Text by MOOK Scenic Spots Editorial Team
While Kaohsiung is known for its enchanting port city atmosphere, besides famous landmarks like Love River and E-Da Amusement Park, there are plenty of other spots worth visiting. Below are six food, fun, and play destinations in Kaohsiung, including arts and cultural zones, movie filming locations, and world-class wonders. Travelers planning a trip to Kaohsiung might want to add these to their itinerary.
Pier-2 Art Center (Photo / Pier-2 Art Center)
1. Arts & Culture Spot - #Pier-2 Art Center
This popular hipster destination, Pier-2 Art Center, has transformed old warehouse buildings by the docks into a new hub for arts and culture. It frequently hosts exciting large-scale exhibitions, and its public spaces feature numerous artistic installations, making it a truly unique cultural space.
“Chair Score” installation at Pier-2 Art Center (Photo provided by Fang Xiaov)
2. Movie Location – #Qiaotou Sugar Refinery
The Taiwanese film *The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful* (血观音) delivered an outstanding performance at the Golden Horse Awards. Not only did actress Annie Wu, who played “Madam Tang,” win Best Actress, but up to two-thirds of the movie was also filmed in Kaohsiung. This helped boost tourism in the city alongside the rising popularity of local films.
The “Tang Residence” featured in *The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful* was filmed in the old dormitories of the Qiaotou Sugar Refinery (Photo / MOOK)
The location filmed most in *The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful*, the so-called “Tang Residence,” is actually set in the old dormitories of the Qiaotou Sugar Refinery. It's not only Taiwan’s first modern mechanized sugar factory but also a site rich in historical significance from the Japanese colonial period. Fans visiting Kaohsiung to explore filming locations gain deeper insight through the stories behind these spots, offering a uniquely enriching experience.
The corridor and continuous arches of the residential office building from the Japanese era are designed in a European architectural style, making them quite distinctive (Photo / MOOK)
3. Monster Building Wonder – Zuoying Guomao Community
Located in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District, the densely packed and expansive Guomao Community can make visitors feel as though they’ve stepped into Hong Kong’s famous “Monster Building” at Sea Mountain. The community consists of 13 buildings, renovated from a decades-old naval dependents’ village. The architecture features an onion-like concentric circle design, with two semi-circular towers forming a perfect circle that creates a striking visual effect.
Zuoying Guomao Community looks like a little Hong Kong (Photo provided by fo96309)
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