Mailiao

Màiliáo (麥寮) is a coastal township in northwestern Yunlin, originally home to the Hoanya Plains Indigenous people. Its name derives from a shed (麥仔簝) that once stood beside a ferry dock where farmers stored grain for shipment. The early settlement centered on Haifeng Port (海豐港), a coastal trade hub during the Kangxi era that silted up and was abandoned by the mid-18th century. Gongfan Temple, a Mazu temple established in 1685 and recently designated a national monument, remains the township’s spiritual anchor. The derelict Jincheng Theater, built around 1965 and abandoned by the late 1980s, is well-known among urban explorers. The construction of the Formosa Plastics Sixth Naphtha Cracker complex on reclaimed land offshore in the 1990s transformed Mailiao from a declining fishing and farming community into Yunlin’s third most populous township.