Gongyuan Road (Hardware St)

There were times when ship-dismantling industry prospered in Kaohsiung. During its golden age, many discharged old ships had been towed to Kaohsiung Harbor for dismantling. Lots of laborers gathered in the Harbor to make a living. A special derivative industry also developed in Hardware Street: people collected the dismantled pieces of ships or their components. They’d fix the malfunctioned components, have them painted, and assemble them together again. Hardware Street as a result had been an important hub for industrial component recycling during the early stage of Taiwan’s industrialization.

There are many hardware stores in Gongyuan Road now and they are operated in different places. Some are in traditional Japanese houses; some in assembled iron houses and some even in the ground floor of modern apartments. However, they all possess the same feature: they each have a mobile hoist to lift heavy items in their stores. If you are looking for an image that best depicts an industrial city; something that gives you the crowded, dark, greasy and iron feeling, this is definitely the right place to come. Lots of huge industrial vehicles pass by this area very often, including trucks, earth scrapers and flatbed trailers. You can also hear loud, piercing noises when store owners are engaging in machinery repairs.