Dadaocheng: Bastion of TCM ingredients
When the subject of the TCM materials industry comes up, Taipei’s Dadaocheng area, where there is a cluster of dealers and shops, is sure to be mentioned. On short Dihua Street alone, there are tens of TCM pharmacy businesses in among the vendors of other traditional products such as dried foods, tea, and textiles. The place attracts not only Taiwanese, but also foreign visitors.
How did Dadaocheng become a bastion of the TCM ingredients business? Chen Shih-che, director general of the Dihua Street Shopping District Development Association, tells us about Dihua Street’s past. After the Treaty of Tianjin was signed in 1858, the port of Tamsui was opened to foreign trade. Scottish merchant John Dodd and businessman Li Chunsheng, originally from Xiamen, collaborated to cultivate tea plant seedlings from Fujian in Northern Taiwan, and the resultant tea was processed in Dadaocheng and exported from there. As trade increased, given the overlap between tea, TCM medicinal ingredients, dried foods and other products, Dadaocheng gradually became a distribution and sales point for all these goods.
For Taiwan’s TCM ingredients industry, Dadaocheng firms are the most influential leaders. For consumers, the area is a shopping paradise with the most complete selection and freshest products, and also the most high-end goods.
Take Chinese jujubes (Ziziphus jujuba) for example. Besides the ordinary sweet varieties used in stews, there are also varieties with much stronger medicinal properties as well as expensive high-quality jujubes locally grown in Miaoli County. As for cinnamon, besides the ordinary grade products, most large shops also sell high-end Qinghua cinnamon. “Different growing sites, varieties, and flavors all affect the end product,” explains Chen Shih-che. Dadaocheng offers everything one can imagine.
Walking along Dihua Street with Chen, we learn that the firms there all have something in common: They are nimble, clear-sighted companies that were pioneers in transforming themselves.
This characteristic recalls the development process of this historic street. In the past, each Lunar New Year’s Eve there was naturally some kind of collective grand sales event in Dadaocheng. But in 1996 the Dihua Street New Year Market, combining folk celebrations and marketing, was launched with strong backing from the Taipei City Government, and was an immediate success. From that point, the old neighborhood was brilliantly transformed, and a consensus developed around the preservation of the old buildings and affirmation of the history and culture of this urban area that until then had been in decline.
Various factors prompted businesses there to pull out all the stops to transform themselves. These included their pride in Dadaocheng and a sense of mission to revitalize its traditional industries, the neighborhood’s growing embrace of tourism, a changing consumer market, the emergence of a new successor generation of business owners, support for old shop renovations from the city government, and innovative energy injected by the “Herbal Party” events organized by the local business community. Besides striving to retain old customers, local businesses have proactively sought out new business opportunities.
As a result, new branding and packaging strategies have emerged. Products often come with user instructions in Japanese, English and Chinese, while smaller package sizes targeted at small families and singles are becoming more widely available. Then there are goods such as instant ingredient pouches for medicinal cuisine, as well as mulled wine spice mixes that are popular among younger people. These have appeared in the wake of continual changes in lifestyles and dietary trends. At the same time, virtually every store has begun to offer online shopping.
Thanks to these new strategies, people have also discovered that as TCM has gone beyond national boundaries, there is a great deal of resonance with other cultures. The commercial opportunities from contemporary lifestyles are also not to be underestimated.
“Those shops that have been able to survive in Dadaocheng all have their own unique characteristics and clientele,” says Chen Shih-che. The TCM ingredients industry has been through its ups and downs over the years, but still stands strong today. In the future, it will operate in even more diverse ways to continue to support Taiwanese in their daily lives.
TCM herbal ingredients such as roselle and Chinese hawthorn are frequently used to flavor beverages. (courtesy of City Explorer)
Dadaocheng, known as a place of living history, is where the long-established TCM ingredients industry has transformed itself to find connections to modern people and overseas cultures.