Qualla: Hongmaogang Cultural Park

Hongmaogang Cultural Park: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mk2010, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2007, an entire village disappeared from the southern tip of Kaohsiung. The residents of Hongmaogang had lived along that stretch of coast for generations, fishing the Taiwan Strait and building a tight-knit community rooted in the rhythms of the sea. Then the Port of Kaohsiung's Intercontinental Container Terminal expansion arrived, and the village had to go. The Hongmaogang Cultural Park, opened in June 2012 after three years of renovation, stands on a small reserve of land set aside from the development. It is less a tourist attraction than an act of remembrance — a place that insists the people who lived here are not forgotten.

Image: Mk2010 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hongmaogang Cultural Park: A Name That Carries History

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hongmaogang means, roughly, 'red-haired harbor,' and the name points to a layer of Taiwanese history that predates even the Qing dynasty. Hongmao — 'red-haired' in Hokkien — was the term local people used for the Dutch colonists who controlled Formosa in the seventeenth century, ...

Image: Pbdragonwang | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hongmaogang Cultural Park: The Village That Was Relocated

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. The displacement was not dramatic in the way demolitions sometimes are. The residents of Hongmaogang were not expelled overnight; the process was the slower, grinding kind — negotiations, compensation, the gradual emptying of streets and lanes as families packed up and moved else...

Image: Pbdragonwang | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hongmaogang Cultural Park: What the Park Preserves

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Liaon98, CC BY-SA 3.0 tw. Spread across 3.42 hectares, the Hongmaogang Cultural Park holds several distinct spaces. The Gaozi Tower — its name evoking the Chinese character 高, meaning 'tall' or 'high,' which the tower's silhouette resembles — once housed a revolving restaurant and offers elevated views ac...

Image: Liaon98 | CC BY-SA 3.0 tw

Hongmaogang Cultural Park: Memory Against Erasure

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. Industrial ports, by their nature, consume coastlines. The Port of Kaohsiung is one of the busiest container ports in the world, and its expansion has reshaped the southern waterfront for decades. Hongmaogang was not the first community to make way for freight, and it will not be...

Image: Pbdragonwang | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hongmaogang Cultural Park: The View from the Water's Edge

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pbdragonwang, CC BY-SA 3.0. Standing on the ocean-front platform at Hongmaogang, with the harbor machinery visible to one side and open water to the other, the tension that defines this place is palpable. Cranes and container ships signal the economic logic that displaced the village; the platform itself si...

Image: Pbdragonwang | CC BY-SA 3.0