Neipu Township, located at the foot of Dawu Mountain in Pingtung County, is a pristine township where Hakka people account for more than 60% of the population. It belongs to the Liudui Hakka settlement in southern Taiwan and has fertile land and pollutant-free water. Fancying such unique resources, Taiwan Tsing Beer Co., Ltd. In 2005, it built the first private brewery in Taiwan—Long Chuan Brewery (龍泉觀光啤酒廠)—in 2005, covering an area of 8.6 hectares in Neipu, with an annual output of 100,000 tons of beer.
(Photo: CNA)
When the brewery was first established, it held beer festival activities every year, inviting renowned performers such as Taiwanese band Mayday to perform and attracting large numbers of visitors with various marketing gimmicks. In addition, there were many sightseeing spots and restaurants in the factory area, allowing everyone to experience the beer production lines by watching through glass windows and experiencing various free activities, which were enjoyed by many tourists, such as the "Drunken Experience House"—a space deliberately designed for people to experience what it feels like to be drunk. The factory area also sold all kinds of beer-processed products, including beer ice cream, beer-flavored pork knuckle, beer-boiled eggs, beer sausages, beer-soaked chicken, and beer marinated meats. Before returning home, many travelers would buy a few bottles of fresh brewed beer, and they would not miss out on the appetizing dishes either.
During those days, every holiday, one tour bus after another would take tourists to the brewery, and the flood of visitors helped the local area earn a lot of tourism money. However, in recent years, with the change in domestic tourism habits, which has seen more people choosing to travel on their own instead of joining group tours, the number of tourists visiting the brewery has dropped sharply. One after another, many well-known restaurants in the factory closed, and even the large parking lot in front of the factory became vacant.
However, in 2019, when Long Chuan Brewery announced that it would close the restaurants in the factory, change the brewery’s operating service strategy, and transfer the energy it puts into running the restaurants to making beer for other brands, many tourists who loved the factory’s creative cuisine of mixing Hakka food with beer felt that such a decision was unfortunate. Nowadays, there were still guided services and the sale of beer processed products in the factory, but the content of sightseeing and facilities in the factory had not been updated to reflect the changing times. The exhibition area’s furnishings that have remained unchanged for more than 10 years, and the sparse crowds seem to be saying the tourism brewery is no longer the way it was in its glorious days.
Long Chuan Brewery is still the main production area of Taiwan’s Tsing Beer Co. Ltd. It continues to develop a variety of flavors and maintains its own brand for marketing and sales. And because of its advanced technology in producing aseptic pure draft beer and clean water quality, the factory has also attracted a lot of large foreign factories, such as Heineken’s "Tiger" and "SHUN MUGI" which is a brand of beer sold to Japan, to commission Long Chuan to make their beer. However, with the company’s current operating energy transferred to the contract-manufacturing market and abandonment of the loss-making tourism side of its business, its business model is drifting away from that of "beer tourism." How it can realize the goal of "bringing tourism revenue to local areas" that the Neipu villagers were so hopeful of in the beginning, seems to have become an unavoidable issue for all Hakka villagers and manufacturers. After the boom in consumption, the sustainable operation of the Hakka villages’ industries is something that the Long Chuan Brewery and local residents must ponder and join hands to resolve.