Fenglin

Fènglín (鳳林) is a rural township of approximately 10,000 residents in the Huadong Valley of Hualien, Taiwan. Hakka people constitute roughly two-thirds of the population, making it the largest Hakka settlement in Hualien; Amis and Hoklo communities account for the remainder.

During the Japanese colonial era Fenglin was the site of Hayashida (林田), one of three major Japanese immigrant villages in Hualien, traces of which survive in the Hayashida Shinto Shrine, Pinglin Aqueduct, and Principal’s Dream Factory. The township’s other major heritage site is Lintianshan Forestry Culture Park (林田山), a mountainside forestry settlement established in the 1930s and operating until the nationwide logging ban of the late 1980s. Tobacco cultivation, also introduced under the Japanese, left its mark in distinctive curing barns scattered across the valley floor.