Keelung, the rain port, had 174 days of rain in 2025

Keelung's weather station has been counting rain days since 1947. In 2025 there were 174, nearly 20 fewer than the long-term average; over eight decades the count has fallen by about 3.4 days per decade, while the annual rainfall total has barely changed.

The city has hills on three sides and the harbour on the fourth, and very little flat ground. Houses climb the slopes from the waterfront, and the roads start to rise as soon as they leave the docks. Even with fewer rain days, it rains often enough for the city to be nicknamed the Rainy Port, and most shopfronts in the centre sit behind covered arcades.

Container ships tie up beneath rows of cranes, and the cruise terminal is right beside the city centre. Further east, at Zhengbin fishing port, the boats are moored in front of a row of old houses painted in different colours. On the hill to the south is Zhongzheng Park, with a tall white statue of Guanyin at the top.

The Miaokou night market fills Ren 3rd Road in front of Dianji Temple, under a long row of matching yellow lightbox signs. Ding bian cuo is made by pouring rice batter around the rim of a hot wok so it sets into thin sheets, which then go into a broth with dried shrimp, mushrooms and bamboo shoots. In Keelung, tempura means fried fish paste, soft and usually served with a little sweet chilli sauce and pickled cucumber. The so-called nutritious sandwich is a long bread roll, deep-fried, split and filled with braised egg, ham, tomato and cucumber, then finished with mayonnaise.

The city was originally called Kelang, written with the characters for "chicken coop". One story says a local hill had that shape; a likelier one traces the name to the area's first Indigenous inhabitants. In the late Qing period officials swapped in two characters with the same sound and the meaning "prosperous base", and in Taiwanese Hokkien the city is still called Ke-lâng. The Ghost Festival held each seventh lunar month keeps the old name.