Kaohsiung: The Pier-2 Art Center

From Takao Railway Museum, you can also come to the Pier-2 Art Center - one that was transformed from a disused dockside warehouse. It was abandoned and faded away of its original purpose until a group of persistent artist who injected waves of creativity and inspiration into the spaces. The Pier-2 was then released and reborn and became a huge attraction to the local and tourist to enjoy fine art, contemporary art, to explore and to contemplate.  

We were half-recharged from Old Yancheng District and were not sure to call it a day or to continue our exploratory. The girls were pretty much up to their max, in term of exhaustion: from morning to almost evening, from the hotel in Gushan to Fengshan to Yancheng, almost equivalent to from the north to the east and the west of Kaohsiung. But since we could pick a route passing by Pier-2 to get a train back to hotel, why not? We pushed our limit and encouraged the girls too- to strike off the very last to-go-place for the day.

I reckon, the cooling weather in December made us walked the extra miles, literally. Breeze from the seashore, the railway tracks continued from Takao Railway museum and the exciting crowd probably given us an oomph and it was kind of art and culture trail for us to go through this part of Pier-2.

After the book cafe, we roamed along Jiexing Street (unintentionally), and came to the main rod of Penglai Road, intended to cut across Pier-2 and headed to Dayong Road to reach Yanchengpu (鹽埕埔) MRT station.

One of the public arts that drew many attention was "Labour and Fishwoman". Same forms of sculpture but repeated in many different themes and colours.

Explicitly,

"Both the front and back of the sculptures are the backs of the Labor and Fishwoman. The images of the backs strongly imply that the figures "work hard silently" without fear of being anonymous and nobodies. The faceless images also indicate the nameless persons known only by their backs because they often have to bend their bodies when working, so no one pays attention to their faces." 

As many of the warehouse were huge in term of the space, great idea to become a contemporary art gallery and performance, some extraordinary boutiques, grocery shops that distinctively on local creation or chic imported goods. From time to time, Pier-2 hosted themed events. Such as, Chibi Maruko-chan to celebrate the anime's 25th anniversary, during our visit. As this was one of the ticketed event, and we were there at late afternoon (almost closing time), we managed to convinced the girls dropped the idea of going in. 

Left photo below: We were in "Roaming over Clouds".

In 2006, Kaohsiung City Bureau of Cultural Affairs took over the Pier-2 Art Center and started with series of exhibitions and festivals that revitalise Pier-2 to higher level- continuously been presenting avant-garde perceptions and appearances. while building this city internationally well recognized as a cultural and living hub.

Despite the crowd (i hate crowd), it was a pretty relaxing to check-out Pier-2, especially when I looked out to the shore.

The street photo below was probably taken from Xinhua Street, when we overshot the junctions and reached Guangrong Street, instead of Dayong Road. Well, talk about fun in finding way. 

When we came to Dayong Road, we can't help it but to go into Elite Bookstore. It was heaven, we didn't want to leave the bookstore at all but had to. Little Bomber started to meltdown and it would be a long way to carry her back to hotel. 

In the end, little Bomber fell asleep in daddy's arms during the train ride. It was another almost 30 minutes walk from the nearest station to the hotel.