[Hidden Treasures] A Day in Chiayi City

Let’s go on a day-tour walkabout taking in old places around Chiayi Railway Station that have been dynamized with new cultural-creative pizzazz.

Old, slow-paced Chiayi City sits on Taiwan’s western plains not far from the soaring central mountains. Its fortunes flourished when the Japanese built Taiwan’s main railway system and the Alishan Forest Railway in the early 1900s, connecting the lines here, and the Jianan Plain irrigation system, which nourished an explosion in regional agricultural production.
For tourists, the sleepy city was long considered not a destination itself worth spending much time in, but a jumping-off point for trips to places with more illustrious names, notably popular Alishan in the mountains to the east. The Chiayi brand has seen much positive change over the past decade, government and civic bodies together harvesting anew the city’s rich trove of historical and traditional-culture jewels, with efforts aimed specifically at the tourist.
Following, we present one of the newest offerings, guided day-trips in the Chiayi Railway Station area celebrating old Chiayi’s traditional craft industries and a burgeoning concentration of cultural-creative tourist-inviting enterprises. The railway station is the heart of the old-city area, and all sites visited below are within easy walking distance of each other.



Old-Time Architecture
Chiayi Cultural and Creative Industries Park, better known as the G9 Creative Park, is a short walk from Chiayi Railway Station. Enjoy the train-spotting ops as locomotives rumble by on the lines right behind the grounds, charges in tow.
The park is on the site of the former Chiayi Brewery, closed in 1999, which was established by the Japanese in 1916 to produce sake and other products. Later it was rededicated to the production of kaoliang (sorghum) liquor and medicinal spirits by the Nationalist government.
There are 21 buildings in the complex, with an intriguing heritage-treasure bounty of bottle washers, packaging machines, scales, conveyors, barrels, and other equipment on display. Info boards (mostly in Chinese) around the site explain what you’re looking at. You’ll also see the remnants of spur lines that brought trains right up to the buildings.

Chiayi Brewery in the old days
Chiayi Brewery in the old days
The former Chiayi Brewery today
The former Chiayi Brewery today
The park is a project of the Ministry of Culture, managed by a non-profit group. A three-year comprehensive renovation is underway with many sections already back up and running. This is the largest of the ministry’s five cultural-creative parks around Taiwan, all in revivified heritage complexes. It is designed as a national hub for innovation in traditional arts, with a specific focus on southern Taiwan. Signature local art forms such as koji pottery and both wood and stone sculpture are promoted. Browse the vibrant market-style array of offerings for sale at the many stands set up by artists, artisans, and private cultural-creative enterprises. Other promotional stands of note are operated by the National Palace Museum Southern Branch and the Yunlin Hand Puppet Museum.
What else can you get up to? There are art exhibitions and gallery-cum-cafés/teahouses, a cultural-creative DIY experience area, and even an Alleycat’s franchise (pizza, calzoni, wraps, etc.).