One Sugar Factory, a Crowd of Artists, and the Sea

Drive north out of Taitung City and Provincial Highway 11 runs the length of the Pacific. The sea stays at your right hand the whole way.

About thirty minutes in, a sign appears at the roadside: "Xindong Sugar Factory" (新東糖廠).

You turn in, and Taitung shifts into a different rhythm.

A Sugar Factory Turns

The Xindong Sugar Factory was founded in 1933, made brown sugar, and closed in 1991. From 2001, artists began renting its spaces as studios. In 2002 it was registered as a Taitung County historic building.

Under the same tin roofs that once covered the sugar works, there are now studios and exhibitions. Which ones are open on a given day, you'll find out on site.

Before the Factory, the Village

The Taitung County Indigenous Peoples Department lists the area around Taitung City, Malan and Dulan among the places where the southern Amis (阿美族) live.

The village lanes beyond the factory's red-brick walls and the gathering house are not "attractions." People live here. Dulan Mountain (都蘭山), 1,190 meters high, rises behind them.

Coming into Dulan, ease off the accelerator first. If you arrive during a village gathering or a ceremony, give way and let it pass — that is how a guest behaves.

One Afternoon in Dulan

Time	How to spend it
14:00	Step into the Xindong Sugar Factory; see the studios and the current exhibition (whether they're open, check on site)
15:30	Find a café on Dulan's main street and sit for a while
16:30	Drive south to Fugang Geopark (Little Yeliu, 小野柳) for the sea-eroded rock formations (the Jialulan Recreation Area is closed for construction through the end of 2026)
17:30	Back to Dulan for dinner at a sea-view restaurant (mahi-mahi, flying-fish season)
Summer evenings	Drive north to the Duli Visitor Center (都歷遊客中心) in Chenggong for the Moonlight Sea Concert (月光・海音樂會), run by the East Coast National Scenic Area (eight shows in 2026, most free, one ticketed; next year's dates per the official announcement)

There's no need to fill the day. The way to do Dulan is to not plan it — sit a little longer in the café, walk a little farther along the shore, talk for half an hour with whoever is working in a studio.

「

This little town isn't somewhere to check off. It's somewhere to stay.

」

When to Come

• March–June: the sea breeze is still gentle; café terraces are comfortable to sit on
• June–September: the East Coast Land Arts Festival opens in summer (June 21, the summer solstice, in 2026), the Moonlight Sea Concert plays at Duli, and it's surf season
• October–February: quieter than summer; a café will hold you for a whole afternoon

Afterword

Dulan is not like Taitung's other small towns.

It has no hot springs, no hot-air balloons, no Instagram-famous Takeshi Kaneshiro tree. But it has people living their days here — people making things in the studios, making coffee in the cafés, living in the village — each spending the same afternoon in their own way.

You don't come to Dulan to see something. You come to see how people live in a place.

(Correction, October 30, 2026: this page said the sugar factory ran for nearly a century and closed in the 1990s; per the National Cultural Memory Bank it was founded in 1933 and closed in 1991. It placed the Moonlight Sea Concert in Dulan on summer weekends with free admission; it is held at the Duli Visitor Center in Chenggong, eight shows in 2026, one ticketed. The Dulan stone coffins entry was removed; the site is officially marked closed to visitors. Several unsourced descriptions of shops and people were also removed.)

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Further reading:

• To travel the full coastline: The East Coast Tribes, 3 Days