The biennial has 32 venues. You do not have to become an endurance exhibit over the first weekend. Start in the old police station, follow yarn through cracks in a cloth house, then descend to water where a canal and shopping mall once stood. These three stops look at what Tainan keeps, dismantles and uses again.
Your afternoon and evening
13:30–15:00 Museum Building 1; 15:20–16:20 Gimgoanheng; dinner and a rest; 17:30–19:00 The Spring. Have lunch before starting and leave time to look along the way.
Allow about twenty minutes on foot from Tainan Station to Museum Building 1. The underground station opened October 17: use Beimen Road Exit 1 and allow extra time inside for the temporary footbridge to the old station. A taxi back from the Hai'an Road area saves your legs after the water stop.
Walk — Use Beimen Road Exit 1 towards the city centre; allow about twenty minutes on foot from Tainan Station to Museum Building 1.
At 13:30, look at the former police-station facade, then enter Gallery A on 1F for Investigation Chronicles: The Police Expo. A 1925 police-bodhisattva poster leads into policing and colonial rule through art, literature, film and comics. The NT$200 biennial day ticket covers the municipal museum, the National Museum of Modern Art Tainan preparatory office and the Confucius Temple cultural park that day. Give Building 1 about ninety minutes here.
Tainan Art Museum Building 1. Photograph published on the museum's architecture page. Editorial use.
Walk — About 900 m from Museum Building 1 to Gimgoanheng; allow 15–20 minutes.
Around 15:20, browse Gimgoanheng's Taiwanese prints downstairs—milkfish and mullet roe become patterns—then climb to Zeze Chen's Through the Weave on 3F. Yarn and wool spill from rough panels; Chen starts with the force of roots finding gaps and lifting paving. The exhibition is reached by a narrow terrazzo stair. Sunday hours are 10:00–18:00; the show runs through November 22.
Work: Zeze Chen. Exhibition image: Tainan Arts Festival, Through the Weave programme. Editorial use.
Right now:Wednesday–Sunday, 10:00–18:00; closed Monday and Tuesday.
From Tainan Station's front side, allow 30 minutes for the roughly 1.8 km walk. Enter Lane 209 off Zhongzheng Road and find No. 3. The exhibition is upstairs, reached by a narrow terrazzo stair.
Walk — About 425 m from Gimgoanheng to The Spring; allow ten minutes, with a meal break before the evening stop.
Eat and sit down before entering The Spring from the Kangle Street side at 17:30. LONG FLOW TAINAN runs through the entrance, bridge underside and water, returning to the canal and China-Town mall that once occupied this ground. November 1 is its final exhibition night: free, 17:30–22:00, last admission 21:00. Shoes come off before entering the water; bring a shoe bag and a small towel.
