Southern Taiwan Region Guide

Southern Taiwan is the island’s oldest settled region, its sunniest, and the one where Taiwanese identity is felt most strongly.

Tainan was the capital for two centuries and is the cultural heart: some 1,600 temples, Dutch and Qing forts, and a food culture that Taiwanese regard as the best in the country. People travel from Taipei simply to eat here.

Kaohsiung is the second city and a working port that has reinvented itself — the Pier-2 arts district in converted warehouses, a light rail loop along the harbour, and the Lotus Pond with its dragon and tiger pagodas.

At the southern tip, Kenting is Taiwan’s tropical end: coral coastline, surf, and a national park where the mountains run into the sea.

And the weather is the region’s quiet advantage — sunshine through the winter months when the north is grey.

Tainan

Start with the temples: the Confucius Temple, Taiwan’s first, founded in 1665; the Grand Matsu Temple in a converted Ming prince’s residence; and the God of War temple beside it. Then Anping, where the Dutch built Fort Zeelandia, with the Anping Tree House swallowed by banyan roots, and the old canal quarter at Shennong Street. Mostly, though, you come to Tainan to eat.

Kaohsiung

The Pier-2 Art Center in old harbour warehouses, the Dome of Light at Formosa Boulevard station, Cijin island by ferry for seafood and a black-sand beach, and Lotus Pond with its Dragon and Tiger Pagodas, entered through the dragon and left through the tiger.

Kenting

The island’s southern tip: Eluanbi lighthouse, Longpan grassland on the cliffs, Baisha beach and coral reef snorkelling, with the national park running from mountain to sea.

Monasteries and mountains

Fo Guang Shan, the vast Buddhist monastery and museum complex outside Kaohsiung, and the Maolin valley for purple crow butterflies wintering in their millions.

Offbeat

Yanshui’s fireworks festival, the salt flats at Cigu, and the Rukai slate villages in the southern mountains.

The south is the oldest and most distinctly Taiwanese part of the island, and it knows it.

The first capital

Tainan was the seat of government from the Dutch period through the Qing, and for most of Taiwan’s recorded history it was Taiwan. That depth shows in the temple count, the family lineages and a certain confidence about what is authentic.

Taiwanese identity

Taiwanese Hokkien is more widely and comfortably spoken here than in the north, and the region is the heartland of Taiwanese political identity as distinct from a Chinese one. Politics is discussed with more openness and more feeling than in Taipei.

Folk religion

Southern temple culture is intense: spirit mediums, jiajiang troupes of painted infernal generals who dance before a deity’s palanquin, temple fairs and firecrackers. Tainan has more temples per person than anywhere in Taiwan and they are busy.

Indigenous south

The Paiwan and Rukai peoples live in the southern mountains, building in slate, carving lintels with ancestor figures and hundred-pace snakes, and maintaining a hereditary noble system unlike other Taiwanese indigenous groups.

Harbour and industry

Kaohsiung’s identity is built on shipping, steel and petrochemicals, and on a deliberate turn toward culture and design since the 2000s.

Kenting’s reefs are the most-visited in Taiwan and show it. Use reef-safe sunscreen, never touch or stand on coral, and choose snorkel and dive operators who brief properly and use moorings. The national park has protected zones that are marked and should be respected.

Dengue outbreaks are a southern issue and are made worse by standing water. Do not leave containers of water around, and use repellent — this protects the community as much as you.

Tainan’s temples and old neighbourhoods are lived in. The alleys around Shennong Street and the Confucius Temple are people’s homes and workplaces, not a set.

Indigenous communities — Paiwan and Rukai in the southern mountains — have their own villages, slate houses and crafts. Visit through community-run arrangements.

Eat local and use public transport. Kaohsiung’s metro and light rail and Tainan’s buses cover most of what matters, and the food that makes the region famous is at market stalls rather than restaurants.

November to March is the best window and the south’s great advantage: warm, dry and sunny, around 25 to 28°C, while the north of the island is grey and drizzling. This is when Taiwanese come south for the weather.

April and May are warm and increasingly humid, with the plum rains arriving in May.

June to September is hot — 32 to 34°C with high humidity — and is the wet season and the peak of typhoon risk. Kenting is at its busiest with domestic holidaymakers in July and August despite the weather.

The Yanshui Beehive Fireworks in February and the Mazu pilgrimage in the third lunar month are the two events worth planning around, and the Dragon Boat Festival in June fills Tainan’s canals.

Kenting’s Spring Scream music festival in April is a long-running institution.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

The south is the cheapest part of western Taiwan, and Tainan in particular offers an extraordinary amount of very good food for very little money.