Yunlin

Yúnlín (雲林), literally “Cloud Forest”, is an agricultural county on the western plains of Taiwan. It is bordered to the north by the Zhuoshui River (濁水溪), which serves as the unofficial boundary between northern and southern Taiwan, and to the south by Beigang River (北港溪). The county is Taiwan’s leading producer of sweet potatoes and is home to the Huwei Sugar Factory, the only facility in Taiwan still producing sugar from domestic sugarcane. Yunlin is also renowned as the heartland of traditional glove puppet theater (布袋戲), particularly in Huwei, which became the center of the art form’s golden era in the 1950s. Notable landmarks include the Beigang Chaotian Temple, a national monument and one of Taiwan’s most celebrated Mazu temples, and the Xiluo Bridge, a 1,939-meter steel truss bridge completed in 1952 with American aid that was the second-longest bridge in the world at the time.