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Keelung City

Cruises Restore Glory of Keelung, Once Taiwan’s Largest Port

Cruises Restore Glory of Keelung, Once Taiwan’s Largest Port

Source:Kuo-Tai Liu

Keelung Port, whose history dates back to the 17th century, has always played a crucial role as Keelung City’s lifeline. While in the past the port thrived on handling and transferring cargo, it has now traded that business for the tourist trade. Today, elegant cruise ships towering over the pier like office high-rises count among Keelung’s most striking sights.  

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Cruises Restore Glory of Keelung, Once Taiwan’s Largest Port

By Jin Yi Chen
web only

Our car has hardly left the highway downramp when a giant vessel comes into sight, blocking the view at the side of the street. Only half of the towering ship is visible from the street level of the two-lane road. You have just begun to process the stunning visual effect when the car reaches downtown Keelung.

If the center of a city is its heart, then Keelung Port, built more than a century ago, is without doubt the city’s pulse. Keelung’s prosperity and decline have always revolved around its harbor.  

Keelung is surrounded by mountains on three sides and often shrouded in clouds. Against this backdrop, the harbor has always served as the city’s gate to the world.   

A bird’s eye view of Keelung Port shows the Majestic Princess, a cruise ship owned and operated by Princess Cruises, docking at the pier. Taiwan’s once largest port had lost its luster, but recently a steady stream of stately mega liners has been bringing new glitz and glamour. Thanks to the rising popularity of luxury cruises, Keelung Port is getting a new lease on life. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

Keelung was on the forefront of many major events in Taiwan’s history. In the 17thcentury, Spanish traders arrived here and built castles, churches and fortresses on Heping Island (then Sheliao Island), a small islet that today is connected to Keelung City via a bridge. In the 19th century, Taiwan was forced to open its ports, including Keelung, after China and Britain signed the Treaty of Tianjin at the end of the first phase of the Second Opium War in 1858. Keelung was important for trading coal, which the British had discovered here.

During the Sino-French War, the French captured the port in October 1884. A gold rush followed in 1891 when railroad workers found gold specks in the Keelung River. The Japanese entered Taiwan from here in 1895, setting the stage for 50 years of colonial rule. And eventually, as the defeated Kuomintang retreated from China in 1949, they too came ashore in Keelung.   

                       

Changing Times Erode Trade as Source of Affluence

Deftly navigating the vicissitudes of time, Keelung continued to prosper at the northern tip of Taiwan.

In 1984, Keelung was not only Taiwan’s biggest port but also the world’s seventh-largest port in terms of containerized cargo volume.

“When we were kids, we knew that we should stay inside on Thursdays unless it was really necessary to go out because cargo was clearing customs that day. The city would be jammed with heavy trucks hauling 40-foot containers, which shook the ground when roaring down the streets,” recalls Mr. Chiang, who grew up in the port city.

“In the past, the entire sky was purplish-red in the evening; it was a very boisterous atmosphere,” says Chen Wei-chung, a Keelung city councilor for the New Power Party, in describing the activity level as international cargo vessels arrived and hurried to unload their goods.

There was also the Kanziding Fish Market, also known as Taiwan’s Tsukiji, which woke up to frenzied business around midnight when ordinary citizens had long gone to bed. Keelung was a sleepless harbor city, loading and unloading, busily welcoming and sending off a never-ending stream of vessels and people. 

Kanziding Fish Market, also known as Taiwan’s Tsukiji (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

The large ships from abroad brought flows of goods and money, and triggered the opening of numerous consignment shops which sold goods brought in from abroad to dealers around Taiwan at a time when imported goods were not widely available. Back then, you had to go to Keelung to get your hands on the latest, most fashionable goods from abroad. When it came to international trends, Keelung was avant garde.  

The adjacent Zhengbin Fishing Port at the south side of Heping Island was Taiwan’s largest harbor during the Japanese colonial period and the economic locomotive driving the early boom of Keelung Port. Meanwhile Zhengbin Fishing Port has been transformed into a leisure and tourism attraction with the colorful facades on Nostalgia Pier forming a picturesque backdrop. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

Owing its glorious past to internationalization, Keelung also lost its former luster due to globalization.

The government lifted travel restrictions, allowing Taiwanese citizens to freely travel abroad for tourism, and Taiwan’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002 led to further market opening and liberalization, so that imported goods were no longer hard to come by, and the city government no longer received recompense from commercial port service fees.

Less than ten years after Taipei Port opened in 2009, it had already overtaken Keelung in terms of cargo transported through the port. In Keelung’s container terminals, the gantry cranes were sitting idle, their booms raised to the sky “shooting birds” as the locals like to say, tongue in cheek. From childhood on, youngsters were instilled with the idea that they had better move to Taipei for school or work.

Amid rapid global change, Keelung fell behind and lost its former glory. All it had left was the dubious fame of being the city with the highest suicide rate in Taiwan.  

Eventually, the resounding blasts of cruise ship horns blew away the gloom, reinvigorating stagnating Keelung and opening up new horizons.

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From Handling Cargo to Servicing People

Over the past five years, the number of cruise passengers from Asia has tripled to more than 4.26 million people, according to industry body Cruising Lines International Association (CLIA). Despite being a relatively small subtropical island nation, Taiwan is the second-largest source market in Asia behind China.

The Taiwanese love to travel to neighboring Japan and South Korea, and cruise liners offer an alternative to flying. “There are no baggage weight restrictions, and there is plenty of onboard entertainment. Our most popular tours are return trips of three to five days,” observes Peter Chen, region marketing director for Princess Cruises Taiwan.

For many Taiwanese travelers, Keelung is the favorite point of departure because the northernmost port is located closer to Japan and South Korea than other harbors in Taiwan (Read: Keelung Battles to Change Identity). More than 90 percent of all cruise passengers from Taiwan embark in Keelung.

The number of international cruise passengers visiting Keelung Port has risen from 400,000 in 2013 to 940,000 last year. Passenger numbers are expected to keep growing more than 20 percent per year, which is why several international cruise liner operators have chosen to make Keelung Port their home port.

According to the Taiwan International Ports Corporation, Keelung Port saw 565 cruise ship visits in 2018, more than one visit per day on average.

“We are now playing in the big league,” notes Lee Wang, director-general of Keelung City Government’s Department of Transportation and Tourism. Meanwhile, Keelung has become Asia’s third-largest cruise ship port, ahead of Hong Kong and all Japanese harbors, just behind Shanghai and Singapore.

Competition among cargo ports is fierce because all it takes to get into the business is a harbor and warehouses. The threshold to enter the cruise liner industry is comparably higher, however, since the transition from handling cargo to servicing people is not a simple one. “You need nearby sightseeing spots and coordination on the software side,” remarks Liou Shy-tzong, president of Port of Keelung, Taiwan International Ports Corporation. “Service must be more meticulous.” After all, cargo does not complain, whereas people do. 

When a single cruise liner makes a port call, 2,000 to 3,000 tourists spill into the passenger terminal in an instance, putting its ability to provide a seamless flow of passport control, customs procedure and baggage claim to the test. Traffic patterns must be coordinated with the shipping companies as different gangways need to be installed depending on vessel size and tide levels. Procedures are by no means simpler than at airports. Automatic currency exchange machines for U.S. dollars and Japanese yen have been set up. By the middle of next year, automated passport controls are slated to be introduced for faster and more efficient entry and exit border checks.  

While the old port’s facilities still require some upgrading, its service personnel have made great efforts to catch up to international standards. Consequently, Keelung Port was named the best cruise home port in Asia in 2017.

Since cruise liners require much larger crews and workers than container ships, the cruise business creates new jobs. Already the first graduates from Taiwanese universities have found work as service workers aboard cruise ships. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

About 70 to 80 percent of people involved in home port operations are Taiwanese. As soon as a ship docks at the pier, tour coaches stand ready to whisk the tourists away. Do the cruise tourists bring anything aside from traffic jams?

“Currently the output value of cruises is not high,” admits Keelung Mayor Lin Yu-chang. “In fact, we regard cruise liners as a trigger to jumpstart the development of other industries in Keelung.”  

Cruise Money Brings Affluence to Community 

“The trend of Keelung becoming the home port for international cruise liners is very clear,” says Lin, who has been pushing for improved public infrastructure. Plans for a light rail, the West Side Convention Center and the Smile-Shaped Port Project have gotten underway thanks to the cruise ship boom.

Aside from the tourism industry, this also includes the replenishment of provisions on board, vessel maintenance etc. It is an entire supply chain,” the tourism department’s Lee points out. Since these provisions are not necessarily produced in Keelung, other parts of Taiwan can also get their slice of the pie. “If Keelung does well, it means Taiwan is doing well. I believe it is a good thing, no matter which city benefits [from the cruise business],” says Lee.

The cruise ships have brought travelers, turning Keelung into a locomotive that allows everyone to make money.

Let’s take Princess Cruises as an example. In 2018, the cruise operator procured goods worth US$20 million, about NT$620 million, in Taiwan. Included were US$9 million worth of fruit, vegetables, rice and other foods from Taiwan. In 2019, procurement of these items alone is expected to surpass US$20 million.

Cruise liners resemble floating luxury hotels with an abundance of entertainment facilities. Among Taiwanese travelers, short cruises to neighboring Japan and South Korea, lasting three to five days, have proven most popular. The picture shows the interior of the Majestic Princess. (Photo by Kuo-Tai Liu/CW)

“Passenger transport growth has greater spillover effects than cargo transport growth,” explains Liou. A cargo vessel has a crew of 20 to 30 people, while a cruise ship carries at least 2,000 passengers and nearly 1,000 staff and crew to serve them and run the ship. This means that a cruise ship brings many times the potential spending of a cargo vessel.

Overlooking the harbor, Keelung’s only 5-star hotel, the Evergreen Laurel Hotel, is also seeing brisker business thanks to the cruises. “Before 2015, our occupancy stood at 40 percent to 50 percent. Now we are booked up on the weekends so that we can maintain occupancy of around 75, 80 percent,” says Ice Sun, the hotel’s general manager. Many cruise passengers choose to spend a night at the hotel before embarking on their trip. 

Without doubt, the iconic Taipei 101 skyscraper and the world-famous National Palace Museum are top tourist attractions in nearby Taipei. But Keelung has meanwhile also come into its own with a distinctly different pace of life and atmosphere.  

Thanks to foreign influence, the coffee culture took root in Keelung at an early stage, so you literally only need to walk a few steps to find a coffee shop (Read: How an Island of Tea-Drinkers Came to Love the Bean). “You can have pork intestines in thick soup in a café; it is a fusion style,” explains Keelung City Councilor Jiho Chang in describing Keelung’s inclusive character. Distinctly local but also hip, making virtually everyone feel at home.

Keelung has lived through an eventful history and coped with ups and downs. The cruises help the history-steeped port chart a new course.

Translated by Susanne Ganz
Edited by TC Lin, Sharon Tseng

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