Dongli Story House
Dongli Story House
  • Name: Dongli Story House
  • Level: Folk premises
  • Rownsihip: Fuli Township
  • Feature: Tenno rice on sale here, exhibition of old and new rice mills
  • Address: No.1, Dazhuang Rd., Fuli Township, Hualien County 983
  • TEL: +886-8861171
  • FAX: 03-8861366
  • Open hours:  Open all year
  • Ticket:  Free
  • Website: http://www.tennorice.com/
Dongli Story House Dongli Story House

Service:

1. Creative Tenno rice gifts on sale.
2. Guided tours of the Dongli Rice Factory, please book in advance.
3. Pesticide-free organic rice paddies for adoption.
Buy pesticide-free, organic rice directly from the farmer, unit of adoption 0.1 hectares.
About 600 kg of rice can be harvested from each unit, after milling around 360 kg of white rice is produced.
Companies and the public are welcome to adopt a paddy. (For more details please see the official website.)
4. Rice seedling planting activity (only during summer and winter holidays or group bookings)

A brief introduction of the facility:

The Dongli Rice Factory was founded in 1899. The founder was a Hakka merchant surnamed Song who came with a merchant group to Taiwan to escape internal conflict towards the end of the Qing Dynasty.
At that time, the Hualien and Taitung regions were remote and not easily accessible so were open for businesses to establish themselves there. Due to the clean water and rich soil of the area rice was a highly suitable crop. Therefore Merchant Song settled down in the area and began a century-long journey of rice cultivation.
In its early days Taiwan was a cooperative agricultural society. The farmers formed harvesting teams to help each other with the farm work. They harvested, dried the crops, stored and milled the rice together. The predecessor of the Dongli Rice Factory was the gathering place of the farmers.
Due to improvements in irrigation and use of chemical fertilizers, and reforms in Taiwan's rice cultivation techniques, crop production increased significantly. In addition, rice produced in the eastern regions was favored by the Japanese so the export of rice became an important source of income for Taiwan.
Due to rice exports, Dongli Village became one of the wealthiest villages in the area.
After policy implementations such as "375 Rent Decrease", "Public Land Release" and "Land to the Tiller", in the 1950s rice cultivation was in its golden period. At that time, there were 780,000 hectares of cultivated rice paddy. Due to the enormous increase in rice production, Dongli Rice Factory also moved to larger premises at today's location on Highway 9.
But, after the 1970s, the government gradually shifted economic direction to industrial development. Also, due to the booming economy, import of foreign foods became common so there was a change in people's dietary habits, i.e. there was an increase in the intake of animal proteins and wheat products,
so rice consumption decreased. Many rice mills were faced with this transitional crisis.
Due to these changes, Dongli Rice Factory developed smaller packaged rice,
and also increased the production of organic rice as a response to recent organic and health trends
and pioneered the market for organic rice.
In 2000, a blue ocean market for Hualien and Taitung was founded amidst the competitive rice market to ensure the outstanding quality and sustainability of rice production in the Hualien and Taitung regions.
Fuli Township, Chishang Township and others gathered together to form the brand "Good Rice of the Valleys".
In 2006, it was discovered through academic literature that rice produced in the Fuli area was eaten by the Japanese Emperor due to its excellent quality,
so the brand "Tenno Rice" was developed ("tenno" means emperor in Japanese).
Dongli Rice Factory is the only rice mill in Taiwan with over a hundred years of history, in addition to the renowned "Tenno Rice" brand. The Dongli Story House was established to preserve artifacts from the cultivation history of early times. It also has the most detailed agricultural development history in the whole of Taiwan. It is definitely a worthwhile trip to learn more about the good rice of Taiwan.


Geography QRcode
23.26801,121.30344
Information QRcode
Dongli Story House
Address:No.1, Dazhuang Rd., Fuli Township, Hualien County 983
TEL:+886-8861171