Chiayi Local Customs

Are there any customs or cultural traits that set Chiayi's happy residents apart from the rest of the Taiwanese? If you read accounts of early Western visitors to Chiayi (missionaries a century ago, not the Dutch during the colonial era) you'll hear about the curious custom of stone-throwing games. Evidently the young men of Chiayi used to throw stones at each other for fun and amusement, sometimes killing each other (if accounts can be believed). This custom no longer endures, but ask any elders if they heard stories about the stone-throwing when they were children.

Chiayi was a hotbed of opposition to the KMT, so the central government didn't do much to fund economic development in Chiayi until the 1980s. As a result, there was a high concentration of traditional buildings and Japanese colonial wooden architecture in Chiayi. This is changing as economic development spells the doom of many old buildings.

One old custom probably persists. This is the rite of passage in which young men race their motorcycles through the Wen Hua night market, missing pedestrians by inches as their motorcyles, badly in need of new mufflers, scream through the crowds. This diversion is related to the custom of lighting bottle rockets and firing them from one's motorcycle or scooter while racing down the streets during the Autumn Moon Festival.