Chiao-Tou Sugar Factory (Taiwan Sugar Museum) Introduction
With the selected package of Kaohsiung, enjoy a leisurely time at Qiaotou, where time stands still and the heart finds peace and tranquility. Step into a unique Japanese aesthetic world and explore the historical site — the Qiaotou Factory Manager's Dormitory, where you can experience the beauty of Japanese wabi-sabi through seasonal wagashi, Japanese tea, tea ceremonies, and floral art. The Qiaotou Sugar Factory, formerly known as the "Qiaozaitou Sugar Factory," is Taiwan's first modern mechanical sugar factory, operational since the Meiji 34 year (1901) during the Japanese Colonial Era. It once led Taiwan into a glorious era of sugar production, setting various industry records over the years. As a pioneer of employing steel construction techniques in the early days of Japanese rule, it has been designated as a historic site by the municipality. The park preserves many relics, including the sugar factory, Japanese wooden houses, air raid shelters, and a red brick water tower. In 2006, Taiwan Sugar Corporation established the Taiwan Sugar Museum on-site, retaining parts of the century-old factory walls and allowing visitors to witness the entire sugar-making process from transportation, pressing, purification, evaporation, crystallization, honey separation to packaging. The park features both Japanese and Baroque-style tropical colonial architecture, encompassing 19 historical sites including a red brick water tower, an ammunition depot, and a life-sized statue of Guanyin. These sites illustrate the past struggles of Taiwan's economic industrial development. The rich public art creations and historical displays breathe new cultural vitality into the nostalgic environment. The extensive park is also home to abundant natural ecological resources, where common visitors include birds, dragonflies, butterflies, and squirrels. A walk among them on a summer afternoon brings a refreshing breeze. Visiting the sales office for traditional ice products from Taiwan Sugar and taking the small train is a fantastic option for family and friends to enjoy together. The factory manager's dormitory was built in 1940, constructed by the factory manager Jinmu Shanzan of the Taiwan Sugar Co., Ltd. It is the most well-preserved and representative Japanese dormitory in the area. Architectural features include a roof structure made of Taiwanese cypress, elevated floors, wooden bed bundles, front yards and backyards, and a Japanese water landscape. Notably, it has a rare independent brick foundation in Taiwanese Japanese dormitories. The Taiwan Sugar Corporation restored it in 2011, and since 2015, the external space has been opened for public visits and photography, while internal space also offers guided tours by reservation. This elegant old Japanese house was selected as a filming location for the award-winning movie "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful," making it a popular spot for photo opportunities. The Social Housing Office, built in 1901, is one of the important buildings from the Japanese colonial period. Its structure combines wood construction, brick, and reinforced concrete, marking a significant engineering achievement in Taiwanese architectural history. The exterior mimics buildings from the Netherlands in Southeast Asian colonial areas, characterized by elevated foundations for ventilation, corridors, and continuous arch shapes that reflect European style. Notably, the square holes surrounding the building are not merely decorative but serve as gun holes for defense against bandit raids. This site has gained popularity as a social media hotspot due to the film "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful." The Qiaotou Sugar Factory Club was built in 1902 by then-president Suzuki Tohsaburo to offer a gathering place for employees from Japan working at the factory. The club features a "tropical colonial style" exterior, combining Japanese wooden construction techniques. It is now planned as a sugar industry museum, café, and pig-themed museum, with the latter showcasing over 1,300 themed collectibles donated by Professor Chen Shimen of National Taiwan University and Gufu Jiang, former director of the Livestock Research Institute of Taiwan Sugar Company. The Rain Tree Square was once a Japanese military firing range during the colonial period. After Japan's defeat in 1958, the nationalist government built bachelor dormitories behind the rain trees to train Vietnamese exchange students, while the lower part of the rain tree is a spiral stone staircase made from stacked boulders. The entire square forms a natural performance stage. The Iron Love Park utilizes discarded metal pieces, chains, discs, gaskets, and bolts from the Xiaogang Refinery and Gangshan Incineration Plant. Following creative designs by the sugar factory, it features six art pieces themed around "Love," transforming the resilient image of steel into romantic installations. The Shigu Bridge Sugar Cultural and Creative Park was established in October 2010, located at the Qiaotou Sugar Factory (Northern Warehouse Area) in Kaohsiung, operated by Shigu Cultural and Creative Co. It revitalizes the unused century-old factory space, preserving its historical appearance while injecting new life through percussion art, with the water theater being particularly well-known for its shocking sound and light effects. In relation to human rights events, in August 1978, then-Kaohsiung County Mayor Yu Dengfa and his son Yu Ruiyan were labeled "bandit spies" by the government, charged with "not reporting bandits" and "promoting bandit propaganda," leading to an eight-year prison sentence. On January 22, 1979, figures like Hsu Hsin-liang, Huang Hsin-chieh, Chen Chu, He Chunmu, Zhang Junhong, and Zeng Xinyi held a demonstration in Qiaotou Township, marking the first political protest against martial law in Taiwan after more than forty years, known as the "Qiaotou Incident."
