The Jiali Sugar Factory's construction in 1906 came just a decade after Japan took control of Taiwan from Qing China following the first Sino-Japanese War of 1895. The colonial government invested heavily in Taiwan's sugar industry, viewing the island's subtropical climate and flat coastal plains as ideal for plantation-scale cultivation. Sugar became one of Taiwan's defining industries under Japanese rule, and the landscape of southwestern Taiwan was reorganized around it: rivers were channeled, wetlands drained, and narrow-gauge rail lines built to carry cane from field to factory. The Soulangh refinery participated in this transformation. By the time it closed in 1995 — nearly a decade after sugar became economically marginal and after the island's agricultural priorities had shifted — it had operated for nearly nine decades and shaped the community of Jiali in ways that outlasted the industry itself.

The conversion of the sugar refinery into a cultural park took several years of planning after a preparatory office was established in 2003. When Soulangh Cultural Park opened in 2005, it offered something the surrounding Jiali District had never had: a large, multi-purpose public venue for exhibitions, performances, and community events. The 14 former warehouses became exhibition galleries, workshop spaces, and event halls — their industrial bones preserved, their interiors repurposed. The scale is generous in the way that only former industrial sites can be: high ceilings, wide spans, thick walls, and the particular acoustics of spaces designed for machinery rather than people. The park also accommodates a library and a playroom alongside its museum spaces, aiming at a breadth of use that distinguishes it from a conventional gallery.

Among the most significant aspects of Soulangh's permanent programming is its commitment to the Siraya people — the indigenous Taiwanese group whose ancestral territory encompassed the Tainan area long before Han settlement began in the 17th century. The Siraya were one of the Formosan plains peoples, and they faced centuries of displacement, cultural suppression, and assimilation as Han populations expanded. By the 20th century, Siraya identity had been substantially eroded — the language largely dormant, the traditional practices reduced to fragments. Soulangh's exhibitions on Siraya culture sit alongside displays of Tainan folk art, offering a layered account of the region's cultural inheritance: indigenous, Han settler, and Japanese colonial histories intertwined in the same landscape. The park does not resolve these layers into a simple story; it displays them.

In 2013, eight years after the park's opening, Soulangh initiated its Artist Village — a residency program that invites artists to live and work on the grounds, bringing active creative practice into what could otherwise become a purely memorial space. The Soulangh Artist Village has hosted both Taiwanese and international residents, connecting the former factory site to contemporary art networks that extend well beyond Jiali District. Residency programs in post-industrial spaces have become common enough globally to constitute their own pattern, but Soulangh's version is notable for its setting: the artists work in a landscape that still shows the traces of its industrial past, against a backdrop of Siraya cultural heritage and the flat sugarcane plains of the Tainan hinterland. The combination is specific enough to produce work that could not be made anywhere else.

Soulangh Cultural Park sits at approximately 23.173°N, 120.179°E in Jiali District — notably further north than most of Tainan's better-known historic sites, on the flat agricultural plain that stretches between the city and the Zengwen River. From the air, this part of Taiwan looks like a different country than the dense urban core around Tainan Station: open fields, fish ponds, and the occasional cluster of low buildings marking a district town. The former factory buildings at Soulangh are identifiable from low altitude as a compact industrial complex surrounded by greener, more open land. Kaohsiung International Airport (RCKH) is approximately 43 kilometers to the south-southwest. Tainan Airport (RCNN) is closer, roughly 17 kilometers south. Approaching from the south at low altitude, the sugarcane plain stretches to the north and west, and the contrast between Tainan's urban density and Jiali's agricultural quiet is visible in a single sweeping view.