Welcome to Rainbow Village – Instagram paradise in Taichung! Rainbow Village is one of the newest attractions in Taichung City. It is also without a single doubt, one of the top sights in all of Taiwan, boasting a massive 2 million tourists every single year!Â
More information about Rainbow Village in Taichung follows below this photo gallery. Click the pictures to enlarge.
This shows an interesting trend about what tourists are interested in seeing while visiting Taichung. Guidebooks in the early 2000 would list more traditional heritage sites like the Confucius Temple and old tea shops as top sights in the city. Today, Rainbow Village and more modern places like the National Taichung Theater take the top spots.
What’s the story behind Rainbow Village?
Rainbow Village is a cluster of old houses covered in colorful and cartoonish drawings of animals, imaginary creatures, flowers, bugs… As you arrive there, you might think that you’ve just popped acid and you’ve landed in a psychedelic world. Some of the images are very intriguing.
Grandpa Huang is the man who started this project. He’s a former soldier and security guard who lived in the military housing complex. He started painting his own house and also his neighbors houses in 2010, at 86 years old. He claims to have started that to “bring color to the neighborhood“.
The project inspired university students and various local organizations to petition the government to protect the old military housing complex from being torn down. As you can see from 2 of the pictures I shot with my drone in November 2020, the village is now surrounded by massive construction zones. It seems like the faith of this beautiful Taichung attraction is at risk.
Where is Rainbow Village
Rainbow Village is inconveniently located outside of Taichung city center. You’ll need to have your own wheels to get there, or use public transportation. From the High-Speed Railway station, you can take buses 70, 26, 800, 617, 56 or 74. It’s about 15 minutes by bus to get to the village from the HSR station.
From Gancheng station downtown, you can take bus 56. This takes a bit longer, about 1 hour.
How long should you plan for your visit?
The village is quite small and if you just walk around quickly without taking picture of every wall, you could be in and out after 5 minutes. But take your time, have a drink, check out the souvenirs, and chat with Grandpa Huang if he’s there!