The Light at Taimali

If the whole island of Taiwan were a single person, then Taimali would be the eye that looks out over the Pacific.

When the sun lifts off the Pacific horizon, its first light falls along this shore.

Land of the Rising Sun

Taimali sits at the southern end of Taitung County, its back to the mountains and its face to the sea — a long, narrow township unrolled along the Pacific.

According to the Taimali Township Office, its name comes from the Paiwan (排灣族) word "Ja.Bau.Li", meaning "the place where the sun rises" (Taimali Township Office, in Chinese). The name was talking about the sun long before it became a tourist's word.

For New Year's Day 2026, Taiwan's Central Weather Administration listed sunrise at the Taimali Dawn Memorial Park at 06:36. In its own words, the earliest sunrise on the outlying islands was on Lanyu (Orchid Island, 06:33), and the earliest on the main island's lowlands was at Longkeng in Pingtung (06:35) (CWA, in Chinese).

A minute or two either way. The people waiting on this beach aren't here for a ranking — they're here for the light.

The First Light of the Millennium

On January 1, 2000, all of Taiwan turned its eyes to Taimali.

It was the first morning of the new millennium, and Taimali had been chosen as the place to welcome Taiwan's first millennial dawn. Afterward the government built the Millennium Dawn Memorial Park here.

More than twenty years on, the park is still open. The official dawn events at Taimali and on the east coast were not held on New Year's Day 2024, 2025 or 2026 — the Taimali Township Office cited limited funding and said the park would simply "stay open to the public" that morning (CNA, November 29, 2025; CNA, December 24, 2025 also wrote "three consecutive years" without one). Whether there will be one on January 1, 2027 has not been announced. Even so, past New Year's mornings have still drawn people who drive out in the dark, just to watch the year's first sun climb up out of the Pacific.

「

The sun stops for no one, but it returns every single day.

」

A Railway Crossing Straight Out of a Comic

In recent years, Taimali went viral online thanks to a single railway crossing.

Near Taimali train station there is a level crossing where the backdrop is the deep blue Pacific and the tracks run out toward the sea — uncannily like the crossing in front of Kamakura High School in the opening of the Japanese anime Slam Dunk.

So it earned a nickname: the "Sakuragi Hanamichi Crossing." Countless people make the trip just to wait for a South-Link Line train to pass and capture that moment when the comic comes to life.

This is another kind of "light" Taimali offers — not the light of sunrise, but the light of a whole generation's youth.

A Sunrise Above a Sea of Clouds on Jinzhen Mountain

Taimali's sunrise isn't only by the sea.

Drive up into the hills and you reach Jinzhen Mountain (金針山). For a few weeks — roughly mid-August to late September — the whole crest is dyed gold with daylilies (金針花); up there the Wangyou Pavilion (忘憂亭) sits high enough that, looking out toward the Pacific, with a little luck a whole sea of clouds spreads below your feet while the sun rises from its far edge.

The seaside sunrise is grand; the mountain sunrise is dreamlike. Taimali has both.

In 2026, Even the Hot-Air Balloons Came Here for Sunrise

In 2026, Taimali's first light gained a companion.

At four in the morning on July 23, the 2026 Taiwan International Balloon Festival moved its single "dawn glow" session to the Taimali Dawn Memorial Park — while most people were still waiting for daybreak at Luye Highland (鹿野高台), the balloons here chose to glow quietly to life inside the Pacific's first light.

Of the festival's eight night-glow concerts, this was the only one held not in the dark but at daybreak. The location was no accident: this is where Taiwan came to greet the millennium's first dawn in 2000.

How to See Taimali's First Light

• Seaside sunrise:
  • Millennium Dawn Memorial Park and the Taimali shoreline (the easiest place to photograph the dawn)
  • The "Sakuragi Hanamichi Crossing" beside Taimali station (sunrise + train + sea)
• Mountain sunrise: Wangyou Pavilion on Jinzhen Mountain (you'll need to drive up; whether the sea of clouds shows up is down to the day)
• Best seasons:
  • Around New Year's Day (no official dawn event on New Year's Day 2024–2026, and nothing announced yet for 2027; the park stays open — go early, in the dark)
  • Mid-August to late September (daylily peak + sunrise over both sea and mountain)
• Timing: sunrise shifts with the season — around 05:10 in summer; in winter the latest is around 06:38, in January — the exact dates shift year to year, so check that year's table (Central Weather Administration, Taitung County sunrise and sunset table). Check the exact sunrise time the night before.
• A note: catching the sunrise means setting out in the dark — it is steadier to let someone who knows the road drive that climb.

Afterword

We live in an age when it's hard to rise early. The alarm goes off three times, we linger in bed, and then we steal back the sleep on the commute.

But in Taimali, there's a kind of early rising that's worth it — you get up for a single ray of light, stand on a coast that faces the open Pacific, and watch the sun climb up from the far end of the Pacific. In that moment there is no phone, no notifications, no to-do list.

Only light, inch by inch, opening the world again.

This is the light at Taimali. And it may also be a morning you haven't truly looked at in a long, long time.

Correction (2026-10-25): This page used to call Taimali "the part of Taiwan that wakes the earliest" and the place for "Taiwan's earliest sunrise." Per the Central Weather Administration's New Year 2026 sunrise times, the earliest on the outlying islands was Lanyu (06:33) and the earliest on the main island's lowlands was Longkeng, Pingtung (06:35); Taimali Dawn Memorial Park was 06:36. We have corrected it. The unsourced "tens of thousands" in 2000 has been removed, and the winter sunrise time now follows the CWA Taitung table.