By Eryk Michael Smith
If you love history and Kaohsiung, the Facebook page “高雄老照片/ Kaohsiung Old Photos” should be a frequent stop during social media scrolling. Created circa 2017, the page has over 170,000 members.
It is open to the public, and the visual delights include personal family pics from days gone by, to images of major construction projects or milestones in the city’s development. Below are just some examples with captions from this highly recommended page.
- The main train station in 2003.
2. The main station sometime after 1992 (when the Chang-Gu World Trade Center, also known as Grand 50 Tower opened), before any major redevelopment. Note: the Grand 50 Tower was Taiwan’s tallest building for 6 months between 1992-93)
3. A scooter gets ready to cross over to Cijin on a barge (note the lack of railings) — caption from FB page says “December 31, 1989 — a ‘wildcat ferry’ crossing at Cijin, photographed from a candid angle. Riding this kind of unlicensed ferry naturally involved risks, but it was also quite thrilling. Wildcat ferries became part of history in 2009.”
4. Caption: “This photograph was taken in 1961 and was regarded at the time as a highly challenging and avant-garde work of art. Although the identity of the female subject can no longer be confirmed, it is known that both the location and the photographer were based in Kaohsiung, making the image a rare and significant record within the visual culture of southern Taiwan during that era.”
4. Jhonghua 2nd Road – 1983. (1983年 中華二路 – 三民區)
5 -6. Caption: “A ‘Bailey Bridge‘ spanning the Love River officially opened to traffic at 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day, 1983. Built with assistance from the ROC military to meet an urgent deadline, the bridge was widely welcomed by the public for its convenience. It helped ease traffic congestion caused by the reconstruction of the Kaohsiung Bridge. The 141-meter-long Bailey Bridge was completed in just three to four days by more than 100 combat engineers from the Southern Army Corps’ engineering unit. Once the new bridge work was completed, the Bailey Bridge was dismantled.
7 – end: The toll station at Gangshan. Old-timers will remember how this spot used to be the cause of major traffic jams.
