Tainan’s Sky City: The Mysterious Dwarf Wooden House “Thousand Plots Seed Museum” That Has Japanese Tourists Flocking for Pilgrimages

▲Tainan’s Sky City: The Mysterious Dwarf Wooden House “Thousand Plots Seed Museum” That Has Japanese Tourists Flocking for Pilgrimages. (Photo / Screenshotfrom the Thousand Plots Seed Museum fan page)

Travel Center / Tainan Report

In the ancient city of Tainan, there is a mysterious wooden house surrounded by hundreds of plants. Three low-rise wooden buildings are nestled among greenery, their irregular shapes designed to blend with the surrounding trees. The lush courtyard makes visitors feel as if they’ve stepped into a secret forest realm, leaving many amazed, comparing it to the “Sky City” from a Studio Ghibli animation. In reality, this is the “Thousand Plots Seed Museum,” a museum where the trees came before the buildings—truly a treehouse.

On the mountainside of Dongfeng Road in Qibing Mountain, North District, Tainan, a building can be faintly seen nestled among the trees. This is a garden cultivated by a couple after more than 20 years in the greening and landscaping industry—a space of pure nature, untouched by artificiality. Operator Liang Chao-hsun told the United Daily News that the Thousand Plots Museum was originally a gardening studio rented by his parents. The studio collected and preserved over 500 different types of plant seeds. After his parents retired, he took over and transformed it into a seed-themed museum.

The courtyard is enveloped in lush greenery, with pre-existing large trees and plants all retained and allowed to grow freely.Liang Chao-hsun said that at the museum, the trees came before the buildings, and some structures are even built on tree roots—a hallmark of Thousand Plots. Many visitors from Taiwan and Japan feel that the integration of architecture and nature here resembles scenes from Studio Ghibli’s “Sky City.”。

Recently, the Thousand Plots Seed Museum has gone viral online, with netizens from mainland China and Hong Kong expressing their desire to visit and see Tainan’s version of Sky City with their own eyes. Located in central Tainan just 15 minutes from the train station, the museum currently offers outdoor educational programs and is open to individual visitors. Covering an area of 100 ping (about 330 square meters), over 60 ping of the site is courtyard space, home to more than 150 species of plants, most of which are native to southern Taiwan—making it extremely popular.