Taitung County: Two Offshore Islands, One Held Political Prisoners for Thirty-Six Years, the Other Has Stored Nuclear Waste for Forty-Two Years

30-Second Overview: Taitung County covers 3,515 square kilometers, Taiwan’s third largest county by area. Its 210,000 people are scattered across that land, at a density of roughly 60 people/km², the lowest in the country and one-hundredth that of Taipei City. Indigenous people make up about 37.5% of the population, the highest proportion in Taiwan, and the county is home to six Indigenous peoples: the Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, Rukai, Bunun, and Tao. In 1980, South-Link Railway construction uncovered the Peinan Site, where 1,600 stone-slab coffins were excavated. Dating to 5,300 to 2,300 years before present, it is Taiwan’s largest prehistoric settlement. From 1951 to 1987, Green Island’s New Life Correction Center and Oasis Villa held about 2,000 White Terror political prisoners, continuously for 36 years. In 1975, Chiang Ching-kuo approved a nuclear-waste storage facility at Longmen on Orchid Island. The first shipment arrived in May 1982, and after the Tao launched the “expel the evil spirits” anti-nuclear-waste movement on February 20, 1988, 97,672 barrels still had not been removed by 2026. On August 25, 1968, seven Bunun children from Hongye Village defeated Japan’s Kansai Little League All-Star Team 7:0 in Taitung (not the world championship team later claimed by party-state media), initiating the myth of baseball as Taiwan’s national sport. Of the 13 players who took the field, 9 played under false names; 8 of the 13 later died around the age of forty. This article’s point is this: Taitung is Taiwan in miniature, and two offshore islands bore the cost of Taiwan’s modernization.

Coming Out of the South-Link Tunnel, the First Thing You See Is 3,515 Square Kilometers

If you drive the South-Link Highway from Fanggang in Pingtung, cross the tail end of the Central Mountain Range heading east, and pass the Dawu checkpoint, the whole field of vision suddenly opens.

To the left is the Coastal Mountain Range. To the right is the Central Mountain Range. Between them, the rice fields of the East Rift Valley extend north toward Hualien. Ahead is the Pacific Ocean. This highway was not fully opened until 1985¹, linking the Pingtung Peninsula and eastern Taiwan by the shortest route. Before that, traveling from western Taiwan to Taitung meant either circling along the South-Link mountain road, taking a boat, or crossing Yushan via the Southern Cross-Island Highway, which opened in 1972².

After entering Taitung County, the first thing one notices is density.

Its area of 3,515 square kilometers makes it Taiwan’s third largest administrative division, after Hualien and Nantou³. Its population is 208,000; in July 2025 it fell below 210,000, officially becoming the least populous county or city on the island⁴. That comes out to only 60 people per square kilometer, the lowest in the country, one-hundredth of Taipei City’s nearly 9,800 people per square kilometer⁴.

Behind those numbers is a physical reality: driving within this county, it takes two hours to get from Taitung City to a Bunun community in Haiduan Township; to Green Island, one must add a half-hour flight; to Orchid Island, one must take a boat for more than two hours from Fugang Fishing Harbor in Taitung. The county has 1 city, 2 towns, and 13 townships, of which 5 are mountain Indigenous townships and 2 are offshore-island townships³.

📝 Curator’s Note: “The last pure land” is the label most often applied to Taitung, but it flattens the entire county into a backyard for tourists and skips over the 210,000 people who live here. Another phrase heard just as often is “the most remote county,” which measures Taitung inside a coordinate system centered on Taipei. But seen from the sea, Orchid Island is closer to the Batanes Islands of the Philippines than to Taipei, and the Tao language has 60% similarity with Ivatan, the language of Batan Island⁵. Seen in time, the Peinan Site predates any Han settlement on Taiwan proper by 5,000 years. “Remote” is a question of direction, not a matter of fact. Taitung compresses the timeline of an entire island into one county: the earliest people, the final offshore islands, and the deepest struggles.

In 1980, South-Link Railway Construction Dug Into Five Thousand Years Ago

When Taitung Station was being built, workers dug up stone-slab coffins.

In 1980, construction of the new Taitung Station on the South-Link Railway reached the underground-work phase and exposed a large quantity of cultural artifacts. The Taitung County Government commissioned Professors Sung Wen-hsun and Lien Chao-mei of National Taiwan University’s Department of Anthropology to conduct rescue archaeology. The excavation lasted nine years, with 13 excavation campaigns in all and a total excavation area of 10,000 square meters⁶.

The final numbers shocked the academic community:

1,600 stone-slab coffins, the largest stone-slab coffin burial complex in the Pacific Rim and Southeast Asia. More than 20,000 artifacts were unearthed, including pottery, stone tools, and jade objects, setting an unprecedented record in Taiwan’s archaeological history⁶. The cultural period dates to roughly 5,300 to 2,300 years before present; the broader site covers 1 million square meters, making it the largest prehistoric settlement yet discovered in Taiwan⁷.

Excavation site of stone-slab coffins at the Peinan Site, 2012-02-28. Photo: Benson KC Fang. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia.

The burial jade was so exquisite that it was registered as national-treasure-level cultural heritage, including anthropomorphic and zoomorphic jue earrings, bell-shaped jade bead ornaments, trumpet-shaped jade rings, and jade tubes. The jade came from Fengtian jade in Hualien, meaning that people of the Peinan culture already had long-distance exchange networks spanning hundreds of kilometers 5,000 years ago⁸.

The earliest record reaches back to the Japanese colonial period. In 1896, Japanese colonial anthropologist Torii Ryuzo photographed stone pillars on the surface; these are the earliest surviving images of the Peinan Site⁷. At that time, Han people had not yet excavated this land. From the perspective of modern intellectual history, the first person to turn over this ground was Torii Ryuzo, who came from the Department of Anthropology at Tokyo Imperial University in 1896.

In 1990, the preparatory office for the National Museum of Prehistory was established, and the museum officially opened in August 2002 as Southeast Asia’s first internationally scaled museum of a prehistoric cultural site⁹. Four months later, the visitor center at Peinan Cultural Park opened to the public, creating Taiwan’s first archaeological-site park. In 2003, the Peinan Site and Dulan Mountain were listed among Taiwan’s first potential World Heritage sites¹⁰.

“The Peinan Site is Taiwan’s largest site, with the most complete prehistoric settlement form and data, and is also the largest stone-slab coffin burial complex in the Pacific Rim and Southeast Asia” (official introduction, National Museum of Prehistory⁹).

The county with the lowest density once housed Taiwan’s earliest people.

Six Peoples Sharing One County

One number always appears in Taitung County’s official statistics: Indigenous people make up about 37.5% of the population, the highest proportion in the country⁴.

But that percentage conceals a deeper fact. Taitung is a county where six Indigenous peoples coexist within the same administrative unit. There is no second example among Taiwan’s 22 counties and cities.

Amis: The largest population, about 40,000 people, concentrated along the east coast in Changbin, Chenggong, Donghe, Beinan Township, and Taitung City¹¹. The annual harvest festival, Ilisin, is held separately by each community in July. In 1911, after being humiliated and harshly reprimanded by Japanese police, the Malan and Torik communities on the east coast launched the Chengguang’ao Incident in resistance against Japan¹¹. Today, the harvest festival of the Torik community remains one of the east coast’s most important annual rituals.

Puyuma: About 14,000 people, concentrated in Taitung City and Beinan Township. The names of the traditional Eight Communities differ slightly across sources; the Council of Indigenous Peoples version includes Nanwang (Puyuma), Zhiben, Jianhe, Lijia, Tai’an, Xiabinlang, Alipai, and Chulu¹². The Mangayaw, the great hunting ritual held from late December to early January, is the largest annual ceremony, including the monkey ritual and the stage in which adult men go into the mountains to hunt. The promotion structure of age sets is the core logic of this people’s social organization.

Paiwan: Eastern Paiwan, mainly distributed in Daren Township, Jinfeng Township, the southern part of Taimali Township, and Dawu Township, with more than 14,000 people in Taitung County. The Tjuabar community in Daren Township is one of only two communities in Taiwan that still continuously hold the Five-Year Ceremony (Maljeveq); the other is Kuljaljau Village in Laiyi Township, Pingtung County¹³. The history of the Five-Year Ceremony can be traced back to Dutch-period records, at least 400 years ago. The full ritual lasts about 15 days, with the ball-spearing ceremony at its core.

Rukai: Eastern Rukai, about 2,100 people, mainly in Dongxing Village, Beinan Township (formerly known as Danan)¹¹. Eastern Rukai territory borders Eastern Paiwan territory; culturally it preserves Rukai traditions while also exchanging with Paiwan culture. In Taitung County, it is a minority within a minority.

Bunun: This people is not originally from Taitung. During the Japanese colonial period, Bunun people were widely distributed across the upper reaches of the Beinan River system, living by dispersed-village shifting cultivation and hunting. Between Showa 6 (1931) and Showa 16 (1941), the Japanese colonial government carried out a group-relocation policy in present-day Haiduan Township and Yanping Township, Taitung County, concentrating Bunun people scattered in the mountains into flatter alluvial fans near the mountain foothills, forming nucleated villages¹⁴. ⚠️ In Taitung oral memory, this history is often simplified as “they moved here in 1934,” but the archives show a decade-long policy; 1934 may have been only the year of one batch. Group relocation changed the Bunun way of life, turning them from mountain-forest hunters into settled farmers.

The Bunun’s most representative cultural heritage is Pasibutbut, the eight-part polyphonic “Prayer for the Millet Harvest.” In 1943, Japanese scholar Kurosawa Takatomo recorded this polyphonic harmony in Taiwan’s mountains¹⁵. The voice parts are finely matched, the choral force is expansive, and the technique of harmony developed amid the resonance of waterfalls and rivers is astonishing. Bunun communities in Haiduan Township still transmit it today.

Tao: The six communities of Orchid Island Township (Langdao, Dongqing, Yeyin, Hongtou, Yuren, Yeyou) are Taiwan’s only Indigenous people living on an offshore island, and the only one not belonging to the Austronesian lineage of Taiwan proper. The Tao language belongs to the Austronesian family, Malayo-Polynesian branch, Philippine branch, Batanic subgroup, and has 60% similarity with Ivatan on Batan Island in the Philippines⁵. Archaeological and linguistic analysis suggests that Orchid Island was an intermediary point on the Austronesian southward dispersal route.

Six peoples live in one county, and each people has its own ritual calendar, taboo system, and historical memory. Here, the plural noun “Indigenous peoples” consists of six singulars that cannot replace one another.

Hongye Won Seven to Zero, but the Opponent Was Not the World Champion Team

Hongye Village, in Yanping Township, Taitung County, is a small Bunun settlement. In that August of 1968, seven children changed the history of Taiwanese baseball, but in a way that has now been exposed.

The opponent in that game was not “Japan’s Wakayama world Little League champion team.”

In July 1968, the Japan Amateur Baseball Association, invited by the Chinese National Baseball Committee, selected a Little League all-star team from the Kansai region to play in Taiwan¹⁶. They were not that year’s world champion team. Japan had indeed won two consecutive Little League World Series titles in Williamsport at the time, but the team that came to Taiwan was a different team. The Reporter’s in-depth report, “Bearing 50 Years of Crime and Punishment,” states clearly: “Where did that ‘world Little League champion Wakayama Little League team’ come from? ‘That claim appeared only later’”¹⁶.

The result of the August 25 game was recorded this way in the United Daily News on August 26, 1968:

“The record on the scoreboard was seven to zero; Hongye defeated the world-renowned Japanese youth baseball team in overwhelming fashion.”¹⁶

7:0, not the 4:0 later circulated in many recollections.

Hongye won. Then, one year later, the problem emerged.

A 1969 Taitung District Court judgment revealed that of the 13 Hongye Little League players who took the field, only 4 played under their real names; the other 9 were impostors, and 5 of them had their ages falsely lowered to 12¹⁶. Principal Hu Xueli, coach Qiu Qingcheng, and manager Zeng Zhendong were each sentenced to 1 year in prison, suspended for 2 years, for forging official documents. This was not Little League; it was older children pretending to be younger children in order to win an international game.

Yet this scandal did not destroy Hongye’s historical significance. Instead, it became the foundation of the national-sport myth. It directly led to the formation of the Golden Dragon Little League team in 1969 and its advance to the United States to win the Williamsport championship¹⁶. Taiwan’s three-level baseball era formally began here; in Taitung alone, more than 60 new Little League teams were established¹⁶. The starting point of baseball as Taiwan’s national sport was a cheer built on deception.

⚠️ Contested View: Was Hongye Little League “a victory for national narrative” or “an act of collective self-deception in memory”? The two answers are not mutually exclusive. The Reporter wrote a sentence that may be the most precise: “Of the 13 Hongye young players that year, 8 have already passed away; there was no applause when their lives left the stage.”¹⁶ The average life expectancy of Indigenous people is seven years shorter than that of Han people; poverty and alcohol abuse are the main causes, and most of the Hongye children were only around 40 when they died. The game they won was never against a world champion. At their real ages, they could not have defeated that Japanese team. Nor did they receive any care because they changed baseball history. Hongye Village still has about 500 residents today¹⁷ (⚠️ the source of the circulating claim of “30 households” is unclear; the confirmed figure found in searches is “about five hundred people”). The school has fewer than 50 students; its Little League team was dissolved in 1999 and reconstituted in 2009.

Hongye Village is still there today. Bunun and Han residents live together and grow corn for a living. In winter, tourists from western Taiwan drive into the community to see the Hongye Little League Memorial Hall, then leave after a meal. Of the seven children from that year, the only one still living in Hongye Village is Qiu Chunguang¹⁶.

Huoshao Island, 1951 to 1987: Political Prisoners Were Held for Thirty-Six Years

Thirty-three kilometers out to sea from Fugang Fishing Harbor in Taitung City is Green Island.

A volcanic island of 15.09 square kilometers, it is Green Island Township, Taitung County. During the Japanese colonial period it was called “Huoshao Island,” and after the war it was renamed “Green Island.” Its most famous geographic feature is Zhaori Hot Spring, one of only three undersea hot springs in the world; the other two are in Kyushu, Japan, and near Sicily, Italy¹⁸. It is a saltwater sulfate-chloride spring, with temperatures of 60-70°C. During the Japanese period it was already listed among the four great famous springs.

But Green Island’s deepest history is not its hot spring.

Green Island Human Rights Memorial Monument, 2022-08-28. Photo: S8321414. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia.

In 1951, the Nationalist government established the “Taiwan Provincial Security Command New Life Correction Center” on Green Island, and large numbers of political prisoners were exiled there¹⁹. At its peak, the New Life Correction Center held about 2,000 political prisoners, divided into 3 battalions and 12 companies. After the Taiyuan Incident in the early 1970s, the “Ministry of National Defense Green Island Reform Prison,” commonly known as “Oasis Villa,” was built in the northeastern corner of Green Island in 1972¹⁹. Two political-prisoner prisons operated simultaneously on one small island.

From 1951 to 1987, this island held political prisoners continuously for 36 years without interruption¹⁹.

Mapped onto Taiwan proper’s timeline, those 36 years covered the outbreak of the Korean War, the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, the Ten Major Construction Projects, withdrawal from the United Nations, Chiang Kai-shek’s death, the Kaohsiung Incident, the Lin family massacre, and the Chen Wen-chen incident. From beginning to end across the entire White Terror martial-law era, Green Island was operating.

Across Taiwan during martial law, there were more than 29,000 political-prison cases, 140,000 victims, and 3,000 to 4,000 people executed¹⁹. A considerable proportion of them were transported to this volcanic island 33 kilometers from Taitung, lived in wooden barracks at the New Life Correction Center or concrete cells at Oasis Villa, faced the sound of the Pacific every day, and waited for a notice to return home that might never come.

Martial law was lifted in 1987, and Green Island stopped holding political prisoners. Oasis Villa was decommissioned in 1992. On International Human Rights Day, December 10, 1999, then-President Lee Teng-hui personally presided over the unveiling of the Human Rights Memorial Monument. This was the first physical site where a Taiwanese president personally acknowledged the history of the White Terror²⁰. In 2002, the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park was established (the full name “Green Island White Terror Memorial Park” was formally adopted in 2018). The park covers about 32 hectares in the northeastern corner of Green Island and includes the New Life Correction Center ruins and Oasis Villa.

Most tourists who go to Green Island today go diving, ride scooters around the island, and soak in Zhaori Hot Spring. A small number walk to the park. The park is on the same road as dive shops and scooter-rental shops. On one side are the remains of political prisoners’ barracks; on the other is the “Green Island Star” visitor center. This island is simultaneously a physical witness to Taiwan’s martial-law memory and a popular tourist destination among eastern offshore islands. These two identities have never been reconciled; they merely coexist.

The Land at Longmen Was Not Actually Meant for a Cannery

Ninety kilometers south from Fugang Fishing Harbor in Taitung, 2.7 times farther than Green Island, lies Orchid Island.

A volcanic island, it is farther from Taiwan proper but closer to the Batanes Islands of the Philippines. It is home to six Tao communities and has a total population of about 5,000. In 1975, something happened that still affects Orchid Island today.

That year, then-Premier Chiang Ching-kuo approved the establishment of a low-level radioactive waste storage facility in the Longmen area of Orchid Island²¹. The decision-making process did not consult Orchid Island residents. Between 1977 and 1980, the Atomic Energy Council and Taiwan Power Company carried out construction on Orchid Island, and local elders’ memories consistently point to deception. The government induced people to sign consent forms by saying it would build a “fish cannery” (in some accounts, a “pineapple cannery”); Tao people did not know the true purpose of the construction site²². ⚠️ Official government statements deny using the term “cannery.” The 2018 Investigation Report on the Truth of the Establishment of the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility on Orchid Island confirmed that the people “were not informed,” but the specific wording of the deception remains disputed. Tao memories, however, consistently indicate that they were not told at the time that it was a nuclear-waste facility.

In May 1982, the first phase of the Orchid Island storage facility was completed, and the first batch of low-level nuclear waste began to arrive²¹. From that moment until the final shipment in 1996, a total of 97,672 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were received over 14 years²¹, originating from the Jinshan, Kuosheng, and Maanshan nuclear power plants as well as medical, agricultural, industrial, and academic institutions across Taiwan.

Orchid Island landscape, 2017-07-21. Photo: Pai-Shih Lee (白士 李). CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia.

In 1987, Tao people protested at the airport against Taipower’s purchase of overseas sightseeing trips to Japan for Orchid Island elected representatives, formally opening the anti-nuclear-waste movement²³.

On February 20, 1988, Tao people launched the “Expel the Evil Spirits” movement, wearing traditional rattan helmets and armor, carrying spears and daggers, and circling the island. This was Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples’ first organized demonstration against nuclear waste²⁴. The protest language of “expelling evil spirits” was developed in a meeting chaired by Chen Yingzhen in January 1988 at the Renjian magazine editorial office on Anhe Road in Taipei²⁴.

That day, the people issued a joint statement, recorded verbatim as follows:

“This land has a soul. It has protected our people since ancient times. Now the poison of nuclear waste harms it here. Our people put on traditional warrior dress, wear rattan helmets, put on armor, carry daggers, and hold spears to show the ‘evil spirits’ our firm will to fight.”²⁴

In 1995, the Orchid Island Township Office launched the “one person, one stone” action. In April 1996, the Orchid Island township mayor, village chiefs, and anti-nuclear-waste activists gathered at Longmen Harbor to protest Taipower’s shipment of 168 barrels of nuclear waste from the Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant. The nuclear-waste ship Dianguang No. 1 was blockaded by Orchid Island residents and, after remaining off Orchid Island for 4 days, was forced to sail away²⁵. After 1996, Taipower did not ship in any new nuclear waste.

But the 97,672 barrels remained. At Longmen.

✦ “From 1982 to 1996, more than 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste entered the storage site, until the Tao people’s harbor blockade pushed the nuclear-waste ship back to the Mingguang wharf at the Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant.” (Events in Focus report²⁶)

In Tao traditional culture, the sea is men’s domain and the mountains are women’s domain. The flying-fish season (beginning each year in February-March, when the fish move north with the Kuroshio Current) is the covenant this people signs with the ocean. When eating flying fish, the people classify fish species by gender and age: women’s fish, men’s fish, and elders’ fish, each handled differently²⁷. During flying-fish season they do not catch reef fish, allowing coral-reef fish to spawn; after flying-fish season ends, they catch reef fish, allowing flying fish to return home to spawn. This ecological wisdom has operated for more than a thousand years.

The plank-built boat (the large chinurikuran made of 27 planks; the small tatara made of 21 planks) is the pinnacle of Tao craft. Its traditional colors are red (mountain red earth), white (shell lime), and black (soot from cooking pots), and the circular boat-eye motif is widely recognized as a cultural symbol of the Tao²⁸.

Traditional Tao plank-built boat, 2015-08-02. Photo: Cho Hsun Lu. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia.

Orchid Island has a tropical maritime climate, with annual rainfall exceeding 3,000 millimeters (far more than the roughly 1,900 millimeters in Taitung City in the East Rift Valley and the 1,500 millimeters on the leeward side of the Coastal Mountain Range), and strong winter northeast monsoons. The Tao traditional underground house (talakaval) was designed for this climate: low, semi-subterranean, with surrounding earth walls for insulation, allowing the northeast monsoon to skim directly over the roof²⁹. Today, the Yeyin community preserves the most complete traditional underground-house settlement, the only old community form on Orchid Island still inhabited.

Forty-two years have passed.

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, August 1, 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen apologized to Indigenous peoples on behalf of the government. On August 15, Tsai visited the island, becoming the first head of state to go to Orchid Island in person to discuss the nuclear-waste problem face to face with Tao people³⁰. On November 22, 2019, the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced NT$2.55 billion in retroactive compensation in Taitung, covering the period from 1974 to 1999³⁰.

Tao elder Lin Hsin-yu refused on the spot. His original words were:

“I solemnly declare: we will not take a single cent! We have sweet potatoes, flying fish, and taro. Please use this money to relocate the site!”³¹

He continued:

“As long as nuclear waste is not removed from Orchid Island, this death, this genocide, will continue.”³¹

As of today in 2026, the nuclear waste has still not been removed. The 97,672 barrels continue to be stored at Longmen on Orchid Island. The White Terror stopped on Green Island after thirty-six years; nuclear waste has been stored on Orchid Island for forty-two years. Taitung County’s two offshore islands each bore the cost of one chapter of Taiwan’s history, and Taiwan proper has felt almost nothing most of the time.

Chishang’s Rice Waves, Puyuma’s Golden Melody Awards

Turning the lens back from Orchid Island to the East Rift Valley, the story changes register.

Chishang Township lies in the southern section of the rift valley, at an elevation of 250-280 meters, bordered by the Central Mountain Range to the west and the Coastal Mountain Range to the east. Its irrigation water comes from Central Mountain Range springs and from fault-fed springs at Dapo Pond³². During the Japanese colonial period, rice varieties from Yamagata Prefecture in Japan were introduced and successfully cultivated. Chishang swept the championships in the first three National Rice Quality Competitions³³, and during the Japanese period its rice was even presented as tribute to the Japanese emperor.

Mr. Brown Avenue is a straight 2.2-kilometer rural road through the fields, with no utility poles, made famous by a Mr. Brown Coffee advertisement. Since 2009, the Chishang Autumn Harvest Rice Art Festival has been held every year in late October, with performances by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, U-Theatre, A-Mei, EggPlantEgg, and others; the rice fields themselves are the stage³⁴.

Mr. Brown Avenue, Chishang, 2016-09-03. Photo: Sinchen.Lin. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia.

But Chishang’s rice waves are the Taitung of tourists. Local Taitung has another source of sound: the Nanwang community (Puyuma).

This Puyuma community in Taitung City has fewer than 1,500 people, yet it has won more than 9 Golden Melody Awards and is called the “hometown of the Golden Melody Awards”³⁵. Representative figures, in chronological order:

Kimbo Hu (born 1950, Puyuma father and Paiwan mother), a pioneer of Taiwan’s folk-song movement, the “father of folk music,” who promoted the “sing our own songs” movement in the 1970s.

Chen Chien-nien (born August 1, 1967, Puyuma), from the Nanwang community in Taitung City and heir to Puyuma song master Lu Sen-bao. His profession was grassroots police officer. In 1999 he released his first original album, Ocean. At the 11th Golden Melody Awards in 2000, he won Best Mandarin Male Singer, becoming the only police-officer singer in history to win the prize, defeating Jacky Cheung, Harlem Yu, David Tao, and Wang Leehom³⁶.

Ocean was an event in the history of Taiwanese popular music. The producers brought recording equipment to Taitung: “The recording was in Taitung, and the life it narrated and the issues it discussed were also closely connected to the local place”³⁷. Across the album, Chen Chien-nien’s guitar served as the main, even the only, instrument, incorporating the sounds of Taitung’s valleys, streams, communities, and coasts into the recording. This was the first Golden Melody-level work to begin from a local Taitung Indigenous perspective.

In 2000, David Tao, Wang Leehom, and Jacky Cheung shook Chen Chien-nien’s hand below the awards stage to congratulate him: a grassroots police officer from land in Taitung where Bunun, Puyuma, and Paiwan people live together had gained recognition at the center of Mandopop.

Nanwang produced more than Chen Chien-nien. Samingad (Chen Chien-nien’s niece) has won the Golden Melody Award for Best Indigenous-Language Singer. Nanwang Sisters (Chen Hui-qin, Li Yu-qin, and Xu Mei-hua) won Best Vocal Group at the 20th Golden Melody Awards³⁵. The Puyuma people also include A-Mei (Indigenous name Gulilai Amit, from Beinan Township), who debuted with Sisters in 1996 and became a Mandopop diva. Panai Kusui (Puyuma father and Amis mother), from Taitung, is called “Taiwan’s weightiest voice” and released her first solo album, Mud Doll, in 2000³⁸.

💡 Did You Know: The density of a 1,500-person Nanwang community winning more than 9 Golden Melody Awards has no second case anywhere in the world. The year Chen Chien-nien won, Ocean was finished recording in a deep mountain area in Chiayi and taken to Taipei by the producer for post-production. But the soul of that album was in Taitung: he himself said, “The recording was in Taitung.” The reason Taitung Indigenous music could become a kind of Taiwanese sound is that it grew directly out of Nanwang community festival songs, then was wrapped in lyrics written after a police officer’s day shift. This followed a completely different path from the mainstream Western-pop covers or adapted Mandarin-pop lyrics of that era.

Taimali’s Sunrise Was Taiwan’s First Light of the Twenty-First Century

The story returns to the road at the beginning.

The South-Link Highway opened in 1985, from Fanggang to Taitung. In October 1992, the South-Link Railway from Fangliao to Taitung opened in full, 98.2 kilometers. On December 23, 2020, electrification of the South-Link Railway opened in full, shortening the Kaohsiung-Taitung travel time by 27 minutes³⁹.

On the day electrification opened, Puyuma Express and Taroko Express trains entered Taitung Station. Taitung Station stands beside the Peinan Site, where 1,600 stone-slab coffins were dug up 40 years earlier. Every day, travelers from western Taiwan walk out of this station toward Chishang, Zhiben, Taimali, the Southern Cross-Island Highway, Green Island, and Orchid Island. What they step on is a human settlement from 5,300 years ago.

In the Paiwan language, Taimali is called “Ja.Bau.Li,” meaning “the place where the sun rises”⁴⁰. On January 1, 2000, the Taimali Township Office planned a millennium sunrise concert, linked by British and American television networks to broadcasts in 25 countries around the world. It became Taiwan’s emblematic site for welcoming the twenty-first century⁴¹. That morning, there was a light on the Pacific horizon that people in western Taiwan could not see, and people in eastern Taiwan did.

Frames such as “lowest density,” “last pure land,” and “most remote” all point in the wrong direction when seen from this perspective. Looking out the window from an electrified South-Link train, the light of Taimali’s millennium sunrise and a Peinan pottery jar from 5,300 years ago occupy the same field of vision. Taitung is where Taiwan’s deepest timeline and earliest memory live in the place of lowest density.

Next time you go to Taitung, do not only go to Chishang to photograph rice fields, and do not only go snorkeling on Orchid Island. Try walking ten minutes from Taitung Station to the National Museum of Prehistory to look at the jade jue unearthed with those 1,600 stone-slab coffins. Then take a boat to Green Island, walk up to the wall at the Human Rights Memorial Park, and find a name you recognize. Then take a boat to Orchid Island and stand for three minutes outside the barbed wire of the Longmen storage facility.

The county with the lowest density once housed the earliest people. The jade jue left by the earliest people is in the museum. The deepest political oppression remains on Green Island. The deepest environmental-justice struggle is still ongoing on Orchid Island. These four things are not coincidences; they are the same history unfolding along different dimensions. Taitung is this island in miniature.

Further Reading

• Orchid Island Ecosystem — The endemic organisms and ecosystem of the volcanic island of Orchid Island, and the biogeographic basis that coexists with Tao traditional culture
• Green Island Prison — The history of political-prisoner incarceration at the 1951-1987 New Life Correction Center and Oasis Villa, extending the Huoshao Island section of this article
• Keelung City — Another fault-line city in the 22 Counties and Cities Series; like Taitung, it is invisible at the scale of the capital, but follows the path of a “declining port city” rather than a “lowest-density county”
• Penghu County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: an offshore-island sovereignty choice that twice rejected gambling; like Taitung, it is among the counties farthest from Taiwan proper, but its residents are Han migrants rather than Indigenous peoples
• Lienchiang County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: offshore islands under Taiwan’s wartime administration for 36 years, almost parallel to Green Island’s 36-year political-prisoner timeline
• Taiwan’s White Terror — The island-wide context of political oppression after 1949, of which Green Island is one physical witness
• Indigenous Land Justice and Traditional Territories in Taiwan — Land, traditional territories, and contemporary disputes from Indigenous perspectives, and the place of Taitung’s six peoples on this map
• Contemporary Indigenous Singer-Songwriters — From Kimbo Hu to Chen Chien-nien to A-Mei, the context of Nanwang community as the hometown of the Golden Melody Awards
• Taiwan’s Coastal Landforms and Marine Landscapes — The geological formation of the Central Mountain Range, Coastal Mountain Range, and East Rift Valley
• Miaoli County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: Hakka stubbornness vs. the five-star magistrate paradox, another county misread at the scale of the capital
• Yilan County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: the two Yilans before and after the Hsuehshan Tunnel, facing touristification pressure much like Taitung’s “last pure land of the east”
• Chiayi City — 22 Counties and Cities Series: a provincial city named “Chiayi” by the emperor yet easiest to overlook, like Taitung in its ignored historical depth

Image Sources

This article uses 5 Wikimedia Commons CC-licensed images:

• Hero (frontmatter): Taitung County Montage — Sleepingstar, 2012-07-06, CC BY-SA 3.0. A Taitung County landscape montage, including Taitung City, Baisha Bay, Zhiben Hot Spring, Green Island, and Orchid Island.
• Scene §Peinan Site: Excavation of the Peinan Site — Benson KC Fang, 2012-02-28, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stone-slab coffin excavation site at the Peinan Site.
• Scene §Huoshao Island: Taiwan GreenIsland Human Rights Memorial Monument — S8321414, 2022-08-28, CC BY-SA 4.0. Green Island Human Rights Memorial Monument.
• Scene §Orchid Island Landscape: Lanyu landscape - Taiwan — Pai-Shih Lee (白士 李), 2017-07-21, CC BY 2.0. Aerial view of Orchid Island.
• Scene §Plank-Built Boat: The Traditional Boat Of Tao People — Cho Hsun Lu, 2015-08-02, CC BY 3.0. Traditional Tao plank-built boat.
• Scene §Chishang Rice Waves: 伯朗大道 — Sinchen.Lin, 2016-09-03, CC BY 2.0. The Takeshi Kaneshiro tree on Mr. Brown Avenue in Chishang Township.

License terms: CC BY 2.0 / CC BY 3.0 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / CC BY-SA 4.0.

References

1. South-Link Highway — Wikipedia — The South-Link Highway opened in 1985 (Fanggang to Taitung), the final completed segment of Provincial Highway 9, and the engineering history of linking the Pingtung Peninsula and eastern Taiwan by the shortest overland route.↩
2. Southern Cross-Island Highway — Wikipedia — The Southern Cross-Island Highway opened in 1972, running from Yujing in Tainan through Taoyuan in Kaohsiung and Haiduan in Taitung to the Taitung county-city area; one of Taiwan’s three cross-island highways.↩
3. Taitung County — Wikipedia — Administrative structure: area of 3,515.2526 square kilometers, Taiwan’s third largest administrative division, 1 city, 2 towns, 13 townships, 5 mountain Indigenous townships, and 2 offshore-island townships.↩
4. Department of Civil Affairs, Taitung County Government Household Registration Statistics — Household-registration records showing the population falling below 210,000 in July 2025, density of roughly 60 people/km² as the lowest nationwide, and Indigenous share of about 37.5% as Taiwan’s highest.↩
5. Tao Language and Austronesian Migration Routes — Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park — Linguistic analysis showing that Tao belongs to the Austronesian family, Malayo-Polynesian branch, Philippine branch, Batanic subgroup, and has 60% similarity with Ivatan on Batan Island in the Philippines.↩
6. Peinan Site — National Museum of Prehistory — Full excavation history: 1980 South-Link Railway new Taitung Station construction exposed large quantities of artifacts; NTU Professors Sung Wen-hsun and Lien Chao-mei’s team conducted 13 excavations over 9 years; 1,600 stone-slab coffins were unearthed; the excavation area reached 10,000 square meters; an unprecedented record in Taiwan’s archaeological history.↩
7. Peinan Culture — Ministry of Education Encyclopedia — The Peinan Site dates to roughly 5,300 to 2,300 years before present, with its flourishing period from 3,500 to 2,300 years before present; the broader area reaches 1 million square meters; Torii Ryuzo’s 1896 photographs of surface stone pillars are the earliest records.↩
8. Peinan Site Jade Objects and Long-Distance Exchange — National Museum of Prehistory — Burial jade from stone-slab coffins, including anthropomorphic and zoomorphic jue earrings, bell-shaped jade bead ornaments, trumpet-shaped jade rings, and jade tubes, is registered as Taiwan national treasures; the jade source was Fengtian jade in Hualien, demonstrating Peinan people’s long-distance exchange capacity 5,000 years ago.↩
9. Official Website of the National Museum of Prehistory — Preparatory office established in February 1990; official opening in August 2002; Southeast Asia’s first internationally scaled museum of a prehistoric cultural site; source of the official wording “the Peinan Site is Taiwan’s largest.”↩
10. Potential World Heritage Sites in Taiwan — Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture — Official record of the first batch of potential sites announced in 2003, with the Peinan Site and Dulan Mountain both included.↩
11. Taitung County Amis and the Chengguang’ao Incident — Council of Indigenous Peoples — Historical records of Taitung County’s Amis population of about 40,000, their main settlements in Changbin, Donghe, Chenggong, Beinan Township, and Taitung City, and the 1911 Chengguang’ao anti-Japanese incident.↩
12. Traditional Eight Communities of the Puyuma — Council of Indigenous Peoples — Official version of the Puyuma traditional Eight Communities (Nanwang, Zhiben, Jianhe, Lijia, Tai’an, Xiabinlang, Alipai, Chulu) and an explanation of the great hunting ritual structure held in late December.↩
13. Paiwan Five-Year Ceremony — Daren Township Office, Taitung County — Records that Tjuabar Village in Daren Township is one of only two communities in Taiwan still continuously holding the Five-Year Ceremony, alongside Kuljaljau Village in Laiyi Township, Pingtung County, and that the ritual has a history of at least 400 years.↩
14. Bunun Group-Relocation Policy — Taiwan Historica — The history of the Japanese implementation of Bunun group relocation in Haiduan and Yanping Townships, Taitung, from Showa 6 (1931) to Showa 16 (1941), changing dispersed-village shifting cultivation and hunting into nucleated settled villages.↩
15. Bunun Eight-Part Polyphony — Haiduan Township Cultural Life Museum — Verifiable historical record of the polyphonic harmony technique of the Bunun “Prayer for the Millet Harvest” (Pasibutbut) and the 1943 recording by Japanese scholar Kurosawa Takatomo.↩
16. Bearing 50 Years of Crime and Punishment: The Hongye Little League That Lit the Fire for Taiwanese Baseball — The Reporter — Full in-depth report on Hongye’s 7:0 defeat of Japan’s Kansai Little League All-Star Team (not a world championship team) on August 25, 1968; 9 of 13 players taking the field under false names; 5 having their ages falsely lowered; the 1969 judgment; and 8 of the 13 players having passed away. Includes the three verbatim quotations: “The record on the scoreboard was seven to zero,” “Where did that ‘world Little League champion Wakayama Little League team’ come from? That claim appeared only later,” and “Of the 13 Hongye young players that year, 8 have already passed away.”↩
17. Current Conditions in Hongye Village — Yanping Township Office, Taitung County — Contemporary records that Hongye Village has about 500 residents, Bunun and Han residents live together, corn farming is the livelihood, Hongye Elementary School has fewer than 50 students, and the Little League team dissolved in 1999 and was reconstituted in 2009.↩
18. Zhaori Hot Spring — Taitung Travel — Geological records that it is one of only three undersea hot springs in the world (the other two are in Kyushu, Japan, and Sicily, Italy), a saltwater sulfate-chloride spring at 60-70°C, and one of the four great famous springs during the Japanese colonial period.↩
19. Green Island White Terror Memorial Park — National Human Rights Museum — Complete history: the New Life Correction Center established in 1951; at peak holding about 2,000 political prisoners; Oasis Villa opened in 1972; political prisoners held continuously from 1951 to 1987 for 36 years; during martial law, Taiwan had more than 29,000 political-prison cases, 140,000 victims, and 3,000-4,000 executions.↩
20. Green Island Human Rights Memorial Monument — National Human Rights Museum — Official record of President Lee Teng-hui personally presiding over the unveiling of the Human Rights Memorial Monument on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 1999; the Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park established in 2002; the formal 2018 naming as “Green Island White Terror Memorial Park”; and the park’s area of about 32 hectares.↩
21. Orchid Island Storage Site — Wikipedia — Full chronology: Chiang Ching-kuo approved the low-level radioactive waste storage facility in 1975; first phase completed and receiving began in May 1982; from 1982 to 1996 a total of 97,672 barrels of low-level radioactive nuclear waste were received; sources included nuclear power plants 1, 2, and 3 and medical, agricultural, industrial, and academic institutions across Taiwan.↩
22. Truth Investigation on the Establishment of Nuclear Waste on Orchid Island — Atomic Energy Council 2018 Report — The 2018 Investigation Report on the Truth of the Establishment of the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility on Orchid Island confirmed that the people “were not informed”; the government denied using the name “cannery,” but the specific wording of deception remains disputed in the government’s formal investigative conclusion.↩
23. Timeline of the Tao Anti-Nuclear-Waste Movement — Environmental Information Center — Record of the movement’s starting point in 1987, when Tao people protested at the airport against Taipower’s purchase of sightseeing trips to Japan for Orchid Island elected representatives.↩
24. The Tao Movement to Expel Orchid Island’s Evil Spirits — Praxis Online — The phrase “expel the evil spirits” was developed in January 1988 at a meeting chaired by Chen Yingzhen in the Renjian magazine editorial office on Anhe Road, Taipei; on February 20, 1988, Tao people launched an island-circling anti-nuclear-waste demonstration, Taiwan’s first organized Indigenous anti-nuclear-waste demonstration; includes the verbatim joint statement beginning “This land has a soul.”↩
25. Orchid Island 1996 Stone-Throwing Harbor Blockade Incident — Events in Focus — Key turning point: the 1995 “one person, one stone” action; in April 1996, Orchid Island residents gathered at Longmen Harbor to protest Taipower’s shipment of 168 barrels of nuclear waste from the Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant; the Dianguang No. 1 was blockaded and forced to sail away after remaining for 4 days; no new nuclear waste was shipped in after 1996.↩
26. Nuclear Waste Orchid Island — Events in Focus — Source of the verbatim passage: “From 1982 to 1996, more than 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste entered the storage site, until the Tao people’s harbor blockade…”↩
27. Tao Flying-Fish Season — WellMedia Cultural Column — Full explanation of festival culture and sustainable ecological wisdom: flying fish migrate north with the Kuroshio Current every February-March; the Tao calendar is organized around flying fish; the sea is men’s domain and the mountains are women’s domain; the classification rules for women’s fish, men’s fish, and elders’ fish; and the practice of not catching reef fish during flying-fish season.↩
28. Tao Plank-Built Boat Craft — Lanyu Info — Complete record of craft and taboos: the large chinurikuran boat has 27 planks and can carry 8-10 people; the small tatara has 21 planks; traditional colors are red, white, and black; the circular boat-eye motif; and outsiders are prohibited from casually photographing or touching the boats.↩
29. Orchid Island Underground House talakaval — Orchid Island Township Office Cultural Heritage — Architectural-culture record that Orchid Island’s underground houses were designed for strong northeast monsoons, low and semi-subterranean with surrounding earth walls for insulation, and that the Yeyin community is the most complete preserved old community form on Orchid Island still inhabited.↩
30. President Tsai Ing-wen’s Orchid Island Apology and Compensation — Presidential Office News — Full apology and compensation chronology: on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, August 1, 2016, Tsai Ing-wen apologized on behalf of the government; on August 15, she became the first head of state to go to Orchid Island in person to discuss the nuclear-waste issue face to face with Tao people; on November 22, 2019, the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced NT$2.55 billion in retroactive compensation in Taitung, covering 1974-1999.↩
31. Rejecting NT$2.55 Billion in Nuclear-Waste Compensation, Tao Elder: “I solemnly declare: we will not take a single cent!” — Environmental Information Center — Original report of Tao elder Lin Hsin-yu’s two verbatim quotations rejecting compensation in November 2019: “I solemnly declare: we will not take a single cent! We have sweet potatoes, flying fish, and taro. Please use this money to relocate the site!” and “As long as nuclear waste is not removed from Orchid Island, this death, this genocide, will continue.”↩
32. Chishang Township Nature and Irrigation — Chishang Township Office — Geographic records: Chishang Township lies in the southern East Rift Valley at 250-280 meters elevation, bordered by the Central Mountain Range to the west and the Coastal Mountain Range to the east; irrigation water comes from Central Mountain Range springs and fault-fed springs at Dapo Pond; soil is unpolluted and day-night temperature differences are large.↩
33. Chishang Rice Quality — Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station — Rice-quality history: Chishang rice swept the championships in the first three National Rice Quality Competitions; during the Japanese colonial period, rice varieties from Yamagata Prefecture were introduced successfully and presented as tribute to the Japanese emperor.↩
34. Chishang Autumn Harvest Rice Art Festival — Lovely Taiwan Foundation — Curatorial record: held every year in late October since 2009; past performers include Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, U-Theatre, A-Mei, and EggPlantEgg; the rice fields themselves are the stage.↩
35. Taitung Indigenous Musicians Special Exhibition | Walking Through the Hometown of the Golden Melody Awards — Made in Taitung — Complete musician genealogy of the Puyuma community (Nanwang), with fewer than 1,500 people and more than 9 Golden Melody Awards, earning the name “hometown of the Golden Melody Awards”; representative figures include Kimbo Hu, Chen Chien-nien, Samingad, Nanwang Sisters, Hao-en, and Jia Jia. Verbatim: “The Puyuma community (Puyuma) has the reputation of being the ‘hometown of the Golden Melody Awards’; with only a little more than a thousand people, it has won more than ten Golden Melody Awards.”↩
36. Chen Chien-nien’s Ocean Defeated Taiwan and Hong Kong Superstars to Win — Fount Media — Full award history: Chen Chien-nien’s first original album Ocean in 1999; Best Mandarin Male Singer at the 11th Golden Melody Awards in 2000; status as the only police-officer singer in history; and his win over Jacky Cheung, Harlem Yu, David Tao, and Wang Leehom.↩
37. Chen Chien-nien’s Ocean Recording Location — Fount Media — Verbatim quotation: “The recording was in Taitung, and the life it narrated and the issues it discussed were also closely connected to the local place,” evaluating the locality of the production location and themes of Chen Chien-nien’s Ocean.↩
38. Panai Kusui — Made in Taitung — Complete record of music and activism: Panai has a Puyuma father and Amis mother, is from Taitung, is called “Taiwan’s weightiest voice,” released her first solo album Mud Doll in 2000, and is also an advocate for Indigenous rights.↩
39. South-Link Railway Electrification Opens in Full — Taiwan Railways Administration, Ministry of Transportation and Communications Press Release — Opening record: full South-Link Railway electrification opened on December 23, 2020; Kaohsiung-Taitung travel time shortened by 27 minutes; Puyuma Express and Taroko Express trains entered Taitung Station.↩
40. Origin of the Taimali Place Name — Taimali Township Office — Place-name etymology: “Taimali” comes from Paiwan “Ja.Bau.Li,” “the place where the sun rises,” also known as the “hometown of sunrise.”↩
41. Taimali Millennium Sunrise Memorial Park — Taitung Travel — Full record of the emblematic site where Taiwan welcomed the twenty-first century: on January 1, 2000, the Taimali Township Office planned a millennium sunrise concert, linked by British and American television networks to broadcasts in 25 countries worldwide. Verbatim: “On January 1, 2000, under the careful planning of the township office, a millennium sunrise concert was held on this beach and linked through British and American television networks with 25 countries around the world to welcome together the first dawn of the twenty-first century.”↩