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

Taitung County's 210,000 people are scattered across 3,515 square kilometers, the lowest density in the country: only 60 people per square kilometer, one percent of Taipei's. Yet this county contains Taiwan's earliest human settlement (the Peinan Site, 5,300 years ago, with 1,600 stone coffins), is home to six Indigenous peoples (Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, Rukai, Bunun, Tao), and has Taiwan's highest Indigenous population share at 37.5%. From 1951 to 1987, Green Island's Huoshao Island held political prisoners for thirty-six years. Beginning in May 1982, Longmen on Lanyu began receiving nuclear waste; forty-two years later, 97,672 barrels are still there. On August 25, 1968, seven Bunun children from Hongye Village defeated Japan's Kansai Little League all-star team seven to zero (not a world championship team), and Taiwan's myth of baseball as the national sport began with this deception. Two offshore islands have borne the cost of an entire island.

30-second overview: Taitung County covers 3,515 square kilometers, Taiwan’s third-largest county-level area. Its 210,000 people are spread across this land at a density of about 60 people/km², the lowest in the country, one percent of Taipei City’s. Indigenous people account for roughly 37.5% of the population, the highest share of any county in Taiwan, and the county is home to six Indigenous peoples: Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, Rukai, Bunun, and Tao. In 1980, construction on the South-Link Railway uncovered the Peinan Site, where 1,600 stone-slab coffins were excavated. Dating from 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 around 2,000 White Terror political prisoners, continuously for 36 years. In 1975, Chiang Ching-kuo approved the construction of a nuclear waste storage facility at Longmen on Lanyu; the first shipment arrived in May 1982, and by 2026, 97,672 barrels remained there. 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), launching the myth of baseball as Taiwan’s national sport. Of the 13 players who appeared, 9 played under false names, and 8 of the 13 later died around the age of forty. This article’s point is this: Taitung is a miniature of the entire island, and its two offshore islands have borne the cost of Taiwan’s modernization.

Emerging from the South-Link Tunnel, the First Thing You See Is 3,515 Square Kilometers

If you drive the South-Link Highway, crossing the tail end of the Central Mountain Range from Fanggang in Pingtung toward the east, the view suddenly opens after you pass the Dawu checkpoint.

On the left is the Coastal Mountain Range; on the right is the Central Mountain Range; between them are the rice fields of the East Rift Valley stretching north toward Hualien. Ahead is the Pacific Ocean. This highway was not fully opened until 19851, connecting the Pingtung Peninsula and eastern Taiwan by the shortest overland route. Before that, to get from western Taiwan to Taitung, you either took mountain roads around the south, boarded a boat, or crossed Yushan on the Southern Cross-Island Highway, which opened in 19722.

After entering Taitung County, the first thing you become aware of is density.

An 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 works out to only 60 people per square kilometer, the lowest in the country, one percent of Taipei City’s nearly 9,800 people per square kilometer4.

Behind the numbers is a physical reality: in this county, driving from Taitung City to a Bunun community in Haiduan Township takes two hours; reaching Green Island requires another half-hour flight; getting to Lanyu means taking a boat for more than two hours from Fugang Fishery Harbor in Taitung. The county has 1 city, 2 urban townships, and 13 rural townships; 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 whole county into a tourist backyard and skips over the 210,000 people who live here. Another phrase heard just as often is “the most remote county,” which measures Taitung within a Taipei-centered coordinate system. But seen from the ocean, Lanyu is closer to the Philippines’ Batanes Islands than to Taipei, and the Tao language has 60% similarity with Ivatan on Batan Island5. Seen through time, the Peinan Site predates any Han settlement on Taiwan proper by 5,000 years. “Remote” is a question of direction, not a fact. Taitung compresses the timeline of the entire island into one county: the earliest people, the outermost islands, and the deepest struggles.

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

In 1980, when construction on the new Taitung Station of the South-Link Railway reached the underground phase, large quantities of artifacts were exposed. 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 digs in total and an excavated area reaching 10,000 square meters6.

The final numbers shocked the academic world:

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

Part of the stone-slab coffin excavation site at the Peinan Site, 2012. In 1980, construction on the South-Link Railway's Taitung Station exposed large quantities of artifacts. A team led by Professors Sung Wen-hsun and Lien Chao-mei of National Taiwan University's Department of Anthropology then carried out 13 excavations over 9 years, unearthing 1,600 stone-slab coffins, the largest stone-slab coffin burial complex in the Pacific Rim and Southeast Asia.
Stone-slab coffin excavation site at the Peinan Site, 2012-02-28. Photo: Benson KC Fang. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia.

The burial jade objects were refined enough to be registered as national treasures, including human-animal-shaped jade jue ornaments, 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 more than a hundred kilometers 5,000 years ago8.

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

In 1990, the preparatory office for the National Museum of Prehistory was established, and the museum formally opened in August 2002 as Southeast Asia’s first prehistoric cultural site museum of international scale9. 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 included in Taiwan’s first batch of potential World Heritage sites10.

“The Peinan Site is Taiwan’s largest site, possessing the most complete prehistoric settlement form and data, and it 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 was once home to Taiwan’s earliest people.

Six Peoples Living in One County

One figure always appears in official statistics on Taitung County: Indigenous people make up about 37.5% of the population, the highest share in the country4.

But this percentage obscures a deeper fact. Taitung is a county where six Indigenous peoples coexist within a single administrative division. 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, the Makalot and Torik communities on the east coast launched the Chengguang’ao Incident against Japanese rule after being humiliated and harshly treated by Japanese police11. Today, Torik’s harvest festival remains one of the east coast’s most important annual rituals.

Puyuma: About 14,000 people, concentrated in Taitung City and Beinan Township. Names for the traditional eight communities vary slightly across sources; the Council of Indigenous Peoples’ version includes Nanwang (Puyuma), Zhiben, Jianhe, Lijia, Tai’an, Xiabinlang, Alipai, and Chulu12. The Great Hunting Festival, Mangayaw, held from late December to early January, is the year’s largest ritual and includes two ceremonial stages: the Monkey Festival and adult men going into the mountains to hunt. The advancement structure of age-grade organization is the core logic of this people’s social operation.

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

Rukai: Eastern Rukai, about 2,100 people, mainly in Dongxing Village, Beinan Township, formerly called Danan11. Eastern Rukai territory borders Eastern Paiwan territory, and culturally it both preserves Rukai traditions and exchanges with Paiwan. In Taitung County, it is a minority within the minorities.

Bunun: This people is not native to Taitung. During the Japanese colonial period, Bunun people were widely distributed across the upper reaches of the Beinan River system, living by dispersed hamlet cultivation and hunting. Between Showa 6 (1931) and Showa 16 (1941), the Japanese colonial government carried out a group relocation policy in what is now Haiduan Township and Yanping Township, Taitung County, concentrating Bunun people who had lived scattered in mountain areas into flat alluvial fans near the foothills, forming clustered villages14. ⚠️ In Taitung oral memory, this history is often simplified as “they moved here in 1934,” but the archives show a full ten-year policy; 1934 may have been only the year for one batch. Group relocation changed the Bunun way of life: they went from being mountain forest hunters to settled farmers.

The Bunun people’s most representative cultural heritage is Pasibutbut, the eight-part polyphonic “Prayer for Millet Harvest.” In 1943, the Japanese scholar Kurosawa Takatomo recorded this polyphonic harmony in Taiwan’s mountains15. Its vocal pairing is intricate, and the chorus is vast in force; amid echoes from waterfalls and rivers, it developed astonishing harmonic techniques. Bunun communities in Haiduan Township still pass it on today.

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

Six peoples live in one county. Each 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 a World Championship Team

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

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

In July 1968, at the invitation of the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association, Japan’s amateur baseball federation selected a Little League all-star team from the Kansai region to play in Taiwan16. They were not that year’s world championship team. Japan had indeed won two consecutive Little League World Series titles in Williamsport, but the team that came to Taiwan was a different one. The Reporter’s in-depth feature “Bearing Fifty Years of Crime and Punishment” states clearly: “So where did that ‘Wakayama world Little League champion team’ come from? ‘That claim appeared only later.’”16

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

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

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

Hongye won. Then, one year later, the scandal broke.

A 1969 Taitung District Court judgment revealed that of the 13 players who appeared for the Hongye Little League team, only 4 competed under their real names; the other 9 all played under assumed identities, and 5 had underreported their ages as 1216. Principal Hu Xueli, coach Qiu Qingcheng, and manager Zeng Zhendong were each sentenced to 1 year in prison for forging official documents, with 2 years’ probation. This was not Little League; it was using older children to play younger children in order to win an international game.

Yet this scandal did not destroy Hongye’s historical significance; instead, it became the cornerstone of the national-sport myth. It directly led to the formation of the Golden Dragons Little League team in 1969 and their journey to Williamsport, where they won the 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”? These two answers are not mutually exclusive. The Reporter wrote one sentence that may be the most precise: “Of the 13 young Hongye players from that year, 8 have already passed away; when their lives ended, there was no applause.”16 Indigenous life expectancy is seven years shorter than that of Han people; poverty and alcoholism are the main causes. Most of the Hongye children died around the age of 40. The game they won was never against a world championship team; at their real ages, they also could not have beaten that Japanese team; and they received no care for changing baseball history. About 500 people live in Hongye Village today17 (⚠️ some circulated claims of “30 households” are of unclear origin; the verified figure found through search is “about five hundred people”). The school has fewer than 50 students. The Little League team disbanded in 1999 and was reorganized in 2009.

Hongye Village is still there today. Bunun people and Han people live together, growing corn for a living. In winter, tourists from western Taiwan drive into the community to visit the Hongye Little League Memorial Hall, eat a meal, and leave. Of the seven children from that year, the only one still 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 Fishery Harbor in Taitung City is Green Island.

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

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

Green Island Human Rights Memorial Monument, 2022. Located inside the White Terror Green Island Memorial Park, it was unveiled by then-President Lee Teng-hui on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 1999. Between 1951 and 1987, the New Life Correction Center and Oasis Villa were successively established on this island, imprisoning around 2,000 White Terror political prisoners.
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 New Life Correction Center of the Taiwan Provincial Security Command 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. In the early 1970s, after the Taiyuan Incident, the Green Island Reform and Reeducation Prison of the Ministry of National Defense was built in 1972 on the island’s northeast corner, commonly known as Oasis Villa19. Two political-prisoner prisons operated on one small island at the same time.

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

Placed on the timeline of Taiwan proper, those 36 years covered 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 of the White Terror martial-law era, Green Island was in operation.

Across Taiwan during martial law, there were more than 29,000 political imprisonment cases, 140,000 victims, and 3,000 to 4,000 people executed19. A considerable share of them were once transported to this volcanic island 33 kilometers from Taitung, living in the wooden barracks of the New Life Correction Center or the concrete cells of Oasis Villa, facing the sound of Pacific waves every day while waiting 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 December 10, 1999, International Human Rights Day, 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; formally named the “White Terror Green Island Memorial Park” in 2018, the park covers about 32 hectares on Green Island’s northeast corner and includes the remains of the New Life Correction Center and Oasis Villa.

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

The Plot of Land at Longmen Was Not Meant for a Canning Factory After All

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

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

That year, then-Premier Chiang Ching-kuo approved the establishment of a low-level radioactive waste storage facility in the Longmen area of Lanyu21. The decision-making process did not consult Lanyu residents. Between 1977 and 1980, the Atomic Energy Council and Taiwan Power Company carried out construction on Lanyu, and local elders’ recollections consistently point to deception. The government induced consent signatures under the name of building a “fish canning factory” (in some accounts, a “pineapple canning factory”); Tao people did not know the true purpose of the construction site22. ⚠️ Government statements deny using the phrase “canning factory.” The 2018 Investigation Report on the Truth of the Establishment of the Lanyu Nuclear Waste Storage Facility 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 Lanyu storage facility was completed, and the first shipment of low-level nuclear waste began arriving21. 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, sourced from the First, Second, and Third Nuclear Power Plants and from medical, agricultural, industrial, and academic institutions across Taiwan.

Lanyu landscape, aerial view from above the airport, 2017. Ninety kilometers from Taiwan proper and closer to the Philippines' Batanes Islands. The island is home to six Tao communities, with a total population of about 5,000. Beginning in May 1982, Longmen on the island's southeast corner began receiving nuclear waste for storage; by 1996, 97,672 barrels had accumulated.
Lanyu 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 attempt to buy off Lanyu elected representatives with a sightseeing trip to Japan, 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 the first organized Indigenous anti-nuclear-waste demonstration in Taiwan24. The protest phrase “Expel the Evil Spirits” was developed in January 1988 in the Taipei office of Renjian Magazine on Anhe Road, at a meeting chaired by Chen Yingzhen24.

That day, the people issued a joint statement. The verbatim record reads:

“This land has a soul. Since ancient times it has protected our people until now. Today, the toxins of nuclear waste are harming it. Our people put on traditional warrior dress, wearing rattan helmets, wearing battle armor, carrying daggers and holding spears, to show the ‘evil spirits’ our resolute will to fight.”24

In 1995, the Lanyu Township Office launched the “one person, one stone” action. In April 1996, the Lanyu township mayor, village chiefs, and anti-nuclear-waste activists gathered at Longmen Harbor to protest Taipower’s transport of 168 barrels of nuclear waste from the Second Nuclear Power Plant. The nuclear-waste ship Dianguang No. 1 was blockaded by Lanyu residents, and after being stranded in the waters off Lanyu for 4 days, it was forced to leave25. After 1996, Taipower did not ship in any new nuclear waste.

But the 97,672 barrels stayed. At Longmen.

✦ “From 1982 to 1996, more than 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste entered the storage facility, until the Tao people’s harbor blockade sent the nuclear-waste ship back to the Second Nuclear Power Plant’s Mingguang Pier.” (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 as the fish move north with the Kuroshio Current) is this people’s covenant with the ocean. When eating flying fish, people divide fish species by gender and age: women’s fish, men’s fish, and elders’ fish, each with different handling methods27. During flying fish season they do not catch reef fish, allowing coral reef fish to spawn; only after flying fish season ends do 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 is the apex of Tao craftsmanship: the chinurikuran large boat uses 27 planks and the tatara small boat uses 21 planks. The traditional colors are red (mountain red earth), white (shell lime), and black (pot soot), and the circular “boat eye” motif has widely come to represent Tao cultural symbolism28.

Traditional Tao plank-built boat, Lanyu, August 2015. A Tao large boat, chinurikuran, is made from 27 wooden planks and can carry 8-10 people; a small boat, tatara, is made from 21 planks. The circular boat-eye motif is the Tao people's best-known cultural symbol.
_Traditional Tao plank-built boat, 2015-08-02. Photo: Cho Hsun Lu. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia._

Lanyu 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. The northeast monsoon is powerful in winter. The Tao traditional underground house, talakaval, was designed for this climate: low and semi-subterranean, with surrounding earthen walls for insulation, allowing the northeast monsoon to pass directly over the roof29. Today, Yeyin preserves the most complete traditional underground-house settlement and is the only old settlement form on Lanyu that is still inhabited.

Forty-two years have passed.

On August 1, 2016, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 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 personally to Lanyu and discuss the nuclear waste issue face to face with Tao people30. On November 22, 2019, the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced retroactive compensation of NT$2.55 billion in Taitung, covering the period from 1974 to 199930.

Tao elder Lin Xin-yu refused on the spot. His verbatim words:

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

He further said:

“As long as nuclear waste is not moved out of Lanyu, this kind of death, this kind of genocide, will continue.”31

As of 2026, the nuclear waste has still not been moved out. The 97,672 barrels continue to be stored at Longmen on Lanyu. The White Terror stopped on Green Island after thirty-six years; nuclear waste has been stored on Lanyu for forty-two years. Taitung County’s two offshore islands have each borne the cost of a chapter of Taiwan’s history, while most of Taiwan proper has felt little of it.

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

From Lanyu, turn the lens back to the East Rift Valley, and the story shifts to another tone.

Chishang Township lies in the southern part 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 springs in the Central Mountain Range and 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 Emperor of Japan.

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

Takeshi Kaneshiro Tree on Mr. Brown Avenue, Chishang Township, September 2016. A straight rural road of about 2.2 kilometers with no utility poles, it became famous through a Mr. Brown Coffee commercial. Since 2009, the Chishang Autumn Harvest Rice Art Festival has been held every year in late October in the middle of the fields.
_Mr. Brown Avenue in Chishang, 2016-09-03. Photo: Sinchen.Lin. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia._

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

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

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

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

Ocean was an event in Taiwanese pop music history. The producer moved recording equipment to Taitung: “The recording was in Taitung, and the life described and issues discussed were also closely tied to the local place”37. The whole album used Chen Chien-nien’s guitar as its main, and at times only, instrument, integrating the sounds of Taitung’s valleys, streams, community life, and coast 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 award stage to congratulate him: a frontline police officer from a land in Taitung where Bunun, Puyuma, and Paiwan lived together had gained recognition at the center of Mandopop.

Nanwang has more than Chen Chien-nien. Samingad (Chen Chien-nien’s niece) won the Golden Melody Award for Best Indigenous Language Singer. Nanwan Sisters (Chen Huiqin, Li Yuqin, and Xu Meihua) won Best Vocal Group at the 20th Golden Melody Awards35. The Puyuma 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, known as “Taiwan’s weightiest voice,” 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 is hard to match anywhere in the world. The year Chen Chien-nien won, the album Ocean had been finished in a deep mountain location in Chiayi and then taken by the producer to Taipei for post-production. But the soul of that album was in Taitung: he himself said “the recording was in Taitung.” Taitung Indigenous music could become a Taiwanese sound because it grew directly out of Nanwang’s ritual songs, then was wrapped in lyrics written after day shifts as a police officer. This took an entirely different path from the Western pop covers and adapted Chinese-language pop lyrics that were mainstream in that era.

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

The story returns to the road from the beginning.

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

On the day electrification opened, Puyuma Express and Taroko Express trains entered Taitung Station. Taitung Station sits 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 Lanyu. Beneath their feet is a human settlement from 5,300 years ago.

In Paiwan, Taimali is called Ja.Bau.Li, meaning “the place where the sun rises”40. On January 1, 2000, the Taimali Township Office planned the Millennium Sunrise Concert; British and American television networks connected it with 25 countries around the world for broadcast. It was Taiwan’s emblematic scene for welcoming the twenty-first century41. That dawn, a line of light appeared on the Pacific horizon. People in western Taiwan could not see it; people in eastern Taiwan did.

“Lowest density,” “last pure land,” and “most remote” are all framings pointed in the wrong direction from this perspective. Looking out from a South-Link electrified train, the light of Taimali’s millennium sunrise and a Peinan pottery jar from 5,300 years ago sit within 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 to Lanyu to snorkel. Try walking ten minutes from Taitung Station to the National Museum of Prehistory to see the jade jue excavated from those 1,600 stone-slab coffins. Then take a boat to Green Island, walk to the wall at the Human Rights Memorial Park, and look for a name you recognize. Then take a boat to Lanyu and stand for three minutes outside the barbed wire of the Longmen storage facility.

The county with the lowest density was once home to the earliest people. The jade jue left by the earliest people are in the museum. The deepest political repression remains on Green Island. The deepest environmental justice struggle is still unfolding on Lanyu. These four things are not coincidental; they are the same history unfolding along different dimensions. Taitung is a miniature of this island.

Further Reading

  • Lanyu Ecosystem — The endemic organisms and ecosystem of Lanyu’s volcanic island, and the biogeographic foundation that coexists with Tao traditional culture
  • Green Island Prison — The history of political-prisoner incarceration at the New Life Correction Center and Oasis Villa from 1951 to 1987, an extension of this article’s Huoshao Island section
  • 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 its path is that of a “declining port city,” not a “lowest-density county”
  • Penghu County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: an offshore island sovereignty choice that twice rejected gambling; like Taitung, it is one of the counties farthest from Taiwan proper, but its residents are Han migrants rather than Indigenous peoples
  • Lienchiang County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: an offshore island under Taiwan’s battlefield administration for 36 years, almost parallel in time to Green Island’s 36-year history of political prisoners
  • Taiwan’s White Terror — The island-wide context of political repression after 1949, with Green Island as one physical witness
  • Land Justice and Traditional Territories of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples — Land, traditional territories, and contemporary controversies from Indigenous perspectives, and where Taitung’s six peoples sit on this map
  • Contemporary Indigenous Singer-Songwriters — From Hu Defu to Chen Chien-nien to A-Mei, the context of Nanwang as the hometown of the Golden Melody Awards
  • Taiwan’s Coastal Landforms and Seascapes — The geological formation of the Central Mountain Range, Coastal Mountain Range, and East Rift Valley
  • Miaoli County — 22 Counties and Cities Series: Hakka stubbornness versus the five-star magistrate paradox; like Taitung, a 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 the same tourism pressure of “the east’s last pure land” as Taitung
  • Chiayi City — 22 Counties and Cities Series: a provincial city named “Chiayi” by an emperor yet easily overlooked, with a historical depth similar to Taitung’s

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 montage of Taitung County landscapes, including Taitung City, Baisha Bay, Zhiben Hot Spring, Green Island, and Lanyu.
  • 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 §Lanyu Landscape: Lanyu landscape - Taiwan — Pai-Shih Lee (白士 李), 2017-07-21, CC BY 2.0. Aerial view of Lanyu.
  • 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: Mr. Brown Avenue — Sinchen.Lin, 2016-09-03, CC BY 2.0. 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 section of Provincial Highway 9 and the engineering history that connected 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 — Area of 3,515.2526 square kilometers, Taiwan’s third-largest administrative division, and the administrative structure of 1 city, 2 urban townships, 13 rural townships, 5 mountain Indigenous townships, and 2 offshore island townships.↩
  4. Household Registration Statistics, Civil Affairs Department, Taitung County Government — Household registration records showing the population falling below 210,000 in July 2025, density of about 60 people/km² as the nation’s lowest, 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 Batanic branch of the Philippine languages within the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family, and has 60% similarity with Ivatan on Batan Island in the Philippines.↩
  6. Peinan Site — National Museum of Prehistory — The complete excavation history: South-Link Railway new Taitung Station construction exposed large quantities of artifacts in 1980; a National Taiwan University team led by Professors Sung Wen-hsun and Lien Chao-mei conducted 13 excavations over 9 years; 1,600 stone-slab coffins were unearthed; the excavated area reached 10,000 square meters; and the results set an unprecedented record in Taiwan’s archaeological history.↩
  7. Peinan Culture — Encyclopedia of Taiwan Education — The Peinan Site’s cultural period dates to about 5,300 to 2,300 years before present; its peak period was 3,500-2,300 years before present; its broader area reaches 1 million square meters; and in 1896 Torii Ryuzo photographed the surface stone pillars, leaving the earliest record.↩
  8. Peinan Site Jade and Long-Distance Exchange — National Museum of Prehistory — Burial jade objects from the stone-slab coffins, including human-animal-shaped jade jue ornaments, bell-shaped jade bead ornaments, trumpet-shaped jade rings, and jade tubes, are registered as Taiwan national treasures; the jade source is Fengtian jade in Hualien, showing the long-distance exchange capacities of Peinan Culture people 5,000 years ago.↩
  9. Official Website of the National Museum of Prehistory — Establishment of the preparatory office in February 1990, official opening in August 2002, Southeast Asia’s first prehistoric cultural site museum of international scale, and the official wording introducing the Peinan Site as “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, including both the Peinan Site and Dulan Mountain.↩
  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 Incident against Japanese rule.↩
  12. Traditional Eight Puyuma Communities — Council of Indigenous Peoples — The official version of the traditional eight Puyuma communities (Nanwang, Zhiben, Jianhe, Lijia, Tai’an, Xiabinlang, Alipai, Chulu), and the structure of the Great Hunting Festival held in late December.↩
  13. Paiwan Five-Year Festival — Daren Township Office, Taitung County — Records showing that Tuban Village in Daren Township is one of only two communities in Taiwan that still continue to hold the Five-Year Festival, alongside Kuljaljau Village in Laiyi Township, Pingtung County, and that the festival has at least 400 years of history.↩
  14. Bunun Group Relocation Policy — Taiwan Historica — The beginning and end of Japan’s group relocation of Bunun people in Haiduan Township and Yanping Township, Taitung, from Showa 6 (1931) to Showa 16 (1941), changing them from dispersed hamlet cultivation and hunting to clustered-village settlement.↩
  15. Bunun Eight-Part Harmony — Haiduan Township Cultural Living Center — Verifiable historical records of the Bunun “Prayer for Millet Harvest” (Pasibutbut), its polyphonic harmonic techniques, and the 1943 recording by Japanese scholar Kurosawa Takatomo.↩
  16. Bearing 50 Years of Crime and Punishment: Hongye Little League, Which Lit the Fire of Taiwanese Baseball — The Reporter — Complete 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 the 13 players competing under assumed names; 5 underreporting their age; the 1969 judgment; and 8 of the 13 players having already passed away. Includes the three verbatim quotes: “The scoreboard record was seven to zero,” “So where did that ‘Wakayama world Little League champion team’ come from? That claim appeared only later,” and “Of the 13 young Hongye players from that year, 8 have already passed away.”↩
  17. Current Conditions in Hongye Village — Yanping Township Office, Taitung County — Contemporary records showing Hongye Village has about 500 residents, Bunun and Han people living together, corn farming as livelihood, fewer than 50 students at Hongye Elementary School, the Little League team disbanding in 1999, and reorganization in 2009.↩
  18. Zhaori Hot Spring — Taitung Travel — Geological records identifying it as one of three submarine hot springs in the world (the other two in Kyushu, Japan, and Sicily, Italy), a saltwater sulfate-chloride spring at 60-70°C, and one of Taiwan’s four great hot springs during the Japanese colonial period.↩
  19. White Terror Green Island Memorial Park — National Human Rights Museum — Complete history of the New Life Correction Center established in 1951, about 2,000 political prisoners held at its peak, Oasis Villa opened in 1972, political prisoners continuously held from 1951 to 1987 for 36 years, and, across Taiwan during martial law, more than 29,000 political imprisonment cases, 140,000 victims, and 3,000-4,000 executions.↩
  20. Green Island Human Rights Memorial Monument — National Human Rights Museum — Official records 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 establishment of Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park in 2002; its formal naming as “White Terror Green Island Memorial Park” in 2018; and its area of about 32 hectares.↩
  21. Lanyu Storage Site — Wikipedia — Complete chronology of Chiang Ching-kuo approving the establishment of the low-level radioactive waste storage facility in 1975; completion of the first phase in May 1982 and the start of receiving waste; receipt of 97,672 barrels of low-level radioactive nuclear waste from 1982 to 1996; and sources including Taiwan’s first, second, and third nuclear power plants and medical, agricultural, industrial, and academic institutions across the island.↩
  22. Truth Investigation into the Establishment of Nuclear Waste on Lanyu — Atomic Energy Council 2018 Report — The government’s formal investigation conclusion in the 2018 Investigation Report on the Truth of the Establishment of the Lanyu Nuclear Waste Storage Facility, confirming that the people “were not informed,” while the government denies using the name “canning factory” and the specific wording of the deception remains disputed.↩
  23. Timeline of the Tao Anti-Nuclear-Waste Movement — Environmental Information Center — Record of Tao people protesting at the airport in 1987 against Taipower’s attempt to buy off Lanyu elected representatives with a sightseeing trip to Japan, marking the start of the anti-nuclear-waste movement.↩
  24. The Tao Movement to Expel Lanyu’s Evil Spirits — Praxis Online — Record of the protest phrase “Expel the Evil Spirits” being developed in January 1988 in the Renjian Magazine office on Anhe Road in Taipei at a meeting chaired by Chen Yingzhen; the Tao people’s island-circling anti-nuclear-waste demonstration on February 20, 1988; the first organized Indigenous anti-nuclear-waste demonstration in Taiwan; and the verbatim joint statement beginning “This land has a soul.”↩
  25. Lanyu 1996 Stone-Throwing Harbor Blockade Incident — Events in Focus — Key turning point records of the 1995 “one person, one stone” action; Lanyu residents gathering at Longmen Harbor in April 1996 to protest Taipower’s transport of 168 barrels of nuclear waste from the Second Nuclear Power Plant; Dianguang No. 1 being blockaded and forced to leave after being stranded for 4 days; and no new nuclear waste being shipped in after 1996.↩
  26. Nuclear Waste on Lanyu — Events in Focus — Source of the verbatim sentence: “From 1982 to 1996, more than 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste entered the storage facility, until the Tao people’s harbor blockade...”↩
  27. Tao Flying Fish Season — WellMedia Cultural Column — Full cultural explanation of the flying fish season: flying fish, a migratory species, move north with the Kuroshio Current each February-March; the Tao annual calendar is organized around flying fish; the sea is men’s domain and mountains are women’s domain; women’s fish, men’s fish, and elders’ fish categories; and the sustainable ecological wisdom of not catching reef fish during flying fish season.↩
  28. Tao Plank-Built Boat Craft — Lanyu Blue Gate — Full record of the craft and taboos: the large chinurikuran boat has 27 planks and carries 8-10 people; the small tatara boat has 21 planks; traditional colors are red, white, and black; the circular boat-eye motif; and outsiders are prohibited from casually photographing or touching plank-built boats.↩
  29. Lanyu Underground House talakaval — Cultural Heritage, Lanyu Township Office — Architectural culture records of Lanyu underground houses designed in response to strong northeast monsoons, their low semi-subterranean form and surrounding earthen walls for insulation, and Yeyin as the best-preserved old settlement form on Lanyu that is still inhabited.↩
  30. President Tsai Ing-wen’s Lanyu Apology and Compensation — Presidential Office News — Full chronology of apology and compensation: President Tsai Ing-wen apologizing to Indigenous peoples on behalf of the government on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, August 1, 2016; becoming the first head of state to visit Lanyu and discuss the nuclear waste issue face to face with Tao people on August 15; and the Ministry of Economic Affairs announcing NT$2.55 billion in retroactive compensation in Taitung on November 22, 2019, 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 containing two verbatim quotes from Tao elder Lin Xin-yu in November 2019 rejecting compensation: “I solemnly declare: we will not take a single cent! We have sweet potatoes, flying fish, and taro. Please use this money to move the storage site!” and “As long as nuclear waste is not moved out of Lanyu, this kind of death, this kind of genocide, will continue.”↩
  32. Chishang Township Nature and Irrigation — Chishang Township Office — Geographic records of Chishang Township in the southern East Rift Valley at 250-280 meters elevation, with the Central Mountain Range to the west and the Coastal Mountain Range to the east; irrigation water from Central Mountain Range springs and fault-fed springs at Dapo Pond; unpolluted soil; and large day-night temperature differences.↩
  33. Chishang Rice Quality — Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station — Records of Chishang rice sweeping the first three National Rice Quality Competition championships, and the successful introduction of rice varieties from Yamagata Prefecture in Japan during the Japanese colonial period, with rice presented as tribute to the Emperor of Japan.↩
  34. Chishang Autumn Harvest Rice Art Festival — Lovely Taiwan Foundation — Curatorial records of the festival held every year in late October since 2009, inviting Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, U-Theatre, A-Mei, EggPlantEgg, and others to perform, with the rice fields as the stage.↩
  35. Taitung Indigenous Musicians Special Exhibition | Walking Through the Hometown of the Golden Melody Awards — ZZTaitung — Full musician genealogy of Puyuma (Nanwang) community, with fewer than 1,500 people yet more than 9 Golden Melody Awards, known as “the hometown of the Golden Melody Awards,” including Hu Defu, Chen Chien-nien, Samingad, Nanwan Sisters, Hao-en, and Jia Jia. Verbatim: “The Puyuma community has the beautiful name ‘the hometown of the Golden Melody Awards’; with only a little over one thousand people, it has won more than a dozen Golden Melody Awards.”↩
  36. Chen Chien-nien’s Ocean Defeats Taiwan and Hong Kong Heavenly Kings — Fount Media — Full award history of Chen Chien-nien’s first original album Ocean, released in 1999; his 2000 Best Mandarin Male Singer win at the 11th Golden Melody Awards; his status as the only police officer singer in history; and his defeat of Jacky Cheung, Harlem Yu, David Tao, and Wang Leehom.↩
  37. Recording Location of Chen Chien-nien’s Ocean — Fount Media — Source of the verbatim quote: “The recording was in Taitung, and the life described and issues discussed were also closely tied to the local place,” evaluating the local nature of Ocean’s recording location and themes.↩
  38. Panai Kusui — ZZTaitung — Complete music and activism record: 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 Indigenous rights advocate.↩
  39. Full Opening of South-Link Railway Electrification — Taiwan Railways Administration, Ministry of Transportation and Communications Press Release — Opening records of full South-Link Railway electrification on December 23, 2020; the Kaohsiung-to-Taitung journey shortened by 27 minutes; and Puyuma Express and Taroko Express trains entering Taitung Station.↩
  40. Origin of the Taimali Place Name — Taimali Township Office — Etymological record that “Taimali” comes from the Paiwan word 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 Taimali Township Office planning the Millennium Sunrise Concert on January 1, 2000; British and American television networks connecting it with 25 countries around the world for broadcast; and its status as Taiwan’s emblematic scene for welcoming the twenty-first century. Verbatim: “On January 1, 2000, under careful planning by the township office, the Millennium Sunrise Concert was held on this beach; through British and American television networks, it was broadcast together with 25 countries around the world to welcome the first dawn of the twenty-first century.”↩
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