A former tobacco research station turned software park, with homes and farmland between two rivers
The closest neighborhoods in the same city.
Caohu sits squeezed between the Dali River and the Caohu River, with the elevated Provincial Highway 74 running right through the middle of the neighborhood. On the west side, Xihu Village has farmland across its western half, though farmhouses and factories large and small are becoming more common now — the whole village has fewer than 4,000 people. The more populated side is Donghu Village, where the liveliest stretch runs along Zhongxing Road. The Taichung Software Park, which opened at the end of 2018, sits along Zhongxing Road, right next to the Taichung Municipal Library's Dali Branch and Caohu Disaster Prevention Park.
Caohu Disaster Prevention Park opened in May 2020, and Donghu Park sits right next to the Software Park — both are in Donghu Village. Kids here go to Caohu Elementary School, and its school district covers exactly Donghu and Xihu Villages. If you're in the mood for something sweet, Caohu taro ice is a well-known Dali snack — back in the 1980s and 90s, Caohu had as many as 20 taro ice shops. For streetscape cleanliness it ranks 22nd, in the middle among Taichung's 47 neighborhoods.
Living here, you'll want to plan ahead for grocery runs and getting around. There's only one big-box store in the whole neighborhood, over in Donghu Village, and most supermarkets are across the way in Jincheng Village, opposite Section 1 of Zhongxing Road. The nearest traditional market is the Renhua Evening Market, about 850 meters outside the neighborhood — day-to-day shopping here ranks last among Taichung's 47 neighborhoods. There's no TRA or MRT station in the neighborhood; the nearest, TRA Wuquan Station, is about 4.5 km away, and public transit access also ranks last. A few city bus routes do stop along Zhongxing Road.
Caohu was originally called 'Caowa,' because the land here is squeezed between two rivers, low-lying and thick with cogon grass. In Taiwanese Hokkien, 'wa' (hollow) and 'hu' (lake) sound similar, so the name eventually shifted to Caohu; after the war it was split into Donghu and Xihu Villages. Xihu Village occupies the lowest-lying, westernmost part of the area south of the Dali River, which is how it got its name. In 1938, the Monopoly Bureau's tobacco experiment station moved to Caohu. When Caohu Elementary School was first established in 1952, the school buildings weren't finished yet, so students held classes in the tobacco-curing sheds. Right up until 1996, most households in Xihu Village made their living growing tobacco. The experiment station later sat unused, and at the end of 2018 the site was redeveloped into the Taichung Software Park; the office building that was preserved was restored in 2020 into the Daliyi Zhan Cultural and Creative Hall.
Compared with the 47 Taichung neighborhoods in this guide (scores 0–10)
NHI-contracted hospitals, public elementary and junior high schools whose catchment covers this area (estimated from the Taichung City Education Bureau's catchment tables for the 2023 (elementary) and 2022 (junior high) school years, the latest the city has published as open data, treating every neighborhood in a village as equal in size), high schools and universities inside or within 1 km, stations, parks of 1 ha or more (OpenStreetMap), and large shopping malls and department stores (OpenStreetMap).
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How to read it: yellow = poor, blue = good; grey = not enough data
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