Old port warehouses turned art spaces, next to the ferry pier and old shophouses
The closest neighborhoods in the same city.
This neighborhood lives off the harbor. Gushan Ferry Pier by the harbor in Hamasen is the ferry terminal to Qijin, right on the edge of the neighborhood. On weekday mornings from a bit after 6 to 8:30, there's a boat every 5 to 7 minutes on average. Walking east from the pier along the harbor, you first pass Old Takao Station, then reach the whole row of old warehouses at the Pier-2 Art Center, now an art space. Further east is the old Yancheng district, which thrived commercially during the Japanese era and was known as Taiwan's Ginza. The streets are mostly lined with old row houses, interspersed with a few public markets.
You don't really need a car to get between these areas. Public transit ranks 3rd out of Kaohsiung's 13 neighborhoods, with Yanchengpu Station on the MRT Orange Line right in the neighborhood, and the Light Rail running all the way from Love Pier, through Dayi Pier-2 and Penglai Pier-2, to Hamasen. If you want to see the river in the evening, the Love Boat runs on the Love River every day from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.. Kids have more flexibility for school here — Yancheng, Zhongxiao, and Guangrong Elementary Schools in Yancheng District form an open school zone, with no exclusive catchment area.
Seeing a doctor is less convenient — healthcare ranks 12th out of Kaohsiung's 13 neighborhoods. The whole southern edge of the neighborhood is taken up by Kaohsiung Port's operational areas and dock warehouses, so that side isn't residential. The Hamasen area gets a lot of tourists — in 2015, residents and faculty and students from National Sun Yat-sen University protested at the entrance to the Sizihwan Tunnel over the flood of tour buses, asking the city government to limit the number of large buses.
Yancheng was originally a salt field. During the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, the Fengshan County Yamen recruited people to develop the Takao coast, and because it was near Takao Harbor, it was called 'Takao Yancheng'. At the end of 1900, the Takao-Tainan section of the Trunk Line opened, and its southern terminus was Takao Station, which later became Old Takao Station. In 1908, the construction of Kaohsiung Port's harbor was completed, and the silt dredged from the harbor bottom covered the salt fields, creating new land. Hamasen was likewise built on reclaimed land, completed in 1912, and its name comes from the Japanese 'hama-sen,' referring to the coastal railway line leading to the harbor and the fish market. In 1920, the station was renamed Kaohsiung Station, and that same year the Kaohsiung Town Office was also set up in Hamasen; after the city was established, it served as the City Hall until 1939. In 1949, residents built Daitian Temple on the site of the old Town Office. The new City Hall was built in Yancheng, which is today's Kaohsiung Museum of History. The Pier-2 warehouses were built in 1973 and renovated into an art space in 2002. The Light Rail reached Dayi Pier-2 in 2017, and was extended to Hamasen that September.
Compared with the 13 Kaohsiung neighborhoods in this guide (scores 0–10)
Hospitals with inpatient beds (2020 data), public elementary and junior high schools whose catchment covers this area, high schools and universities within 1 km, stations, parks of 1 ha or more, and large shopping malls and department stores. Many Tokyo junior high students attend private schools, so junior high catchments are only a guide.
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