With a vintage tile museum, steamy bowls of turkey rice, and a market straight out of a Miyazaki film, Chiayi’s charm is capturing new hearts.
story and photos BY DINAH GARDNER
For years, I never gave Chiayi its flowers.
This small city in south-central Taiwan serves as a jumping-off point for a variety of adventures. It’s where you catch the train into the misty mountain forests of Alishan, or grab a taxi to the ferry terminal for the golden, wind-kissed beaches of Penghu. You could also hop on a bus to visit the High-Heel Church – a surreal, blue-tinted glass building shaped like a giant stiletto. For too long, I saw the city as nothing more than a stepping stone to more exciting destinations.
But how wrong I was!
I spent three days in Chiayi this May, and I found it to be a charming place with friendly people and a rich history, including a creepy old prison and a museum showcasing gorgeous vintage tiles. I also discovered a vibrant food scene, nostalgic cafés, and one of the most jungle-like botanical gardens I’ve ever visited.
And I’m not alone. In 2023, Chiayi’s travel and accommodation sector saw a 16% year-over-year increase in revenue, reaching more than NT$2.5 billion (about US$81 million), according to the Chiayi City Government. The city hosted 2.14 million hotel guests and recorded over 26 million tourist visits in total – surpassing Taiwan’s entire population.
According to local media reports, citing data from the Tourism Administration, Chiayi City experienced the highest post-pandemic surge in attraction visits of any city in Taiwan with a rise of 1,732%.
Chiayi offers more than enough to fill a weekend – and makes an ideal add-on to a trip to Alishan (see page 12). To help you make the most of your time, we’ve put together a packed two-day itinerary highlighting the city’s top experiences.
Day one: downtown
After breakfast, head to the huge tangle of street stalls and indoor spaces that are a center of local life at Chiayi East Market, one of Taiwan’s oldest surviving traditional markets. The main building dates back to 1900. You’ll need to have your wits about you as scooters dart past from all directions, dodging bowls of wriggling eels and pyramids of piled-up fruit.
The ostentatious Anna King Hotel (150 Heping Road) is worth a slight detour. This over-the-top, Thai-themed establishment, whose Alice in Wonderland-like lobby contains a giant stuffed peacock with resplendent tail feathers, is housed in a six-story colonial-style building in cornflower blue with arched windows.
After the market, head to the Old Prison Museum (closed on Mondays). Get here by 11 a.m. to ensure you have enough time to explore before the place shuts for lunch at noon. This grim white building was opened by the Japanese in 1922 and housed prisoners up until the 1990s. Cells are arranged along three corridors that radiate out like the spokes of a wheel. Guards could observe inmates by patrolling the corridors or ascending a ladder and looking down from above – each cell had a ceiling grid that exposed its occupants.
Most cells were built for six people, but some were tiny single-prisoner lockups – the so-called Pennsylvania-style prison system. Even today, the place has a forbidding atmosphere, with its heavy wooden doors, steel bars, and giant padlocks.
From here, it’s a short walk to one of Chiayi’s best-known attractions, Hinoki Village, a popular spot for taking photos. This cluster of 28 neatly arranged black-painted bungalows built with cedar, fir, and cypress wood are renovated from the original dormitories built by the Japanese for employees of the timber industry that plundered Alishan.
The buildings house gift shops selling soft toys, jewelry, purses, bags, wooden train assembly sets, ornaments, and bagged snacks of everything from crackers to dried seafood and meats. But it’s not all gift shops – at least two of the buildings have been converted into cafés, and there’s also a small ice cream parlor for a quick cool-down.
By now, it should be time for lunch. Chiayi’s culinary offerings made international headlines a few years ago when the Netflix show Street Food: Asia dedicated an entire episode to the city. The most famous local dish, Chiayi huoji roufan (嘉義火雞飯), or Chiayi Turkey Rice, is made from strips of turkey meat placed on steamed rice and glazed with a salty, fatty sauce. Check out the January Wine & Dine edition of Taiwan Business TOPICS magazine for some recommended establishments serving turkey rice.
If you’re willing to wait in line, you could head to SmartFish, now wildly popular since it appeared on Netflix. The signature dish is a huge bowl of steaming fish head soup that has vegetables and tofu enriching the meaty broth.
Another place you will likely have to queue for, though not for too long, is the Museum of Old Taiwan Tiles (closed on Tuesdays). This renovated, timber-beamed shop that dates back to the Japanese era exhibits hundreds of beautiful, glazed ceramic tiles originally used as decoration for the facades of homes of the wealthy and as furniture inlays. You will see magpies, storks, flowers, fruit, and kaleidoscopic geometric shapes depicted in a rich palette of colors.
The ground floor is also a shop that was buzzing with customers when I visited. The items for sale, including coasters, stick-on tiles, stationery, jewelry, mirrors, magnets, purses, and postcards, all bear tile-inspired designs. The NT$100 entrance ticket gives you a NT$50 discount in the shop.
The tour ends at the nearby Chiayi Art Museum (closed on Mondays), where the building itself is often more compelling than the exhibits inside. The museum’s original wing occupies the renovated premises of the former Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau, distinguished by its sweeping curved façade and turquoise-painted window frames. Inside, visitors will find a charming heritage café and a small, thoughtfully curated bookshop.
Come evening, join the crowds at Wenhua Night Market. Stalls stretch for several blocks and dish up the usual favorites, including egg cakes, chicken rice, grilled squid, taro balls, and sizzling meats. Many famous restaurants, including SmartFish, can be found in the adjacent lanes. For dessert, try Pin An Tofu Pudding, which serves a refreshing douhua (豆花, silken tofu) in chilled soy milk. Its best-selling lemon caramel douhua looked divine.
Day two: nature
Train enthusiasts can start the day snapping photos of decommissioned steam and diesel locomotives dotted about the Alishan Forest Railway Garage Park. The peaceful wooded grounds also boast a giant turntable to change the direction of trains. Unfortunately, you can’t clamber into the carriages.
From here, head to gorgeous Chiayi Park. Originally opened by the Japanese in 1910, there are several structures in the grounds dating back to that period, including remnants of a Shinto shrine. Look out for the still-intact temizuya, a stone well where worshippers would wash their hands for spiritual purification.
The park is alive with locals dancing, playing tennis, practicing tai chi, chilling in pagodas, and powerwalking along trails. The round brownish building that stands taller than anything else is the 12-story Sun-Shooting Tower. Although you may not be able to shoot the sun from the 62-meter-high observation deck, views of the park’s forest canopy and the urban sprawl of Chiayi in the distance are fabulous. For those wary of heights, the 10th floor offers a gentle test of courage: glass-floor panels that let you peer straight down to the ground below – a little vertiginous thrill.
The park blends into the Botanical Garden to its north, where you can wind your way through the welcome shade of an enchanting forest. This was a real highlight of my trip. There are multiple places to sit and meditate while listening to birdsong and the siren call of insects (bring bug spray).
After lunch back in town, you can either head to the mountain hot spring resort of Guanziling or the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum before taking a train home.
Option 1: Guanziling
Guanziling’s mud springs are less than an hour’s drive from Chiayi. I imagined thick, sludgy pools, the type hippos like to wallow in, but the hot springs here are a silty liquid with a greyish tinge. The water picks up clay as it bubbles through the local terrain. The result is said to soothe and nourish the skin.
You can also stay overnight at one of the many resorts. I was hosted by Joy Day Villa, near the top of the mountain, a long-running favorite among locals. Guests are housed in quaint cottages featuring private mud baths – a magical way to wake up in the morning. The onsite spa has hot, warm, and cold mud pools, a “doctor fish pool” where tiny orange fish nibble your feet in a ticklish frenzy, split sex naked bathing, and a variety of mud face packs to smear on your skin.
Many pools are electrotherapy baths, where pulses of low electrical current travel through the water to create a massage effect. If you don’t have your own transport, there are buses every hour or two that connect the village to both Chiayi City and the Chiayi HSR Station.
Option 2: Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum
Unlike its northern counterpart, the National Palace Museum’s Southern Branch (closed Mondays) is strikingly modern – its armadillo-like exterior giving way to vast, echoing interiors that feel more like a ghostly shopping mall than a traditional museum. Its exhibitions span East to Central Asia, with a highlight being Imprints of Buddhas, featuring statues in various poses, life stages, and materials, from bronze and stone to wood and porcelain.
The other permanent exhibitions, including tea culture in East Asia and Asian textiles, are all richly curated. The museum is just a 10-minute drive from the HSR station, and there are free hourly buses to both the station and Chiayi City.
Where to stay
The city’s growing popularity has expanded accommodation options in recent years, and many rooms are excellent value for money. I was hosted by Hsin Hotel, a large 4-star establishment located outside the center and away from traffic noise. The hotel is especially great for children, with a carousel of dancing horses in the front grounds, an infant playroom, a whimsical train ride on a truncated track that runs just in front of the hotel, and a family of bears motif that pops up everywhere from framed art in the rooms to a giant yellow papa bear structure on the rooftop (a good way to locate the hotel from street level). Rooms are huge and relaxing, with Scandinavian-style furnishings. Ask for one facing the city for great views of Chiayi at night.
Getting there and around
Chiayi is about 90 minutes by high-speed train or around 3 hours by regular express trains from Taipei. Getting around the city is not so easy. If you don’t have your own transport, there’s the occasional Uber and a limited bus service.
Downtown Chiayi is not large and is theoretically walkable. However, there are few sidewalks and very little shade. This means you often have to walk on the road with the traffic, and on sunny days, it is blisteringly hot. If you do plan on walking, bring a sun umbrella. A welcome new development is the introduction of YouBikes in Chia-yi. If you stick to the back lanes where traffic is slower, cycling is actually very pleasant.
