2025 Reading Festival in Pingtung

A nationally recognized and highly anticipated reading and cultural event, the Reading Festival in the Southern Region enters its seventh edition in 2025. Under the theme “Travel with ○△~”, the 2025 festival adopts an open-ended and playful sentence structure for the first time. Different graphic symbols represent Pingtung’s cultural landscape, mountains, and seascapes.

The festival invites everyone to discover their own unique reason for coming to Pingtung, whether it is a book, a film, a dish, or other forms of charm that are difficult to fully articulate.

The year 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of the establishment of Hengchun City. In response, the festival places special emphasis on exploring southern Pingtung, bringing reading activities into Hengchun’s historical sites and organizing international lectures and guided walks in the area. Through this approach, cultural energy is extended throughout Pingtung County, responding to the intersection of local history and contemporary life.

Beyond travel as its theme, the festival also explores multiple dimensions, including genre literature, film and television works, parenting and education, food culture, and local history. Using Pingtung as a point of departure, these diverse perspectives collectively outline the vibrant rhythms of contemporary society and shape a new vision for the southern region as it looks toward the next generation.

2025 also marks the inaugural launch of the “Pingtung 100 Bowls” food culture initiative, conceived as an important extension of the reading journey. Ten judges from the fields of gastronomy, culture, and creative practice were invited to conduct on-site visits across Pingtung. Each selected ten dishes that they felt best represented Pingtung, culminating in a list of one hundred bowls that together form a living food map rooted in everyday life. The selected eateries range from traditional local snacks to innovative cuisine, with dishes spanning daily street food to festive memories. Through “Pingtung 100 Bowls,” the festival reads not only texts, but also landscapes, communities, and flavors shaped by time and place.