Nanfangao

We came to Nanfangao by way of a fairly unglamorous logic: we’d been eating overpriced seafood in Yilan’s tourist restaurants for two days and Lia finally said, correctly, that we should just go to where the boats actually come in. A twenty-minute bus ride later we were standing on the harbor wall watching trawlers idle into port under a bridge painted in a full, unapologetic rainbow arc.

Third Fishing Port, First-Rate Chaos

Nanfangao is one of Taiwan’s three major fishing ports, and its market runs on a controlled chaos that took us a few minutes to find our footing in — vendors shouting prices for squid, mackerel, and bonito still glistening from the boat, buyers moving fast, ice sliding off crates onto the wet concrete floor. We pointed vaguely at a tray of grilled squid skewers and ended up walking away with considerably more food than two people should reasonably eat standing up, all of it excellent, all of it gone within the hour.

Three Temples, One Hillside, No Rivalry

What struck me most about Nanfangao wasn’t the fish, though — it was the temples. Within a few hundred metres of each other sit Nan Tian Temple, a towering, ornate complex dedicated to Mazu, goddess of the sea and unofficial patron of every fishing community in Taiwan; Jin An Temple, older and more modest, tucked closer to the original harbor settlement; and Nanfang’ao Tianhou Temple, whose interior contains a Mazu statue reportedly carved from solid jade. Fishermen here don’t treat this as tourist curiosity — before boats head out, crews still stop to burn incense and ask for calm water, a practice that felt entirely unperformed the afternoon we watched it happen.

From the temple steps, the view down over the rainbow bridge and the crowded fleet of boats below is, unexpectedly, one of the better harbor panoramas on Taiwan’s east coast — color everywhere, from the boats’ painted hulls to the bridge arch to the temple’s own red and gold, competing for attention against a backdrop of grey Pacific water.

When to go: Early morning, ideally before 9am, catches the market at its most active as boats come in with the overnight catch. Autumn and winter bring clearer air and calmer harbor water for photographing the bridge and fleet together.