Mingli Elementary School

Mingli Elementary is Hualien County's oldest school, with a history stretching back to December 8, 1897 — just two years into Japan's colonial rule of Taiwan — when it opened as the "Kirai Branch Institute" of the Taitung Japanese-Language Training Institute (臺東國語傳習所奇萊分教場). Its name changed again in 1905 to Karenkō Kōgakkō (花蓮港公學校), and it grew steadily as the region's population expanded around the historic port of Hualien.

By 1932, the school had produced 999 graduates and held the largest enrollment of any school in the Hualien Port prefecture — remarkable not only for its size, but for the fact that it educated Amis and Han Chinese students together in the same classrooms, decades before such integration became common practice elsewhere. That legacy as a shared institution for the area's mixed communities has carried through to the present day: Mingli is now recognized as a Taiwan-US "Eco-Campus" partner school, connecting its long history with a modern environmental-education identity.

明禮國小是花蓮縣歷史最悠久的學校，創校可追溯至1897年12月8日——日本殖民統治台灣僅兩年時——最初名為「臺東國語傳習所奇萊分教場」。1905年更名為「花蓮港公學校」，並隨著花蓮港周邊人口增長而持續發展茁壯。

到了1932年（昭和7年），學校已培育出999名畢業生，是當時花蓮港廳轄下規模最大的學校——這不僅展現了學校的規模，更難能可貴的是，早在這樣的族群融合成為普遍作法的數十年之前，明禮國小就已讓阿美族與漢族學生同班共學。這份作為在地多元族群共同學習場域的傳承延續至今：明禮國小如今更是台美「生態學校」（Eco-Campus）夥伴學校，將悠久校史與當代環境教育的定位相互連結。