Chishang features diverse terrain, including plains and lakes, flanked by the Coastal Mountain Range to the east and the Central Mountain Range to the west. To the south lies the Xinwulü River, alongside a rare active fault line of global significance. The air is fresh, the area is far removed from urban hustle and bustle, and though situated within the East Rift Valley, the open vistas and the mountain silhouettes against the night sky provide a stunning backdrop for stargazing, creating a serene and extraordinary atmosphere. The tranquil and elegant rural landscape further enhances its charm.
Chishang is a key tourist attraction along the East Rift Valley travel route. It is conveniently accessible, with the Southern Cross-Island Highway exiting at Chishang, provincial highways passing through, and express trains stopping at the station. Since the early days of the Qing Dynasty, Chishang has primarily been a rice-producing area. This region’s fertile soil and favorable climate have nurtured an excellent environment for cultivating high-quality agricultural products. Over the years, Chishang has led the nation in implementing the Chishang Rice Certification program, adapting its agricultural practices to align with various agricultural policies. This transformation has established the premium Chishang rice brand.
As Chishang rice gained recognition nationwide, the region’s agricultural environment began to attract external attention. The farmland cultivated by early settlers has not only yielded superior rice but also preserved traditional agricultural culture. Visitors to the Old Field District of Xinkaiyuan can deeply experience Chishang’s rich traditional cultural heritage and its profound connection to the land.
From the beginning of spring to the winter solstice, from Brown Boulevard to Dapo Pond, Chishang offers breathtaking scenery all year round. From the Spring Plowing Picnic Festival to the Autumn Harvest Festival, and even the Bamboo Raft Carnival and Chishang Starry Night Slow Town events, there is always something exciting happening here to welcome visitors from near and far.
With the support of its profound natural and cultural heritage, as well as the collective efforts of its residents, Chishang Township successfully passed the certification process of the International Cittaslow Organization in June 2024. Remarkably, it achieved one of the highest scores among all the cities applying worldwide. This accomplishment reflects Chishang’s significant progress and outstanding performance across various criteria, such as its natural environment, social interaction, and cultural preservation. It is a great honor for Chishang, and we are delighted to share this achievement with our Cittaslow Alliance partners and the people of Taiwan.
We warmly invite everyone to visit Chishang Township to experience its unique charm and enchanting landscapes. Whether savoring local delicacies, exploring the rich and diverse cultures of the Minnan, Hakka, and Indigenous peoples, or immersing yourself in the natural beauty of shifting light, clouds, and breezes, Chishang fulfills your deepest yearnings and aspirations. Here, in this peaceful and serene paradise, you are sure to create unforgettable memories.
Looking ahead, Chishang will continue to implement innovative measures to enhance the quality of life. As a proud new member of the Cittaslow Taiwan Alliance, we eagerly look forward to working with our alliance partners to create a brighter future and foster a better living environment for Taiwan’s slow towns.
Food of Chihshang
Bento
Packed in wooden containers, Chishang lunchboxes have become a defining image of the region. The wooden box absorbs moisture, ensuring the fragrant and chewy rice retains its ideal texture. During the era of slow trains, passengers would eagerly prepare their coins before reaching Chishang Station, where they could grab a steaming hot lunchbox through the train window—a cherished memory of train journeys from that time.
Although no longer sold on platforms, Chishang lunchboxes continue to captivate travelers with their perfectly cooked rice, juicy lean meat, and refreshing pickled radish. Whether from Jiaxiang, Wutao, Quanmei Xing, or Dadi Hotel, these bento meals remain unforgettable delights for visitors traveling across Taiwan.
Rice Cuisine
Located in the East Rift Valley, Chishang sits at an altitude of 300 meters. Its environment, characterized by significant temperature differences between day and night and abundant sunlight, is ideal for rice cultivation. The irrigation water, rich in organic minerals, comes from the Xinwulü River and the unique inland freshwater marsh, Dapo Pond. Chishang rice has long been synonymous with premium quality. Various rice-based delicacies crafted from Chishang’s exceptional rice, such as Tianweijia’s Hakka glutinous rice cakes, perfectly fried rice cakes, Ganweitang’s rice noodles, BIKE De Koffie’s rice bagels, and Le Mi Shao’s rice wheel cakes, all brim with a delightful rice aroma, leaving a lingering taste of their rich flavors.
Free-range Chicken
The free-range chickens in Chishang are primarily fighting chickens and black-feathered native chickens, raised through free-range farming. In addition to feed, they are fed natural foods like grass and pumpkins, and drink pure water that is free from industrial pollution. This allows the chickens to develop natural immunity, and the use of medication is significantly reduced, making the meat both healthy and delicious. The meat is firm and juicy, and those who have tasted it are full of praise. Only chickens raised within the administrative area of Chishang Township, with a special “town emblem leg band” issued by the township office, and which pass inspection by the Central Livestock Improvement Association 15 days before slaughter, can be sold as “Chishang Free-range Chicken.”
Tofu skin, Tofu, Soy milk
In addition to the famous lunch boxes, soybean products are also an essential part of the local cuisine in Chishang. Well-known establishments such as “Dou Zhi Jian,” “Fu Yuan Tofu Shop,” and “Da Chi Tofu Skin Shop” offer a variety of dishes made from non-GMO soybeans, infused with local characteristics of Chishang. These dishes are not only golden and delicate but also rich in soybean aroma. From savory items like fried tofu skin, fried tofu, and fried tofu pockets, to sweet treats such as tofu pudding and soy milk, these are not only the locals’ favorites but also attract many visitors from outside the region.
Vegetarian Paradise
The weathered soil from the two mountain ranges and the pure water from the Xinwulu Creek nourish the farmland, and similarly, they nourish the vegetable gardens. The various fresh vegetables and fruits from Chi-Shang continue to amaze health enthusiasts and food lovers. Many chefs who embrace the green food philosophy have opened a variety of vegetarian restaurants in Chi-Shang, prioritizing the use of local, seasonal ingredients. From the beloved Baobi Vegetarian favored by teacher Jiang Xun, to Chao Ben Wei, Que Gu, and Shu Shi Nan Hai… these innovative vegetarian dishes allow both vegetarians and non-vegetarians to savor the fresh sweetness of Chi-Shang’s vegetables and fruits.
Clothing of Chihshang
“Mu Lan Chi-Shang”
The local artist Xu Ji-Yun, who has taught at Dulan Elementary School for many years, was introduced to indigo dyeing during a handcraft class. She fell in love with this art, where dye transforms fabrics in endless ways. Starting as an indigo enthusiast, she became an artisan dedicated to promoting indigo dyeing. She even grew indigo plants (Indigofera tinctoria) beside her workshop, cultivating local Taitung indigo to preserve it on the fabric. She dyes scenes of Chi-Shang’s mountains, oceans, flowers, leaves, and people, and has established the brand “Mu Lan Chi-Shang.” Here, visitors can not only find beloved indigo-dyed artworks but also participate in workshops to create their own, experiencing clothing and accessories unique to Chi-Shang.
Housing of Chihshang
Transportation of Chihshang
Chi-Shang Railway Station
The Chi-Shang Railway Station was rebuilt on the site of the old station, with a design featuring a barn-like structure that houses the system equipment room. The elongated station building is connected to the platform and square by a sloped ramp, forming a distinctive feature of the station’s design. The design transforms the historically significant barn into a station symbol, aiming to enhance local identity and reflect Chi-Shang’s unique regional character. Within the barn-like structure, there is an open station hall and a corridor next to the enclosed equipment room. The interplay of glass and wooden panels on the facade creates a striking visual effect. The wooden station, resembling a time tunnel, has become the first impressive sight for visitors to Chi-Shang.
The Circular Zun Bicycle Path
The bicycle path in Chishang Township circles around the eastern side of the main rice production area along Taiwan’s Route 9. It offers expansive views of the countryside and picturesque paths through the fields, with distant views of the Central and Coastal Mountain Ranges. The path is flat and easy to ride, making it suitable for cyclists of all ages. The main route starts at Fengze Bridge near Dapo Pond and connects various attractions, including Du Yuan, the small waterwheel, Bulang Avenue, Bao’an Temple, and Wan’an Brick Kiln. This path is an excellent spot for experiencing Taiwan’s rural life and rice culture, allowing riders to enjoy the peace and simplicity of nature during a leisurely ride.
Bulang Avenue
Bulang Avenue was originally just a straight rural road in the Chi-Shang Township. It became famous after being featured in an advertisement for Bulang Coffee. Recently, it gained attention again after actor Takeshi Kaneshiro filmed a commercial for EVA Air here. It is known as the “Green Paradise Road,” with vast, endless rice fields on either side and no power poles in sight, offering a serene escape for modern city dwellers. The benches under the trees and tea-serving scenes add to the charm, bringing visitors back to the pure, simple rural atmosphere. It’s one of the must-visit spots for photo opportunities.
Heaven’s Road
Under the vast, endless rice fields, this “Heaven’s Road,” which extends toward the sky in an S-shape, winds its way into the distance. It crosses the northeast-southwest direction of the Berlong Avenue, with the rice fields stretching all the way to the towering Nan Heng Mountain in the background. The scenery is a harmonious mix of near, middle, and distant views, making it a perfect spot for photography. The swing at the entrance of Heaven’s Road is also an essential photo opportunity. Created by Indigenous artist Sabu Gacho, the artwork titled “Natural Healing” features a crescent-shaped swing set against the stunning rice fields, often referred to as the “Heaven’s Swing.” It is a successful example of both an art installation and landscape design.
Education of Chihshang
Chihshang Junior High School
Chihshang Junior High School, established in August of 1962, originally began as a junior high school. In 1968, it was restructured and became known as “Taitung County Chihshang Junior High School.” Currently, the school has nine classes and one special education class, with thirty staff members and two hundred sixty-six students. Its catchment area includes Fuyuan, Dapo, Wan’an, and Guangyuan elementary schools. Over the years, through the efforts of eleven school principals and the dedication of all faculty and staff, as well as the support of local leaders and parents, the school has become a cherished alma mater for several generations.
Dapo Elementary School
Dapo Elementary School is located in Qingfeng Village, near the east side of the provincial highway, and the school district includes the two villages of Qingfeng and Dapo; facing the Dapo Pond, a famous scenic spot in the East Rift Valley of Huadong, with the Coastal Mountain Range to the east, and the Central Mountain Range to the west, the school has always been known for its “scenic beauty”.
Dapo Elementary School is located in a fault zone, and the Central Geological Survey has installed a “Precision Measuring Instrument for Terrain Deformation” in the Dapo Elementary School fault zone to record the movement of the East Rift Valley. The Eastern Coastal Rocks Educational Park was also established, where all kinds of rocks produced in the coastal mountains, from slate to metamorphic pyroxene, can be seen. The “Aquatic Plants Educational Garden” on campus is full of educational value, with plants such as the top-spotted tamarind, candelabra, and the American locust apple.
Fukuhara Elementary School
Fukuhara Elementary School is located in Chihshang Township, Taitung County, in the northernmost part of the Rift Valley District of Taitung County. Currently, there are seven regular classes, four art classes, and two kindergarten classes, with a total of 158 elementary school students.
Fukuhara Elementary School was established in 1913, more than a century ago, and was initially named “Xin Kai Yuan Fanjin Public School” by the Japanese, as Chihshang Township was then an uninhabited wilderness, with only a few aboriginal people making a living by hunting. Today, Fukuhara Elementary School’s old Japanese-style dormitories have stood for 90 years, each in a different form, each as charming and elegant as the next, and have been restored through the concerted efforts of various communities and have become a base for the promotion of local culture.
Wan-an Elementary School
Founded in 1934, Wan-an Elementary School in Taitung County currently has twelve classes and more than one hundred students, but it has the largest public and private elementary school site in the country of 8.43 hectares, and the neighboring environment, where waves of rice flow in and waves of the coastline are intertwined with mountain peaks, makes the broad sky and the wide land of the childhood a wonderful memory that many graduates still relish. Wan An Elementary School Zhenxing Branch has become a popular pilgrimage destination because of its inclusion in a painting project, in which French street artist Mr. Seven (Julien Malland Seth) depicted an Amis girl sitting in the bushes on the school building, as well as a boy wearing modern clothes with a traditional totem side pack in the back, in the hope of preserving the heritage of local culture and innovating.
Entertainment of Chihshang
Dapo Pond Scenic Area
Dapo Pond is a major pond in the East Rift Valley Plain of Huadong, famous for its beautiful scenery. Before the 1940s, the pond was rich in fish such as anchovies, carp, lice, perch, eels, and mullet. …… Many people along the shoreline made a living by catching fish from the Dapo Pond. Aquatic plants such as water chestnuts and lotus flowers breed there. There are dozens of wild birds such as ducks and bamboo chickens ……, making it a paradise for both resident and migratory birds. In the past, it was common to see anglers fishing by the pond and fishermen catching fish and shrimp on bamboo rafts, making the scenery as if it were a fairyland. After the 1960s, due to siltation and the construction of additional drainage facilities, the area of Dapo Pond was reduced, and the area was restored to its glory through artificial development. The beautiful environment of Dapo Pond is now a good place for villagers and tourists to enjoy the scenery.
Hakka Culture Park
Located in Taitung’s Chihshang Township, the Taitung County Hakka Cultural Park covers an area of about 6.5 hectares, and its entrance is dotted with wood carvings that convey the images and spirit of the Hakka immigrants from the eastern part of the country who traveled through the mountains and across the sea. In front of the park, there is a large sea of flowers, and during the annual flower season, all the flowers bloom in a variety of colors.
The park is mainly planned with an exhibition area on the first floor, a book area on the second floor, an antique display area and an anchor experience area, etc., presenting the life of the Hakka settlements in the Eastern Rift Valley, various cultural aspects of the industry; Hakka opera, Hakka performing arts, children’s toy-making and other diversified and rich activities are often organized to show the unique social connotation and cultural experience of the Hakka, and at the same time, make the visitors here feel very exciting and full of satisfaction.
The Du Garden
The Du Garden in Xinxing Village was built by Mr. Du Junyuan and his wife, Ms. Yang Meigui, in memory of their father, Mr. Du Jinzhi, and their mother, Ms. Wang Yuan, and in the spirit of giving back to the villagers, they demolished and built the ancestral home where their parents lived, as well as the former Jinfeng Rice Factory. The garden occupies an area of more than 2,000 pings, and its internal facilities include a memorial hall, an activity center, a landscape garden, a medicinal herb garden, a rockery, a lotus pond, a pavilion, an extensive lawn, a parking lot, and tens of thousands of years old fossilized wood from Indonesia …… . In order to ensure that medicinal plants are not lost to the public, more than 100 kinds of precious herbs are collected in the Herb Garden to provide the public with knowledge and research; in addition, the Taitung County Agricultural Reformatory has been invited to provide technical guidance and provide various kinds of precious herbs for research purposes.
Chiang Hsun’s Study Room
The Japanese-style building of the study was built in 1936, formerly the dormitory of the principal of Fukuhara Elementary School, and “Ichihiko Horio” on the door plate was the first Japanese principal who moved in in 1937. With the completion and opening of the new dormitory, the old house fell into disuse and was even on the verge of demolition due to problems with ownership and restoration. In 2014, the Tsuwado team and local residents partially restored and preserved the house, but it was then abandoned for many years due to the fact that there was no one else to take over the use of the building. It was not until 2019 that Mr. Wang Jinsheng, a vegetarian artist who moved to Chihshang, spent nearly two years alone renovating the building, collecting old wood and repairing the old to preserve the integrity of the Japanese-style architecture. Nowadays, the Chiang Hsun Study Hall adopts a reservation system, every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, three staircases every day 10:30/13:30/15:00, and the tour lasts for about 60 minutes, which includes audio tours, exhibition tours, and interactive Q&A, making it a good place to listen to nature and listen to oneself.
Barn Art Museum
The Chihshang Barn Museum of Art was built in 1948 as a barn for the Chien Hsing Rice Mill. Mr. Leung Ching-hsien of the Doritos Rice Company took the initiative to provide his family’s old barn, which was renovated by architect Chen Kuan-hua’s team, and transformed into the Chihshang Barn Museum of Art, a new landmark in Chihshang. The architectural design of the barn retains the original structure, with one large and two small exhibition halls, which can be used for single exhibitions of large-scale works, as well as thematic exhibitions and series of exhibitions. A floor-to-ceiling glass gallery on the façade brings in natural light from the outdoors, allowing the exhibits inside the gallery and the endless green waves of rice outside to form an expansive landscape that brings in a lot of astonishing admiration. The barn, which used to be the memory of local residents, has become a platform for art promotion, creating more surprises and sparks from old bottles of wine.
Rice Farm Museum
Originally the Chihshang Farmers’ Association’s fertilizer warehouse, because of its proximity to the brick kiln factory and its location at the entrance to the Wan’an community, the community planned to use it as a factory for explaining and exhibiting Chihshang’s rice culture, as well as a place of consultation and rest for visitors, and as a base for the villagers to engage in recreational activities. Later, a remodeling plan was submitted to the Cultural Affairs Committee to establish the Rice Museum, which is full of simple beauty and serves as a window to the outside world for the Wanan community.
The museum displays and sells various types of Chihshang rice, as well as agricultural equipment, all of which were provided by community members, demonstrating the centripetal force and importance attached to local cultural heritage. The museum also offers a series of experiential and educational activities, such as rice planting and cutting in accordance with seasonal conditions, and outdoor education at schools, such as rice DIY, colorful rice paintings, and brick kiln experiences, allowing visitors to get closer to the production process of rice.
Floating Canal and Daguan Pavilion
The floating canal was built by the residents of Chihshang a hundred years ago to divert water from the Dapo Pond in order to irrigate their farmland, and the waterwheel that was necessary for this purpose has also been perfectly preserved. Farmland, floating canals, waterwheels ……, a simple rural landscape, the East Rift Valley Scenic Area Management Office has specifically planned bicycle paths for tourists to enjoy the blue sky and greenery, and the floating canals are currently a Taitung County Notified Historical Building. The Da Guan Pavilion is located on the Chihshang Floating Canal, and because it is situated in the center of the Chihshang Plain, it has a good view of hundreds of hectares without obstacles, and when the rice paddies are ripening, the view from the pavilion is like a golden carpet of endless waves of rice, which is breathtaking.
Tanchung Bogong Temple
Located at the northern end of Chihshang Township, Tanchung Bogong Temple (Fude Palace) stands in the middle of the 1,000 hectares of Chihshang Plain at an elevation of 260 meters, surrounded by rice paddies, with the Taiwan Railway tracks passing behind the temple. Every year, when the rapeseed blossoms are in full bloom in January, and when the rice paddy ears are full of golden color in June and November, it attracts many photographers who come here to capture the beauty of the Bogong Temple with the train and the paddy fields and the rapeseed blossoms.
Golden Harvest Museum
The Golden Harvest Museum is a rice tourism factory planned by the Chihshang Township Farmers’ Association to combine leisure and education. It combines professional rice milling and processing, rice DIY experiences, and Chihshang agricultural experience activities, making it a scenic spot with both education and leisure. It also offers a paid reservation tour of the site, as well as the Rice Wave Pavilion Gift Exhibition and Sale Center, the Little White House Café, and the Tian Ma Restaurant, making it the only factory in Taiwan that combines refined rice milling with rice education. Outside the museum is the Chihshang Township Farmers’ Association’s Dadi Theater – Flower Canvas, which is built around the Dadi Theater, and inside the canvas there are flowers and installation art for visitors to play with and take photos of. The Da Di Theater stage is located in the center of the area and is surrounded by grassy slopes as the audience area. In addition to enjoying the performances on the stage, you can also look out at the mountains in the distance, making it the most beautiful and natural stage space.