Taiwan town races snails to boost tourism and celebrate slow living

In Fenglin Township, snails are not a joke at the town’s expense. They are the point. At this year’s May Day holiday gathering, several dozen residents and tourists watched six races over two days as competitors set pet snails at the start and cheered while the animals crept toward the finish at their own speed.

What might look like a novelty act has become a civic brand for the eastern Taiwan town of about 10,000 people. Fenglin joined Cittaslow International in 2014, becoming the first town in Taiwan to receive the slow-town certification. The Hakka Affairs Council says Hakka residents make up about 60% of the township, and that local identity has helped shape a public image built around patience, open space, locally sourced food and a less hurried pace of life.

That branding has taken on deeper meaning as Fenglin has shrunk over the decades, with its population said to have fallen threefold. Rather than treat a smaller, older community as a liability, organizers have turned slowness into a selling point. Taiwan’s official statistics place Hualien County among the places where more than 20% of residents are 65 or older, part of the country’s super-aged society. In Fenglin, that demographic reality is folded into the town’s story instead of hidden from it.

The snail race was launched the month after the April 3, 2024 Hualien earthquake, which killed 19 people and injured more than 1,100 and was described by the U.S. Geological Survey as Taiwan’s strongest quake in 25 years. Organizer Cheng Jen-shou said residents decided to host the race to help tourism recovery after the disaster. For a county that has also faced worries about earthquake-driven outmigration, the event offered a low-cost way to bring people back, fill local businesses and reintroduce Fenglin as a place to visit, not just pass through.

Among the racers this year was 70-year-old retiree Li Cheng-wen, who brought pet snails he had raised from his vegetable garden, feeding them fruit and leaves. Families clustered around the table, children shouted for favorite snails, and the whole scene turned restraint into spectacle. In Fenglin, speed is not the measure of value. The town has made a civic case that in an overworked, overbuilt world, slowness can still draw a crowd and help a community rebuild.