A Fun Rural Excursion in Chiayi: A One-Day Tour of the Koji Pottery Art Village

Text / Compiled and reported by the editorial team of MOOK Scenic Spots Family Travel Life Network

 

Chiayi’s Bantou Village, once an obscure small rural settlement in Chiayi, had nothing more than vast rice paddies, a few farmhouses, and the most ordinary and simple pastoral scenery. Few people knew that Bantou Village was actually a key hub for preserving Taiwan’s temple Koji pottery and cut-and-paste art. The village is home to numerous Koji pottery workshops and features the Bantan Kiln, which is open to visitors.

Once upon a time, Bantou Village had a century-old sugar factory narrow-gauge railway that crossed the Fuxing Iron Bridge over the Beigang River and connected to Beigang. In the early days, when the road system was underdeveloped, villagers traveled north and south via this “narrow-gauge train” railway. Especially around the time of the Goddess Mazu’s birthday, pilgrims from all over the province traveling to Beigang Tianhou Temple or Xingang Fengtian Temple relied on this railway for transport. As a result, this line was once the most profitable passenger route of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation and was known as the “Golden Railway.”

As road transportation became increasingly developed, fewer and fewer people rode the narrow-gauge trains, and the Taiwan Sugar Corporation ceased passenger services on the narrow-gauge railway in 1982, keeping only freight trains. As a result, the entire rural area declined. Mr. Chen Zhongzheng, the owner of the Bantan Kiln Koji pottery workshop, is a native of Bantou Village. Passing by the railway tracks every day, he felt deeply saddened to see this nostalgic narrow-gauge railway now overgrown with weeds.