Houtong is a small mining town located in Rueifang District of Taiwan, a district renowned for its rich, well-preserved railway culture with the old Yilan Line which was built during the Japanese colonial period for transporting resources out of northern Taiwan. Houtong was a train stop on the Yilan Line and one of Taiwan’s biggest coal-mining sites up until the 1970s. During its most prosperous years, Houtong’s mines produced some 220,000 tons of coal, the largest amount of coal yielded in a single area in Taiwan. This attracted many residents to migrate to Houtong, and the town grew to as many as 900 households and population of more than 6,000.
As the coal mining industry began to fall into decline in 1990, development in Houtong became progressively worse. Young residents started to move out of town to look for other opportunities, and only a few hundred residents remained. The once prosperous mining industry fell into ruins and was lying so for decades.
