On Thursday, I went with a UK friend I had not seen in almost 15 years to the Taiwan Sugar Museum (台湾糖業博物館). This museum has a very interesting history (for the history in Chinese) that dates back to the late 19th century when Taiwan came to be under Japanese rule. (For a brief history of the Japanese colonial rule in English click here and scroll down).
前社長金木善三郎所建造之宿舍. This is the house in which the Japanese director of the sugar factory lived. The Japanese ruled Taiwan for fifty years (almost two generations) and regardless of how we view them, they had a deep influence on Taiwan, so much so that when the Mainland Chinese arrived in the late 1940s they were shocked to see how Japanese the island had become.
甘蔗運輸的機具. Trains like this ran on narrow gauges to transport the sugar cane as well as the finished product.
Sheds were built to shelter the steam engines, presumably if they needed to be worked on.
比利時進口的小火車. This steam engine was built in Belgium, and not Japan as I originally thought.
The "Taiwan sugar railways" with their narrow gauge were at one time quite extensive in Taiwan, extending several thousand kilometers.
製糖石轆 Sugar mill stones.
「甘蔗迷宮」. This is not just an example of what sugar cane looks like, but is actually a sugar cane maze. In the past, before TV and X-Box were invented, children could enjoy themselves by playing games in the sugar cane fields.
製糖工廠. Inside the factory, I tried to imagine what it was actually like to work there. I found out that much of the machinery and equipment had been imported from the UK. The writing on the wall means "Tidy" and "Clean" - obviously an exhortation to the workers to make sure they did not leave the place in a mess.
This is a kind of oven.
灣製糖株式會社事務所. This was the plant director's office, built more or less as it would have been built in Japan.
The tree-lined route from the director's office to his adjacent house would have provided plenty of shade and fresh air on a hot day (most days were fairly hot).
前社長之宿舍. A different view of the director's living quarters. I once lived in a wooden Japanese house similar to this for several months in Taipei as a language student.
Bougainvillea ブーゲンビリア紅赤. These flowers always add some color to the browns and greens associated with the surrounding trees.
高雄捷運: 交通の便も良いです. Getting to the museum is very easy. Just a few stops on the mass rapid transit system from the city of Kaohsiung. The museum is next to one of the stations. The MRT in Taiwan reminds me of the local trains in Osaka. Before the train enters the station, music is always played over the loudspeakers.Overall, I found the place very relaxing, and it was able to help me understand something about the history of Taiwan's economic development over the last century or so. It taught me to value being able to reconnect with the past and to see more clearly how Taiwanese society has developed to where it is today. Many changes, but still a common thread running through it all!
