Qiaotou Sugar Factory (Taiwan Sugar Museum) Introduction
With the selected ticket for Kaohsiung, enjoy a relaxed visit to Qiaotou, where tranquility and peace await. Walking into the unique aesthetic of Japan and unlocking historical sites—like the Qiaotou Sugar Factory Manager’s Dormitory—allows you to experience the beauty of Japanese wabi-sabi through seasonal wagashi, Japanese tea, tea ceremonies, and floral art. **Buying Information** The Qiaotou Sugar Factory, formerly known as "Qiaozaitou Sugar Factory", is Taiwan's first modern mechanized sugar factory, inaugurated during the Japanese rule in the 34th year of the Meiji era (1901). It once led Taiwan into a glorious era of sugar production and has set multiple records in the sugar industry over the years. It was a pioneer in the early days of Japanese rule, applying steel construction techniques and is classified as a municipal historic site. The park preserves well the sugar factory, Japanese wooden houses, air raid shelters, red brick water towers, and other historical artifacts. In 2006, Taiwan Sugar Corporation established the Taiwan Sugar Museum on-site, retaining portions of the wall from the factory building built over a century ago, and providing an open view of the entire sugar production process, allowing visitors to witness the physical processes of transporting, pressing, purifying, evaporating, crystallizing, separating molasses, and packaging sugarcane. **Park Features** The park features both Japanese and Baroque-style tropical colonial architecture, alongside red brick water towers, ammunition depots, and 19 other historic sites, reflecting Taiwan's economic and industrial development history. The rich array of public art creations and historical displays enrich the nostalgic space with new cultural dynamism. The expansive park also hosts a wealth of natural ecological resources, with birds, dragonflies, butterflies, and squirrels being common visitors. A summer afternoon stroll offers a refreshing breeze, and a visit to the sales department for traditional ice products from Taiwan Sugar is an excellent choice for family and friends. **Manager's Dormitory** Built in 1940, the Manager's Dormitory was constructed by the then-manager of the Taiwan Sugar Company, Jinmu Shansaburo, and is currently the most well-preserved and representative Japanese-style dormitory in the factory area. Architectural features include a roof structure made of Taiwan Hinoki wood, raised floors, wooden bed frames, a front and back yard, and a Japanese water feature. Notably, it has a rare independent brick foundation among Taiwanese Japanese dormitories. In 2011, Taiwan Sugar Corporation completed restoration as per the original design, and in 2015, external areas were opened to the public for visits and photography, with internal spaces available for guided tours by reservation. This elegant Japanese-style old house was selected as one of the filming locations for the award-winning movie "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful," which has made it a popular spot for fans to take photos. **Community Office** Built in 1901, the Community Office is an important building from the Japanese occupation era, with a structural design that combines wooden construction, brickwork, and reinforced concrete, making it a significant engineering work in Taiwanese architectural history. Its exterior imitates the architecture of Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia, featuring elevated foundations for ventilation, a corridor, and continuous arches that reflect European styles. The square holes surrounding the building are not decorative but served as gun ports for defense against raiders. This site has also become an Instagram hotspot due to the movie "The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful." **Qiaotou Sugar Factory Club** In 1902, then-president Suzuki Tōzaburō built this club within the sugar factory to provide a gathering place for employees who had come from Japan, allowing them a space to socialize, relax, and enjoy themselves. The appearance of the building primarily follows a "tropical colonial style" and was completed using Japanese wooden construction techniques. Today, it is planned as a museum of sugar industry artifacts, a café, and a piggy museum, which showcases over 1,300 themed collections donated by Professor Chen Shih-Meng of National Taiwan University and the former director of Taiwan Sugar Corporation's Animal Husbandry Research Institute, Ge Fu-Jiang. **Rain Tree Square** Formerly a Japanese military shooting range during the colonial period, in 1958, after Japan's defeat, the National Government built single dormitories for employees training Vietnamese exchange students behind the rain trees. The area beneath the rain trees features a spiral stone staircase made of piled rocks, forming a natural stage for performances. **Iron Romance Park** This park features six art pieces themed around "love," created from iron scraps, chains, plates, spacers, and bolts originally from the Xiaogang Refinery and Gangshan Incineration Plant. The imaginative design of the sugar factory transformed these strong materials into romantic installations. **Shigu Bridge Sugar Cultural and Creative Park** Established in October 2010, the Shigu Bridge Sugar Cultural and Creative Park is located in the Qiaotou Sugar Factory area (North Warehouse Group) and is managed by Shigu Cultural and Creative Co. It revitalizes the historic factory space while preserving its original appearance and infusing it with new life through drum art, with its water theater being particularly famous for its stunning audio-visual effects. **Voicing for Human Rights** In August 1978, former Kaohsiung County Mayor Yu Dengfa and his son Yu Ruiyan were labeled by the government as "bandit spies," sentenced to eight years for the charges of "failing to report terror activities" and "propagating for bandits." On January 22, 1979, during a protest march in Qiaotou Township led by Xu Xinliang, Huang Xinjie, Chen Ju, He Chunmu, Zhang Junhong, and Zeng Xinyi, it marked the first political demonstration in Taiwan since the implementation of martial law over forty years ago, an event historically referred to as the "Qiaotou Incident."
