The Dongli Rice Factory opened in 1899, four years into Japan's colonial administration of Taiwan. The late nineteenth century was a period of agricultural reorganization across the island: Japanese engineers redirected irrigation systems, introduced new rice varieties, and oriented production toward export markets. In that context, a rice-milling operation in the Hualien hinterland was not unusual — it was exactly what the colonial economy required.

The factory's original site was modest, calibrated to the surrounding countryside's output. It was named Dongli — East and Power, or perhaps simply East Village, depending on the reading — and it processed the harvests of local farming families who grew rice in the flooded paddies of the Xiuguluan basin. The name survived every subsequent change of ownership and direction, anchoring the operation's identity across more than a century.

By the 1950s, postwar Taiwan's agricultural sector was expanding rapidly, driven by land reform policies that redistributed farmland to the people who worked it and created new incentives for increased production. Fuli Township's paddies were among the most productive on the island's eastern side, fed by clean mountain water flowing down from the Central Range. Dongli's original building could no longer keep pace.

The factory moved to a larger facility at its current location, scaled for the increased volume flowing off the now-numerous small farms of the surrounding area. Processing capacity expanded, the equipment updated, and the rhythm of the business deepened: rice in, husked rice out, season after season. For decades, this cycle defined the factory's days.

In the 1970s, Taiwan's agricultural establishment began grappling with the long-term costs of intensive farming: chemical runoff into the rivers, soil compaction, the gradual narrowing of biodiversity in managed fields. Fuli Township, with its relatively clean watershed and isolated geography, proved well suited to a different approach. The Dongli factory adapted to the shift, beginning to process organic rice at a time when the market for it was small but growing.

The decision to pivot toward organic production kept the factory relevant through decades when many traditional mills fell silent, unable to compete with large-scale industrial processing elsewhere on the island. Fuli's organic rice eventually developed a reputation that extended well beyond the valley — a product whose quality depended precisely on the isolation and clean water that made the area a difficult place to do anything at scale.

At some point in the factory's more recent history, a decision was made not just to continue milling rice but to preserve the memory of how it was always done. The Dongli Story House — the museum and heritage space established on the factory grounds — displays tools, machinery, photographs, and records from the long sweep of the operation's history. The artifacts are not spectacular in themselves: grain-polishing drums, sorting trays, wooden measures, black-and-white images of workers in field hats. But together they document the agricultural backbone of a region that the outside world tends to think of mainly as scenery.

Visitors arriving from Dongli Station on the Taiwan Railway — a short walk south — find the Story House at the active edge of a working facility. This is not a museum frozen behind glass; the land around it still grows rice, the processing still happens, and the organic harvest still leaves Fuli for tables across Taiwan. The story, it turns out, is ongoing.