Meinong District (Hakka: Mî-nùng)

About the village

Meinong is a rural Hakka district of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, a whole township rather than a single village, with a population of about 37,000 in October 2023. It was first settled by Hakka people in 1736, during the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty, when they built the village of "Mi Nong", and it became the "right settlement" of the six Liudui Hakka settlements of Taiwan. Hakka residents still account for about 93.5 per cent of the population, and the district is one of the best known centres of Hakka culture in southern Taiwan, home also to writer Chung Li-he and musician Lin Sheng-hsiang. Meinong is renowned for its oil-paper umbrellas, a craft brought back from Chaozhou, Guangdong, in 1924 and once produced in more than 20 local factories; visitors can still watch and try umbrella making at places such as the Yuan Xiang Yuan Paper Umbrella Culture Village. The district preserves its heritage through the Meinong Hakka Culture Museum, the Meinong Folk Village, historic tobacco buildings and the East Gate Tower, and in 2012 it was named one of Taiwan's "Top 10 Small Tourist Towns". For Taiwanese Hakka and the wider diaspora, Meinong remains a living symbol of Hakka identity, language and craft.