TAIWAN: Tourism Exhibition Opens In Kaohsiung

An exhibition on domestic travel and tourism in the 1930s during the Japanese colonial period opened at the Kaohsiung Museum of History on Thursday.

The exhibition explores the city’s relationship with the Japanese and tourists from other parts of Taiwan through historical films, photographs and artifacts, the museum said.

The museum said that as a result of developments such as the 1908 opening of the western rail line connecting the north and the south, the referendum on “the eight sights of Taiwan” in 1927 and then-Japanese crown prince Hirohito’s tour of Taiwan in 1929, travel agencies and domestic tourism became a phenomenon in colonial Taiwan, culminating in 1935 with the Taiwan Exhibition that brought domestic travel to new heights.

The exhibition is to focus on the historical conditions that gave rise to travel within Taiwan; the growth of tourism as a popular and commercial activity; the preparations that were made by travelers in those times; the sights and attractions a visitor to Kaohsiung was likely to experience and the historical significance of tourism, it said.

The exhibition is to feature items such as archive footage of the 1935 Taiwan Exhibition and tickets for one-pass-boarding for trains and ferries and other transport memorabilia, as well as paintings of sights in Kaohsiung, including Shoushan, Sizihwan and the Chiaozaitou mud volcano by Taiwanese and Japanese artists, such as Shusei Ozawa, Chang Chi-hua, Liao Chi-chun and others, the museum said.