Taiwan Today

With its forts, food and temples, the special municipality is pushing for a greater share of the tourism market.

Around 7 p.m. each Saturday, tour buses stop at a rate of more than one per minute outside Flowers Night Market in Tainan City, southern Taiwan. The peckish passengers they disgorge quickly join queues—some already a dozen deep—in front of the market’s 300-plus food and drink vendors.

Many of those coming here to taste local delicacies like oyster omelets and dan zi noodles are outsiders, and not only from other parts of Taiwan. Mainland Chinese accents are often heard, and for most Hong Kongers and Singaporeans visiting Tainan, the night market is a “must-see.”

Tourism in Tainan, a special municipality created at the end of 2010 when Tainan City merged with Tainan County, is booming, and Flowers Night Market is not the only attraction drawing dense crowds. Tourist days spent in Tainan typically include visits to the city’s Confucius Temple and to Fort Zeelandia. The temple was founded during the Kingdom of Dongning, a mini-state established by Ming dynasty (1368–1644) loyalists who had fled from mainland China under the leadership of Koxinga. Better known to Chinese-speakers as Zheng Cheng-gong (鄭成功,1624–1662), Koxinga is remembered for forcing the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) to leave Taiwan in 1662. Fort Zeelandia, built by the VOC soon after the trading enterprise established a colony in what is now Tainan in 1624, is one of the oldest European buildings in Asia.

According to statistics from the Republic of China’s (ROC) Tourism Bureau, since late 2011 around 80,000 people per month have been visiting Fort Zeelandia; in 2008, the monthly average was just more than 52,000. During the same period, the number touring the Koxinga Shrine, a temple where Zheng is revered as a deity, has more than doubled to about 25,000 each month.

“The former Tainan City has a high density of monuments, characteristic architecture and traditional culture, while the former Tainan County has folk customs, agriculture and natural ecosystems,” says the municipality’s mayor, William C.T. Lai (賴清德). “In addition, there’s a diverse festival culture. Other cities and counties have unique orientations, but none of them has as many resources as Tainan. The integration of festival activities, ecology, customs and local industries will naturally attract more tourists and boost consumption, and this is Tainan City Government’s core development concept for the tourism industry.”

Because tourism is central to the mayor’s vision for Tainan, which has 1.88 million people spread over 2,192 square kilometers, the municipality’s government is devoting more resources than ever to the sector. According to Chen Chun-an (陳俊安), director of Tainan’s Tourism Bureau, before the city and county merged, the two local governments had 34 civil servants assigned to tourism duties. Chen’s bureau currently has twice as many personnel, although funding has not doubled.

“After I was sworn in as mayor, I proposed that our city should orient itself as a ‘Cultural Capital, Technology New Town, Tourism Paradise and Low Carbon City.’ The simultaneous progress of cultural and creative industries, high-tech industries and our low carbon city plan can result in balanced and pluralistic development,” says Lai, a member of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party and a former lawmaker.

According to the mayor, the four goals complement each other. Take those for technology and tourism, for example. “Via [communications] technology, multilingual mobile apps and QR codes, we’ll be able to provide real-time digital mobile guides that satisfy tourists’ need for information and provide barrier-free travel guide services,” he says.

During folk religion festivals in the first half of 2012, Chen’s bureau used GPS technology to track the progress of parades as they zigzagged from village to village. Information gathered this way will be used to promote future editions of these events.

Spreading the word about facets of Tainan that have been fixtures of local life for generations is typical of Chen’s approach. “I’m not going to spend lots of money creating festivals. I focus on discovering local potential and creating local packages,” he says.

“This year, we helped seven temples arrange press trips and conferences a week or two in advance [of existing religious festivals], and we built a theme website,” Chen says, adding that events of this sort cost the city government very little money. To promote the festivals, he says, all his bureau had to do was design and print leaflets, and pay the traveling expenses of reporters attending the press trips.

While folk rituals are very much in keeping with the former city’s image as a bastion of tradition, enlarging the administrative area has greatly changed the face of Tainan. Lai describes the main attractions of the former county as “rich wetland ecosystems, a magnificent sandy coastline, beautiful reservoirs and ponds, and Guanziling’s special muddy hot springs.” He does not worry that Tainan’s reputation as a city of culture and history will be diluted by the merger. “Tourists’ impressions of the city won’t be weakened because of the integration of diverse tourism resources. Instead, Tainan is gaining in value, and expectations are growing,” Lai says. “There’s a symbiotic relationship between tourism and other forms of economic development,” he explains, citing the marketing of agricultural and fishery products to visitors as a way in which tourism and other sectors can work hand in hand.

Savoring “Small Eats”

Tainan has also long been associated with xiao chi, literally “small eats,” which are usually cooked and eaten at roadside stands or in night markets. Well known within Taiwan, these delicacies are now acquiring a reputation beyond the country’s borders. Shanti Christensen, a Californian food blogger based in Beijing, is among the Westerners thrilled by the southern city’s food culture. “Every Christmas, my husband takes me to visit his grandma in Taipei. In Christmas 2011, we took the train to Tainan because I wanted to visit other parts of Taiwan and Tainan is known for its street food,” Christensen says.

“After one day in Tainan I wished I’d discovered Tainan sooner. We’d planned to be in Tainan one night and two days, but extended our stay a day in order to taste more food ... A friend’s father who grew up in Tainan knew stalls that had been around for five decades, and showed me more than my stomach could fit!” she recalls.

Non-Asian visitors like Christensen are becoming more common in Tainan, but neither Lai nor Chen are satisfied with the city’s international profile. As a result, the Tainan City Government has been trying to enhance the area’s visibility via international travel fairs and city exchanges. “In 2011, we attended 18 travel and tourism exhibitions. Twelve were in Taiwan and six, including three in mainland China, were overseas,” Chen says. He expects that by the end of this year, the city will have sent teams to another eight or nine travel exhibitions in Taiwan, and at least seven in other countries.

“International tourists usually focus on Taipei,” the mayor laments. “Access to Tainan is restricted, as tourists need to transfer from Taoyuan or Kaohsiung airports and then use other forms of transportation to reach Tainan. This substantially impacts their willingness to visit our city. How to attract foreign tourists and facilitate tourist transportation have become important issues.”

“We’ve been marketing package tours between Kaohsiung and Tainan to attract foreign visitors from Kaohsiung International Airport,” says Lai, mentioning an approach intended to make up for the lack of direct public transportation between the southern airport and Tainan.

Charter flights from cities in mainland China, Japan and South Korea are able to land at Tainan’s airport. There are no scheduled flights between the city and mainland China, however. Given the importance of mainland Chinese visitors to Taiwan’s tourism industry—in 2011, mainland Chinese residents accounted for nearly one-third of Taiwan’s 6.09 million visitors—this concerns Lai and Chen.

Other second-tier airports in Taiwan, such as Taichung and Taipei Songshan, serve multiple mainland Chinese cities. Yet there seems little prospect of Tainan getting direct scheduled flights in the near future. “For some reason, it just isn’t happening,” remarks Chen, saying the final decision rests with the central government’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC).

Marco Vazzoler, general manager of Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel Tainan, says additional flights to Tainan from mainland China and other parts of East Asia “would definitely help business.” Nonetheless, Chen is not placing all his hopes on the mainland Chinese market. For the sake of other international visitors, the city government is reviewing signs and notices to ensure information in English is correct, he says. Also, his bureau is trying to draw Japanese tourists by playing up Tainan’s architecture from the Japanese colonial era (1895–1945). Last winter, the city government published a Japanese-language leaflet allowing visitors to follow in the footsteps of Crown Prince Hirohito, who toured the city in 1923.

Vazzoler thinks golfing packages, which the five-star hotel has been offering since its grand opening in spring 2009, could become especially popular with Japanese tourists. “Five nearby golf courses are very good. For what Japanese golfers would spend on a golfing vacation in Japan, they could fly here, play golf, and enjoy great food and a comfortable hotel,” he says.

At the budget end of the accommodation market, Fuqi Hostel, which opened in late August 2011, offers 28 beds in three dormitories for as little as NT$450 (US$15) per person per night. “We try to keep our hostel inexpensive, so we’ve not spent much on furniture or decoration,” says Amily Tu (杜婉茹), one of the co-owners.

Tu says that the owners are trying to keep the original character of the building, which is more than 70 years old, but this can make satisfying fire regulations and other rules very difficult. For example, the stairs between street level and the hostel’s second-floor lobby are narrow and somewhat steep. “This is also a problem for cyclists who don’t want to leave their expensive bikes on the sidewalk overnight,” Tu says.

Most of Fuqi’s guests stay for two nights. “Around 60 to 70 percent of our guests are Taiwanese. We’ve had some exchange students from mainland China, some Japanese, some Singaporean and Malaysian visitors, and backpackers from the USA and Germany,” Tu says.

Fuqi Hostel’s downtown location is perfect for those interested in the city’s relics, but for anyone wanting to enjoy the municipality’s scenic and ecological treasures, transportation can be problematic. “Many of our international guests say they’re impressed by how hospitable Tainan’s people are, but they do think places like Qigu are quite difficult to get to,” Tu explains. Qigu Lagoon is a popular conservation and bird-watching area.

Yavonna Hsia (夏怡文), a Taipei native who recently spent three days in Tainan, says reaching far-flung attractions by bus can prove very time-consuming. “I’m used to buses and MRT trains coming every few minutes, not every half hour,” she says.

Chen acknowledges that public transportation is very important for independent travelers, be they backpackers or families, and that improving it is also a key part of the mayor’s push for a low-carbon economy. This month, a new bus service will link points along Tainan’s coast with the Chiayi High Speed Rail station. Chen points out that Tainan is set to be the only city or county in Taiwan to have three bus routes subsidized by the ROC Tourism Bureau, as two existing routes serve the districts of Anping and Qigu.

One of Chen’s policies—training taxi drivers so they can double as tour guides for visitors—has been adopted at the national level by the MOTC.

Asked if any of Tainan’s tourist attractions draw so many visitors that they risk being ruined, Chen answers without hesitation: “Anping. It’s too popular, but that’s why Tainan has gotten central-government support to become a low-carbon city, and that’s why Anping has been chosen as a test bed for low-carbon tourism, low-carbon transportation and low-carbon consumption.”

Chen has a number of strategies to ease congestion in the heart of old Anping, the site of Fort Zeelandia and numerous temples. A ferry link is planned between the fort and the district’s shorefront park dedicated to Lin Mo-niang (林默娘), the girl who was born more than a millennia ago and is now worshipped as the goddess Ma Zu. Chen would also like to see tourists getting around in golf cart-type vehicles. National regulations only permit such vehicles in theme parks and other closed areas, however, so more work is needed before the idea can be realized.

In Chen’s opinion, if Tainan has an attraction that deserves greater attention, it is the sunrise-viewing spot at Erliao in Zuozhen District. In addition to stunning views over strange, moon-like ridges, visitors are often treated to a “sea of clouds,” a phenomenon usually associated with high-altitude locations like Alishan in southern Taiwan. Erliao’s elevation is just 180 meters.

City-County Balance

Chen has another motive for directing visitors toward quieter spots like Erliao—a concern that the city-county merger may exacerbate urban-rural inequality. Chen explains that there is an understandable tendency among local-government officials to focus on places where lots of people will notice and appreciate their efforts, rather than on thinly-populated corners of the countryside. “Because of this, if a bureau director doesn’t recognize the need to balance rural and inner-city areas, resources will inevitably flow from the countryside to urban areas. Many people are not aware of this problem.”

Much of rural Tainan’s tourism potential derives from its ecosystems. “Watching black-faced spoonbills in Qigu is probably the best known and most popular ecotourism activity in Tainan,” says Chen Ying-shih (陳瀅世), a professor in the Department of Ecoscience and Ecotechnology at National University of Tainan (NUTN). “The coastal wetland landscape, especially the salt fields, oyster beds and fish farms, represents the early relationship between humanity and nature, and is also quite special for tourists who live in big metropolises.”

“Qigu and Sicao have very attractive ecological resources,” NUTN’s Chen says. Sicao is a wetland area that includes a wildlife refuge. “However, I think as destinations they aren’t as good as they could be, due to environmental management issues. Air and water pollution produced by the boats that carry tourists is a problem,” she says. “Can tourists enjoy themselves when, throughout the tour, they can smell diesel?”

Tainan Tourism Bureau Director Chen Chun-an has barred tour operators in Sicao from switching to larger boats that would carry more tourists, but NUTN’s Chen would take a different approach. She thinks the vessels on which visitors tour Qigu and Sicao should be replaced by solar-powered boats, as such vessels are very quiet in addition to being non-polluting.

Chen Chun-an expects to continue creating theme tours, which will appeal to different market segments. “Our advantage is that we have the depth of history to do this. Other cities in Taiwan don’t have so much heritage,” he says. “We have such an abundance of topics that we can put together tours with historical and ecological themes. We can offer tourists tremendous diversity.”

“To properly understand the origins and development of Tainan’s culture, and to give tourists an in-depth experience, we need to research and discuss the whole Tainan region,” Mayor Lai says. “The merger and upgrade is a great opportunity to integrate the cultural resources of the two places more efficiently and comprehensively.”

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Steven Crook is the author of Taiwan: The Bradt Travel Guide.

Copyright © 2012 by Steven Crook