five years after Hau Pei-tsun’s promise was exactly 2015. No. 5 Naphtha Cracker really did cease operation on November 1, 2015. The promise was honored, but an entire generation of Houjing residents grew up breathing No. 5 Naphtha Cracker’s air. From the factory blockade in 1987 to the shutdown in 2015, the movement became known as the “28-year movement against No. 5 Naphtha Cracker”⁸.

📝 Curator’s note: Conventional narratives of environmental movements often focus on political alignment, such as “green party rule.” But the story of Houjing’s opposition to No. 5 Naphtha Cracker looks more like another structure: these 28 years were the story of a small village using 25 years of patience to win the closure of a factory. There was no moment of victory in the middle. Every year was a loss: No. 5 was still built, exhaust was still emitted, residents’ health was still affected. Only after losing into the twenty-fifth year did the factory finally close. The greatest difference between Taiwan’s environmental movement and other social movements is its time scale: it is measured in generations, not terms of office. After Houjing, Dalinpu spent more than another thirty years protesting while waiting for village relocation⁹; only in 2016 did Premier Lin Chuan publicly apologize there. Victory does not lie in winning once in one movement, but in ensuring that the next generation no longer has to breathe the same air.

Tear Gas at Dagangpu Traffic Circle on Human Rights Day

Return to 1979.

On July 1, “Kaohsiung City, originally a provincial city of Taiwan Province, incorporated Xiaogang Township of Kaohsiung County and was simultaneously upgraded into a direct-controlled municipality, becoming Taiwan’s second direct-controlled municipality”¹⁰. The first was Taipei City, upgraded in 1967. Kaohsiung was second, twelve years later. At the time of the upgrade, it had 11 districts, including the newly created Xiaogang District, and a population of roughly 1.3 million. It was then southern Taiwan’s largest industrial center.

In the same year, 1979, the United States severed diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in January; Kaohsiung was upgraded on July 1; and Formosa Magazine was launched in August, with Huang Hsin-chieh as publisher, Hsu Hsin-liang as president, and Shih Ming-teh as general manager. The magazine became the flagship of the tangwai, or “outside the party,” movement. In early December, tangwai figures applied under the name “Human Rights Memorial Committee” to hold a rally and march in Kaohsiung on December 10, United Nations Human Rights Day, demanding the lifting of martial law and the release of political prisoners. The authorities did not approve it.

On the evening of December 10, “because the originally scheduled venue, Rotary Park, had been sealed off, tangwai figures decided to turn toward the large traffic circle at the intersection of Zhongshan Road and Zhongzheng Road”¹¹. The gathering site was first near Xinxing traffic circle on Zhongshan 1st Road in Xinxing District, then shifted to Dagangpu traffic circle, then one of the most important traffic circles in downtown Kaohsiung.

“People participating in the march were surrounded near Dagangpu traffic circle by several thousand riot police. After intense searchlight illumination, tear gas, and advancing shields, clashes between the two sides finally erupted”¹².

The clashes continued late into the night. Three days later, at 6 a.m. on December 13, the Taiwan Garrison Command launched islandwide mass arrests. Chen Chu, Lin Yi-hsiung, Lu Hsiu-lien, and Chang Chun-hung were arrested in succession in the early morning. Huang Hsin-chieh was arrested at the Legislative Yuan on the morning of December 14. Shih Ming-teh fled for 26 days and was arrested at a private residence on January 8, 1980. A total of 152 people were implicated.

✦ “On April 18, the military court delivered its final verdicts. All eight defendants were found guilty: Shih Ming-teh was sentenced to life imprisonment; Huang Hsin-chieh to fourteen years; Yao Chia-wen, Chang Chun-hung, Lin Yi-hsiung, Lu Hsiu-lien, Chen Chu, and Lin Hung-hsuan each to twelve years in prison.” (Wikipedia entry on the Kaohsiung Incident¹²)

The major military trial began on March 18, 1980 and ran for nine days. The defendants hired fifteen defense attorneys, including Chiang Peng-chien, Frank Hsieh, You Ching, Chen Shui-bian, Su Tseng-chang, and Chang Chun-hsiung. Chen Shui-bian was responsible for defending Huang Hsin-chieh. All of these lawyers later became key figures in the tangwai movement: Chen Shui-bian later became president; Frank Hsieh, Su Tseng-chang, and Chang Chun-hsiung became premiers; You Ching became Taipei County magistrate; and Chiang Peng-chien became the first chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party.

“The calls to lift martial law, legalize opposition parties, and fully re-elect the central representative bodies instead spread even more widely through the military trial”¹³. The Democratic Progressive Party was founded on September 28, 1986, and martial law was lifted on July 15, 1987. From the tear gas at Dagangpu traffic circle in 1979 to the lifting of martial law in 1987, the seven and a half years in between were the most critical phase of Taiwan’s democratic transition. The starting point of that transition was not in Taipei. It was in Kaohsiung.

February 28, 1980, Xinyi Road, Taipei

Before the military trial had even begun, events had already fallen into a deeper place.

On February 28, 1980, the anniversary of the 228 Incident, a massacre occurred at the home of Lin Yi-hsiung, who was detained at the Jingmei military detention center awaiting trial. The location was No. 16, Lane 31, Section 3, Xinyi Road, Taipei, Lin Yi-hsiung’s Taipei residence. “Lin Yi-hsiung’s mother, Yu A-mei, who was in her sixties, and his seven-year-old twin daughters, Lin Liang-chun and Lin Ting-chun, were stabbed to death”¹⁴. His nine-year-old eldest daughter, Lin Huan-chun, was stabbed six times and survived because her schoolbag protected her back.

The Lin family massacre occurred in Taipei, not Kaohsiung, and not Yilan. Lin Yi-hsiung was from Wujie, Yilan. After being arrested in 1979 because of the Kaohsiung Incident, he was held at the Jingmei military detention center in Taipei. On the day of the massacre, he was in Jingmei, far from the scene. “The case remains unsolved to this day. Because the longest criminal statute of limitations, twenty-five years, has already passed, even if the real perpetrator were found, they could no longer be convicted”¹⁴.

This case’s connection to the Kaohsiung Incident lies in the timeline; its location was 350 kilometers from Kaohsiung. The Lin family massacre took place nineteen days before the military trial opened. It was one of the cruelest pages of the White Terror and a shared wound in the memory of everyone in Taiwan’s democracy movement. The tear gas at Dagangpu traffic circle in 1979, the blood on Xinyi Road in Taipei on February 28, 1980, and the military court verdicts of April 18, 1980: three wounds, all connected to Kaohsiung, this newly upgraded direct-controlled municipality.

Before the red ribbons from the upgrade celebrations had even been taken down, a cut had already been carved into the city’s political history.

Formosa Boulevard Station and the Dome of Light

Twenty-nine years passed.

On September 14, 2008, the Kaohsiung MRT Orange Line opened, and “Formosa Boulevard Station” began operating the same day¹⁵. The station name was deliberately chosen by the Kaohsiung City Government to turn the site of the former Dagangpu traffic circle into the name of an MRT station. Around the corner, the Dome of Light sits at the R10/O5 platform level.

The Dome of Light at Formosa Boulevard Station, 2024-09-19. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

The Dome of Light “was hand-painted by internationally renowned artist Narcissus Quagliata, took four and a half years to complete, reaches 30 meters in diameter, and covers 660 square meters”¹⁵. Narcissus Quagliata, born in Rome in 1942, is a leading contemporary glass artist. The dome consists of 4,500 colored glass panels divided into four sections: water, birth; earth, growth; light, glory; and fire, destruction and rebirth. In 2012, the U.S. travel site BootsnAll ranked Formosa Boulevard Station second among the world’s fifteen most beautiful subway stations.

From Dagangpu traffic circle to Formosa Boulevard Station, this reversal took 29 years. On December 10, 1979, people were indicted here because of an assembly; on September 14, 2008, the same place became the site of a world-class art installation. The physical location of a traffic circle did not change. Its meaning was rewritten twice by Kaohsiung residents.

📝 Curator’s note: Turning the site of that year’s clashes into an art station was Kaohsiung’s answer to 1979. It is a kind of rewriting as remembrance. Taipei’s 228 Peace Memorial Park and Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park remember through memorialization: monuments, memorial sculptures, memorial exhibitions, telling readers that “something once happened here.” Kaohsiung’s Formosa Boulevard Station does something else: it makes memory everyday. More than 30,000 people enter and exit this station every day. Whether they look up at the Dome of Light is not important. What matters is that this name has been embedded into the skeleton of the city’s MRT network. How a city handles its historical wounds can be seen in whether it turns that place into somewhere everyone passes through every day.

Thirty-Eight Districts: From the Cijin Sandbar to the Bunun of Namasia

On December 25, 2010, Kaohsiung was upgraded again.

“On December 25, 2010, Kaohsiung City’s original land area of 153 square kilometers incorporated Kaohsiung County, causing its land area to surge to 2,951 square kilometers. The original city population of 1.52 million was combined with the county population, bringing the total to 2,774,470”¹⁶.

“The 11 districts of the former Kaohsiung City and the 27 townships, towns, and cities of the former Kaohsiung County merged into 38 districts, including three direct-controlled municipality mountain Indigenous districts”¹⁷.

From that day onward, “Kaohsiung City” became a city stretching from the Cijin sandbar all the way to the foot of Yushan. The former Kaohsiung City’s 11 districts formed the urban core: Yancheng, Gushan, Lingya, Xinxing, Qianjin, Qianzhen, Sanmin, Nanzi, Zuoying, Cijin, and Xiaogang. The former Kaohsiung County’s 27 townships, towns, and cities were scattered around the periphery: Fengshan, Daliao, Niaosong, Renwu, Dashe, Gangshan, Luzhu, Hunei, Yong’an, and Qieding; farther north, Qiaotou, Yanchao, Dashu, Dashe, Tianliao, Alian, Mituo, and Ziguan; farther east, Meinong, Qishan, Neimen, Shanlin, Liugui, and Jiaxian; and in the deepest interior, Maolin, Taoyuan, and Namasia, the three mountain Indigenous districts.

Every district has a different story. Cijin District has 28,000 people and is an 11.3-kilometer-long sandbar; the ferry is its main access route. Maolin District has 1,867 people, making it Kaohsiung’s least populous district; its main residents are Rukai, and its elevation climbs from 200 meters to more than 1,000 meters. Fengshan District has 355,183 people, making it Kaohsiung’s most populous district. It was originally the seat of Kaohsiung County government, and after the 2010 merger it became Taiwan’s second-largest single district by population¹⁸. The populations of these three districts differ by a factor of 190, yet administratively all are called “a district of Kaohsiung City.”

Cijin Island viewed from Qihou Mountain. The 11.3-kilometer-long sandbar has 28,000 residents and no bridge to Taiwan proper; the cross-harbor tunnel carries vehicle traffic, and the Gushan Ferry is the main transport link.
_Aerial view of Cijin District. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia._

The Three Mountain Districts: Rukai, Bunun, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua

Maolin District is located in Kaohsiung’s southeastern mountains. Its main residents are the Lower Three Communities of the Rukai people, divided among the Maolin, Duona, and Wanshan communities. Rukai speech differs by community; Duona has the most intact group of slate houses¹⁹.

Taoyuan District is distributed along the upper reaches of the Laonong River. Its main group is Bunun, and it is also the traditional territory of the Hla’alua people. The Hla’alua were long misidentified as a southern Tsou branch until “the Republic of China government recognized the Hla’alua as Taiwan’s fifteenth Indigenous people and the Kanakanavu as the sixteenth on June 26, 2014”²⁰. Today the Hla’alua number roughly 400, mainly distributed in Gaozhong Village and Taoyuan Village in Taoyuan District.

Namasia District lies along both banks of the Nanzixian River, where Bunun and Kanakanavu live together. The Kanakanavu today number roughly 350, mainly living in Dakanua Village and Maya Village in Namasia District. The name “Namasia” comes from a legend: “several hundred years ago, a young man named Namasia discovered a giant marbled eel blocking the stream and endangering the community; the people named the Nanzixian River ‘Namasia’ in his memory”²¹. In 2008, Sanmin Township was renamed Namasia Township, and in 2010 it was upgraded again into Namasia District.

The names “Hla’alua” and “Kanakanavu” only returned to official ethnic classification on June 26, 2014. Before then, their ancestors had been recorded for more than a century as branches of the “Tsou,” called “Southern Tsou” in scholarship. Before name rectification, others represented them; after name rectification, they spoke for themselves.

Meinong: The Right Stack of Liudui

Following the Nanzixian River downstream from Namasia, one reaches Meinong. Meinong District is Kaohsiung’s only typical Hakka settlement. Administratively, it belongs to Kaohsiung City; culturally, it belongs to the Right Stack of Liudui.

Liudui is the collective name for Hakka loyalist settlements in southern Taiwan, divided into the Vanguard Stack, Front Stack, Middle Stack, Rear Stack, Left Stack, and Right Stack. The Right Stack covers all or most of Meinong, Liugui, and Shanlin districts, a small part of Jiaxian District, and parts of Qishan District. During the Zhu Yigui uprising in 1721, Hakka settlements in the lower Tamsui River basin jointly organized a self-defense militia. They “jointly elected Li Zhisan as general manager and divided into six groups, or six stacks, to defend their hometowns”²². This organization later became the cultural identity of Hakka settlements.

But this story is not only about the 1721 militia. Meinong has another, more recent history.

“At the end of 1992, the first public hearing on the construction of the Meinong Reservoir, convened by the Meinong Township Office and local organizations, launched the Meinong anti-reservoir movement, known as ‘small town against the state’”²³. The government planned to build a reservoir upstream on the Meinong River to supply water to the Kaohsiung area, but the dam site sat on a fault and would damage the ecology of Yellow Butterfly Valley’s tropical mother forest, while affecting traditional Hakka culture in Meinong.

The movement ran for eight years. “On March 18, 2000, Chen Shui-bian was elected president and subsequently announced that the Meinong Reservoir would not be built during his term”²³. The Meinong People’s Association became a model for sustainable development in Taiwan’s Hakka communities and also drove an entire generation of Hakka youth to return home. Today’s Meinong paper umbrellas, flat rice noodles, Hakka cuisine, and tobacco barns beneath Mount Yueguang are the result of choices this township made for itself, not decisions made on someone else’s behalf.

The August That Buried Namasia and Taoyuan

From name rectification and the anti-reservoir movement, return to a more recent wound.

On August 8, 2009, Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan. That day, “Jiaxian Township recorded accumulated rainfall of 1,856 millimeters over 72 hours”²⁴, a figure equal to nearly 70% of Taiwan’s average annual rainfall. From the early morning of the 8th, debris-flow warnings began coming from the mountains, but communications were cut, and the outside world could not immediately grasp the actual situation.

The worst was Xiaolin Village. “The most severe was the destruction of the Xiaolin community in Xiaolin Village, Jiaxian Township, Kaohsiung County, which buried 474 people alive”²⁵. Xiaolin’s village structure, built against the mountain, was entirely covered by a landslide. “During the August 8 flood disaster in 2009, when Typhoon Morakot struck, more than six hundred households in Xiaolin Village, Jiaxian Township, Kaohsiung County, were wiped out by debris flows.” Survivors from Xiaolin later relocated in three groups to the Shanlin Da Ai permanent housing community, Wulipu Xiaolin Village 1, and Xiaolin Village 2, but the village’s original geographic context could no longer be restored.

The three mountain Indigenous districts of Namasia, Taoyuan, and Maolin were also severely hit. External roads were severed, bridges collapsed, and communities were cut off from the outside world for days. New permanent housing for Namasia was built in Shanlin District. Some community members chose to return to the mountains to rebuild; others stayed below. From that year onward, one community became two communities: one in the ancestral homeland, one in permanent housing.

📝 Curator’s note: Conventional disaster narratives focus on “death toll,” “reconstruction progress,” and “government efficiency.” But the deeper impact of the August 8 disaster on Kaohsiung’s mountain peoples was that the geographic connections of their communities were severed. The rituals, land knowledge, and language transmission of the Bunun, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, and Rukai peoples are all tied to specific places: which river’s upper reaches hold ancestral spirits, which mountain carries taboos, which hunting ground belongs to which family. Once a community is relocated, the foundation that carries this geographic knowledge breaks. Seventeen years after Morakot, the population of Kaohsiung’s three mountain districts continues drifting downhill. A new generation of Indigenous children attends school in Shanlin and Qishan rather than waking in the morning from slate houses. Reconstruction in heavily damaged areas is physical; how long must cultural loss be counted before it is recognized?

The Two Lines of Love River

From the mountains, return to the city and to a river.

Love River originates at Baguailiao Pond in Renwu District, flows through Kaohsiung’s urban area, and reaches the sea in Qianzhen District. It is 16.4 kilometers long²⁶. During Japanese rule it was called Takau River or Kaohsiung River; after the war it became known as Love River. After the 1960s, Kaohsiung rapidly industrialized. Sewers were not widespread, and industrial, agricultural, and domestic wastewater flowed directly into Love River. It became one of Taiwan’s most polluted urban rivers, with dark gray water floating with oil slicks and a harsh chemical odor noticeable up close.

But around the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan’s attitude toward urban rivers began to change. Media coverage began contrasting “successful Love River remediation” with the still filthy Tamsui River²⁷, although the success at that time was only preliminary. The real cleanup accelerated after Frank Hsieh was elected Kaohsiung mayor in 1998: “the sewage connection rate rose from 6% when he took office to 25%,” and the city reorganized the landscape around Love River, building waterfront embankments, renovating the film library, and introducing the Love Boat.

In 2001, the Taiwan Lantern Festival chose Kaohsiung as its venue, the first time it was held outside Taipei, and the lantern festival along Love River became an annual event. “After the 2000s, Love River successfully transformed into an important Kaohsiung tourist attraction, gradually shedding the long-standing stereotype of ‘industrial center, cultural desert’”²⁸.

But industry did not leave. China Steel remains in Xiaogang, the refinery in Nanzi, petrochemical plants in Linyuan, and the thermal power plant in Dalinpu. The success of Love River remediation is only one aspect of the city’s transformation. The other aspect is that Dalinpu is still waiting for relocation.

“Linhai Industrial Park contains China Steel, CPC, Taipower, and many related downstream industries. There are hundreds of companies and forests of smokestacks, surrounding settlements such as Dalinpu on three sides”⁹. Residents waged “more than thirty years of struggle.” In 2016, Premier Lin Chuan publicly apologized in Dalinpu, acknowledging the polluted environment and launching a relocation survey. But environmental assessment disputes over the relocation plan remained unresolved as of 2026.

Love River’s tourist waterfront after remediation. In the 1960s it was among Taiwan’s most polluted urban rivers. During Mayor Frank Hsieh’s tenure after 1998, the sewage connection rate rose from 6% to 25%, and from 2001 the Love River lantern festival became a tradition.
Love River, or Kaohsiung River, tourist waterfront after remediation. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

Love River has two lines: on one side, tourism, lantern festivals, the Love Boat, and the story of successful remediation; on the other, Dalinpu, Houjing in Nanzi, and Linyuan petrochemicals, the story of a thirty-year struggle waiting for village relocation. The same city is doing two things at once: one can become a tourist photograph, the other appears only in environmental impact assessment reports.

Weiwuying: 4,500 Panels Beneath an Aluminum-Alloy Roof

On October 13, 2018, the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Weiwuying, opened²⁹. The site is in Fengshan District. It was formerly the Army Recruit Training Center, which began relocating in 1979. For Kaohsiung residents during the martial-law era, the three characters “Weiwuying” meant “the place my son went for military service.” Dutch architect Francine Houben took inspiration from Weiwuying’s old banyan groves, using a flowing aluminum-alloy roof to connect four performance venues.

Exterior of the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Weiwuying. Dutch architect Francine Houben designed a flowing aluminum-alloy roof inspired by Weiwuying’s old banyan groves. With 35,000 square meters and 4,500 aluminum-alloy panels, it is the world’s largest comprehensive performing arts venue under one roof.
National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Weiwuying. Photo: Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC BY-SA via Wikimedia.

“The site covers 9.9 hectares, the building covers 3.3 hectares, and the roof is a 35,000-square-meter curved roof assembled from 4,500 aluminum-alloy panels, making it the world’s largest comprehensive performing arts venue under a single roof”²⁹. The opera house has 2,236 seats, the concert hall 1,981, the playhouse 1,209, and the recital hall 434. In 2019, Time magazine included Weiwuying on its list of the World’s Greatest Places.

From recruit training center to world-class performing arts center, this site tells the same kind of story as Formosa Boulevard Station: Kaohsiung residents rewrote a martial-law-era military memory into an artistic memory. A city’s history of martial law does not disappear, but it can be reused.

The year Weiwuying opened was also the thirty-ninth anniversary of Kaohsiung’s 1979 upgrade into a direct-controlled municipality and of the Kaohsiung Incident. From Dagangpu traffic circle to Formosa Boulevard Station, from Weiwuying military camp to Weiwuying theater, this city spent nearly 40 years stitching its wounds into a shape of its own.

2.71 Million People Across 38 Districts

In April 2026, Kaohsiung City had a population of 2.71 million, making it Taiwan’s third-largest direct-controlled municipality after New Taipei and Taipei³⁰. Fengshan District had the most people, 355,000; Maolin District had the fewest, 1,867. These 2.71 million people are spread across 2,951 square kilometers and 38 districts, from the Cijin sandbar to Bunun communities in Namasia, with elevations from 0 meters to more than 3,000 meters.

Population structure: Hoklo people are the mainstream, descended from Han migration after the Qing court established Fengshan County in 1684; Hakka are centered in Meinong, the Right Stack of Liudui; the Makatao, originally a Plains Indigenous people of the “Eight Fengshan Communities,” lived on the plains for a millennium and were incorporated into Hoklo society after Han assimilation in the Qing period; mainlanders are concentrated in Zuoying military dependents’ villages, the postwar navy base and Taiwan’s largest cluster of such villages, and the Guomao Community, southern Taiwan’s largest public housing redevelopment of a military dependents’ village; mountain Indigenous peoples are concentrated in Maolin, Rukai; Taoyuan, Bunun and Hla’alua; and Namasia, Bunun and Kanakanavu.

Compared with Keelung’s 360,000 people, Kaohsiung is more than seven times larger. Compared with Taipei’s 2.4 million, Kaohsiung is slightly larger. But the city’s distinctiveness does not lie in its population. It lies in its scope: the seaside at Sizihwan, Namasia communities, the Cijin Ferry, and Meinong paper umbrellas coexist inside the same administrative coordinates. It is Taiwan’s only direct-controlled municipality that contains an urban core, a heavy industrial belt, a Hakka enclave, and three mountain Indigenous districts.

✦ “The 11 districts of the former Kaohsiung City and the 27 townships, towns, and cities of the former Kaohsiung County merged into 38 districts, including three direct-controlled municipality mountain Indigenous districts.” (Wikipedia entry on Kaohsiung City administrative divisions¹⁷)

The 2018 Han Wave and the 2020 Recall

Thirty-nine years after the administrative upgrade, the city’s political history added another page.

“On November 24, 2018, Han Kuo-yu defeated Chen Chi-mai in the nine-in-one elections with 892,545 votes and 53.87% of the vote, winning election as the third mayor of Kaohsiung City, and took office on December 25 of the same year”³¹. Han’s election ended twenty years of Democratic Progressive Party rule in Kaohsiung. The term “Han wave” swept from south to north that year. His speaking style, slogan, “Goods go out, people come in, Kaohsiung makes a fortune,” and image were completely unlike previous Kaohsiung mayors.

But the reversal did not last long. In May 2019, Han stated that he would run in the 2020 presidential election and was criticized for having “no heart for city government.” After losing the January 2020 presidential election to Tsai Ing-wen, Kaohsiung residents began petitioning for a recall.

“The recall vote was held on June 6, 2020. The final result was 939,090 votes in favor, 25,051 opposed, and a turnout of 42.14%”³².

“Han Kuo-yu became the first mayor of a direct-controlled municipality in the Republic of China to be recalled”³².

The 939,090 votes in favor exceeded the 892,545 votes that had elected him in 2018 by nearly 50,000. The same Kaohsiung voters used ballots within two years to elect the same person and then remove him. The Reporter’s headline put it plainly: “The first local chief in Taiwan’s history to be recalled”³³.

The recall is not the focus of this article. The point is that the June 6, 2020 recall, the Dagangpu traffic circle on December 10, 1979, and Formosa Boulevard Station on September 14, 2008 are part of the same political lineage in the same city. Kaohsiung residents do not put much faith in “gods.” In 1979, they stood up against martial law; in 2020, they stood up again to recall a sitting mayor. More than any other Taiwanese city, Kaohsiung gives public opinion physical form.

4:30 a.m., Black Kites Behind China Steel’s Smokestacks

Return to the opening image.

At Qianzhen Fishing Port at 4:30 a.m., tuna longliners unload. At 5 a.m., the Gushan Ferry carries the first group of Cijin office workers across the harbor. At 6 a.m., Formosa Boulevard Station beneath the Dome of Light is clean and quiet before commuter crowds pour in. At 7 a.m., the first trains at Zuoying High Speed Rail Station send a group north to Taipei for work.

Two kilometers away, smokestacks at China Steel’s Xiaogang plant release white smoke. A little farther on, the waters of Houjing Creek move slowly toward the Port of Kaohsiung. Houjing residents blockaded the factory from 1987 until No. 5 Naphtha Cracker ceased operation in 2015; the smell of that stretch of water changed. A little farther still, Dalinpu has not yet been relocated.

Farther away, more than 1,000 meters above sea level, morning is just beginning in Maolin, Taoyuan, and Namasia, among the Rukai, Bunun, Kanakanavu, and Hla’alua peoples. Residents of permanent housing after the August 8 disaster wake in Shanlin District; those who stayed behind in ancestral communities wake in the mountains.

So many things happen at once in this city’s morning because the 2010 city-county merger placed locations that had originally belonged to different geographic units inside the same administrative frame. The 38 districts from the Cijin sandbar to Namasia communities are the most concrete physical expression of Taiwan’s administrative upgrade.

Seen from Taipei, Kaohsiung is a heavy industrial harbor city plus one democratic incident plus Weiwuying. Seen from the sea, Kaohsiung is the grandchildren of the women workers from the 1968 export processing zone working at TSMC; it is the sons of the people from the 1990 Houjing referendum becoming professors; it is one of the lawyers from the 1979 Dagangpu tear gas later becoming president. Seen from Qianzhen Fishing Port at 4:30 a.m., Kaohsiung is a harbor city where the whole world is still asleep, but this city has already begun working.

Next time you go to Kaohsiung, do not only visit Liuhe Night Market and the 85 Sky Tower. Try taking the Gushan Ferry to Cijin at 5 a.m. and watching the fishing boats enter port. Or take the Kaohsiung MRT Red Line to R8 Sanduo Shopping District, transfer to the Orange Line at R10/O5 Formosa Boulevard Station, and look up at the Dome of Light. Or go farther: rent a car and drive from Meinong to Namasia, following the Nanzixian River into the mountains. Then you will remember one thing: the wound this city received on December 10, 1979, the reflection from Weiwuying’s aluminum-alloy roof in 2018, the name rectification of the fifteenth and sixteenth Indigenous peoples in 2014, and the 930,000 votes in the 2020 recall are all still circulating inside this city of 2.71 million people.

Kaohsiung is not Taiwan’s lower half. Kaohsiung is the city where the three layers of Taiwan’s postwar era, industrialization, democratization, and cultural transformation, physically coexist at the same time.

Image Sources

This article uses six Wikimedia Commons CC-licensed images.

Hero image in frontmatter: Night skyline of Kaohsiung, Taiwan 2014, night view of Kaohsiung City, overlooking Love River and the urban area from the direction of the 85 Sky Tower. Photo: peellden, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Scene §Qianzhen Fishing Port: Port of Kaohsiung first harbor commercial area 2021, aerial view of the commercial district at the Port of Kaohsiung’s First Harbor. CC BY-SA.

Scene §Formosa Boulevard Station: Dome of Light at Formosa Boulevard Station 2024, the Dome of Light at Formosa Boulevard Station. CC BY-SA.

Scene §38 Districts: Cijin Island, Kaohsiung, aerial view of the Cijin sandbar. CC BY-SA.

Scene §Love River: Kaohsiung Love River, Love River tourist waterfront after remediation. CC BY-SA.

Scene §Weiwuying: Wei-Wu-Ying Center for the Arts 01, exterior of the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Weiwuying. CC BY-SA.

Licenses: CC BY-SA 3.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0.

References

History of Kaohsiung — Wikipedia — Complete place-name history, including the Makatao origin of “Takau,” the 1920 renaming as Takao Street in Taishō 9, the 1924 upgrade to Kaohsiung City in Taishō 13, and its 1940 population of 160,000, making it Taiwan’s second-largest city.↩
Historical Development of the Port of Kaohsiung — Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan International Ports Corporation — Official primary source on Gotō Shinpei’s 1899 plan for Takau Harbor, the 1908 launch of first-stage harbor construction, and the full timeline of each expansion phase.↩
1947 Kaohsiung March 6 Massacre — GJ Taiwan — Detailed timeline of Peng Meng-chi’s suppression of the Kaohsiung Incident on March 6, 1947: negotiation representatives arrested on Shoushan, troops descending the mountain at 2 p.m., the Sankuaicuo siege of the railway station and strafing of passengers in the underpass, fifty to sixty killed by grenades in front of city hall, and the full record of the Kaohsiung Senior High School Self-Defense Unit protecting mainlanders.↩
Completion of the Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone — Executive Yuan Historical Archives Exhibition — Official primary historical material on the December 1966 passage of the Statute for the Establishment of Export Processing Zones and the selection of Qianzhen District in the Kaohsiung port area for the first export processing zone.↩
The Petrochemical Zombie That Would Not Die — The Reporter — The Reporter’s in-depth report on the Kaohsiung Refinery, including the full timeline for No. 1 Naphtha Cracker (1968-1990), No. 2 Naphtha Cracker (1975-1994), and No. 5 Naphtha Cracker (1994-2015), and the key quotation that more than forty large plants made it the largest pollution area officially recognized by the government.↩
China Steel Corporation Company Profile — China Steel official website — Official company history: formal establishment on December 3, 1971; completion of the first-stage project and steel production in 1977; and current annual crude steel capacity of roughly ten million metric tons in Xiaogang, including steel plate, bars and rods, hot-rolled steel, and cold-rolled steel.↩
History of Kaohsiung’s Shipbreaking Industry — StoryStudio — Full rise-and-fall history: the 1965 measures encouraging imported old ships, the Qianzhen-Caoya shipbreaking center, 20,000 workers dismantling 10,000 tons of steel plate daily, global No. 1 ranking in 1973, the 1986 Canari tanker explosion at Daren Temple that killed 16, the harbor bureau’s 1989 reclamation of the professional zone, and the 1990 exit of shipbreaking.↩
Movement Against No. 5 Naphtha Cracker — Wikipedia — Full 28-year protest timeline: plan announced in June 1987; Houjing villagers’ assembly establishing the self-help committee on August 5; May 6, 1990 referendum opposing the project by 61% to 39%; Hau Pei-tsun’s September 14 promise to relocate the plant after 25 years with NT$1.5 billion in compensation; Vincent Siew’s September 22 announcement of construction; and the November 1, 2015 shutdown.↩
Dalinpu Environmental Refugees — The Reporter — The Reporter’s in-depth report on Dalinpu, including settlements surrounded on three sides by China Steel, CPC, Taipower, and Linhai Industrial Park, more than thirty years of resident protest, and Premier Lin Chuan’s public apology in 2016, which launched the relocation survey.↩
History of Kaohsiung’s Upgrade to a Direct-Controlled Municipality — National Archives Administration — Official archival record that on July 1, 1979, Kaohsiung City, then a provincial city of Taiwan Province, incorporated Xiaogang Township of Kaohsiung County and was upgraded into the Republic of China’s second direct-controlled municipality.↩
Kaohsiung Incident — National Human Rights Memory Bank — Official digital exhibition by the National Human Rights Museum, including the original wording that “because the originally scheduled venue, Rotary Park, had been sealed off, tangwai figures decided to turn toward the large traffic circle at the intersection of Zhongshan Road and Zhongzheng Road,” and that calls to lift martial law, legalize opposition parties, and fully re-elect central representatives spread even more widely through the military trial.↩
Kaohsiung Incident — Wikipedia — Complete record of the December 10, 1979 Dagangpu traffic circle clash, the December 13 mass arrests, the military trial beginning March 18, 1980, the April 18 verdicts (Shih Ming-teh life, Huang Hsin-chieh fourteen years, and twelve years each for Yao, Chang, Lin, Lu, Chen, and Lin), and the fifteen defense attorneys, including Chen Shui-bian, Frank Hsieh, Su Tseng-chang, Chang Chun-hsiung, You Ching, and Chiang Peng-chien.↩
Same as [^11], verbatim from the National Human Rights Memory Bank entry on the Kaohsiung Incident.↩
Lin Family Massacre — Wikipedia — Complete record of the February 28, 1980 massacre at Lin Yi-hsiung’s residence at No. 16, Lane 31, Section 3, Xinyi Road, Taipei: his mother Yu A-mei and twin daughters Lin Liang-chun and Lin Ting-chun were stabbed to death; his eldest daughter Lin Huan-chun survived six stab wounds because her schoolbag protected her back; Lin Yi-hsiung was detained at the Jingmei military detention center awaiting trial at the time; the case remains unsolved and the 25-year statute of limitations has passed. Location confirmed as Taipei, not Kaohsiung and not Yilan.↩
Formosa Boulevard Station Dome of Light — Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation — Official architectural information: the Orange Line and Formosa Boulevard Station opened on September 14, 2008; the Dome of Light was hand-painted by Narcissus Quagliata, took four and a half years, measures 30 meters in diameter and 660 square meters in area, and consists of 4,500 colored glass panels divided into water, earth, light, and fire sections.↩
2010 Kaohsiung City-County Merger — Kaohsiung City Government Civil Affairs Bureau — Official statistics for the December 25, 2010 city-county merger: the original city’s 153 square kilometers combined with the former county, increasing land area to 2,951 square kilometers, and the original city population of 1.52 million combined with the county to reach 2,774,470.↩
Administrative Divisions of Kaohsiung City — Wikipedia — Complete administrative history of the merger of the former Kaohsiung City’s 11 districts with the former Kaohsiung County’s 27 townships, towns, and cities into 38 districts, including three direct-controlled municipality mountain Indigenous districts: Maolin, Taoyuan, and Namasia.↩
Population Statistics for Fengshan District, Kaohsiung City — Kaohsiung City Government Civil Affairs Bureau — Official 2026 population data: Fengshan District has 355,183 residents, the most, while Maolin District has 1,867, the fewest.↩
Lower Three Communities of the Rukai People — Council of Indigenous Peoples — Official ethnic information on the dialect differences among the Maolin, Duona, and Wanshan communities of the Lower Three Communities of the Rukai people, and their slate-house groups, of which Duona is the most complete.↩
Name Rectification of the Hla’alua and Kanakanavu Peoples — Executive Yuan — Official announcement that on June 26, 2014, the Republic of China government recognized the Hla’alua as Taiwan’s fifteenth Indigenous people and the Kanakanavu as the sixteenth.↩
Origin of the Name Namasia District — Kaohsiung City Namasia District Office — Official information on the oral history that “Namasia” comes from a young man named Namasia who discovered a giant marbled eel blocking the stream and endangering the community, leading the people to name the Nanzixian River in his memory, as well as the 2008 renaming of Sanmin Township as Namasia Township and its 2010 upgrade to Namasia District.↩
Liudui — Hakka Affairs Council — Complete history of Hakka loyalist militias: Hakka settlers in the lower Tamsui River basin organized a self-defense militia during the 1721 Zhu Yigui uprising, jointly elected Li Zhisan as general manager, and divided into six groups, or six stacks, to defend their hometowns; includes the six stacks and their corresponding present-day administrative areas.↩
Meinong Anti-Reservoir Movement — Wikipedia — Full environmental movement history: the first public hearing on the Meinong Reservoir convened by the Meinong Township Office at the end of 1992; the eight-year “small town against the state” movement; the dam site’s location on a fault and threat to Yellow Butterfly Valley ecology; and Chen Shui-bian’s announcement after his March 18, 2000 election that the reservoir would not be built during his term.↩
August 8 Flood Disaster — Wikipedia — Detailed record of Typhoon Morakot’s strike on Taiwan on August 8, 2009, Jiaxian Township’s 72-hour accumulated rainfall of 1,856 millimeters, and severe damage in the mountains of Kaohsiung County.↩
Destruction of Xiaolin Village — SET News — Full retrospective on the destruction of the Xiaolin community in Xiaolin Village, Jiaxian Township, Kaohsiung County during the 2009 August 8 disaster: more than six hundred households wiped out by debris flows and 474 buried alive, including some missing.↩
Love River System — Kaohsiung City Government Water Resources Bureau — Official hydrological information: Love River originates at Baguailiao Pond in Renwu District, flows through Kaohsiung’s urban area, reaches the sea in Qianzhen District, is 16.4 kilometers long, and was called Takau River or Kaohsiung River during Japanese rule.↩
History of Love River Remediation — Kaohsiung City Government Public Works Bureau — Complete remediation timeline: direct discharge of sewage during 1960s industrialization when sewers were not widespread; initial remediation results around 1987, contrasted with the Tamsui River; the rise in sewage connection rate from 6% to 25% during Mayor Frank Hsieh’s tenure beginning in 1998; and the construction of waterfront embankments, renovation of the film library, and introduction of the Love Boat.↩
Love River’s Tourism Transformation — Kaohsiung Pictorial — Official pictorial record of the 2001 Taiwan Lantern Festival’s first Kaohsiung edition and Love River’s successful transformation after the 2000s into an important Kaohsiung tourist attraction, “gradually shedding the long-standing stereotype of ‘industrial center, cultural desert.’”↩
National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Weiwuying — Wikipedia — Complete information: opened on October 13, 2018; formerly the Army Recruit Training Center, which began relocating in 1979; architect Francine Houben; 9.9-hectare site and 3.3-hectare building; 35,000-square-meter curved roof assembled from 4,500 aluminum-alloy panels, making it the world’s largest comprehensive performing arts venue under a single roof; opera house with 2,236 seats, concert hall with 1,981, playhouse with 1,209, recital hall with 434; and selection by Time as one of the World’s Greatest Places in 2019.↩
Kaohsiung City Population Statistics — Kaohsiung City Government Civil Affairs Bureau — Official population statistics for April 2026: 2.71 million people, Taiwan’s third-largest direct-controlled municipality after New Taipei and Taipei, with Fengshan District the largest at 355,000 and Maolin District the smallest at 1,867.↩
Han Kuo-yu — Wikipedia — Political record: on November 24, 2018, Han defeated Chen Chi-mai in the nine-in-one elections with 892,545 votes and 53.87% of the vote, becoming the third mayor of Kaohsiung City, taking office on December 25; in May 2019, he declared his intention to run in the 2020 presidential election, prompting criticism that he had “no heart for city government.”↩
2020 Kaohsiung Mayoral Recall of Han Kuo-yu — Wikipedia — Full election data for the June 6, 2020 recall vote: 939,090 votes in favor, 25,051 opposed, turnout of 42.14%, and Han Kuo-yu becoming the Republic of China’s first recalled mayor of a direct-controlled municipality.↩
Han Recall Record — The Reporter — The Reporter’s in-depth report on the recall, including the headline “The first local chief in Taiwan’s history to be recalled” and analysis of the recall’s subsequent impact on Taiwan’s democratic system.↩