Timber Town Stories

Formerly known as Taocheng (“Peach City”) and Zhuluo County, Chiayi was fortified with a wooden palisade in 1704. However, the massive Meishan earthquake of 1906, in the early years of Japanese colonial rule, devastated the road system that had grown up over nearly three centuries. In response, the Japanese redesigned the city with a grid street layout. The street they named “Second Avenue” (today’s Zhongzheng Road) became a center where Taiwanese people bought and sold household goods.

The Alishan Forest Railway began operating in 1912, and in 1914 the Chiayi Sawmill, a complex of timber industry buildings that was acclaimed as “number one in the Orient,” was completed. Equipped with the most advanced machinery from Europe and North America, it constituted a comprehensive industrial cluster, and earned Chiayi the nickname “Timber Town.”

The city of Chiayi owes its development to the forestry resources of Alishan.

Stories passed down through time

The walking tour company Walk in Taiwan, founded in the Dadaocheng area of Taipei City, set up shop in Chiayi in 2022. Since establishing “Chiayi in House” as its brand and base of operations, the company is introducing Chiayi through walking tours. The first tour they devised is built around the story of Second Avenue.

Betty Chen, Walk in Taiwan’s regional director for Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan, explains that in the era of Japanese rule, “Main Street” (today’s Zhongshan Road) mainly catered to Japanese residents, whereas Second Avenue, also known as “Locals’ Street,” was a place where Taiwanese conducted business. “People said that on Second Avenue you could buy anything from cradles to coffins.” Even today, many traditional businesses remain there, such as “mountain product” shops with a real grass-roots ambience.

Xie Wenxiang, owner of Yichang Mountain Products on Zhongzheng Road, says: “‘Mountain products’ means food products from the mountains, such as jelly ear fungus, honey, dried bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, jelly fig seeds, and dried daylily.” Thanks to the forest railway, in the Japanese era Chiayi City was an important hub of overland transportation routes, and a trading center for goods being shipped north or south. Xie points to a general store across the street from his shop and says that back in the day it was so busy in the run-up to the Lunar New Year that they didn’t close their doors day or night.

Other businesses on Zhongzheng Road are no less impressive. Chia Yi Sewing Machine is a venerable store that is now in the hands of the fifth generation of its owning family. How do you know it is old? Just look at the four-digit phone number that is still written above the doorway! But it is only when you walk inside this building, which on the outside has an elegant washed terrazzo finish, that you discover that the old house is built of cypress wood. There is a story behind every detail of the place, from the cypress staircase to the trademark emblem carved on a wooden panel.

Betty Chen leads us next door to Lai Shin Chun Incense, where fourth-generation boss Lai Longyi stands at the door and asks the customers that enter what kind of worship they are preparing for. He explains that the spirit money that should be burnt differs depending upon whether one is honoring deities, ancestors, wandering spirits, or the souls of the former owners or occupiers of a building. Spreading out some spirit money intended for wandering ghosts, he explains that the objects such as combs printed on the paper are everyday items needed by these spirits. Moreover, there is a whole body of knowledge related to the distinctions between different kinds of spirit money.

These stories of businesses passed down from generation to generation remind me of a conversation I had with a taxi driver that day. The driver told us she had had a fare who was revisiting Chiayi three decades after doing his military service there, and complained that the shops on the city’s streets were all exactly the same as they had been 30 years previously. The taxi driver boldly replied: “Yes, but if you look at it from another angle, this means that we Chiayi people raise our children right, because they all take good care of the family business and pass it on to the next generation!”

The four-digit telephone number still visible over the doorway of Chia Yi Sewing Machine shows that this is an old-established business. The veteran sewing machines on display inside the shop are reminders of the clothes making and mending done in many homes in the past.

Betty Chen says that Chiayi is a city that embraces anyone with dreams.

The firm Walk in Taiwan set up shop in Chiayi in 2022 to help people get to know the city through walking tours. They started out with tours of “Second Avenue.” (courtesy of Chiayi in House)

The scenery of daily life

Betty Chen, who left Chiayi for five years and only returned six months ago, likes to describe her hometown in this way: “Chiayi is like a sparrow: small, but perfectly formed.”

In the past, Chiayi’s most famous landmark was probably Alishan (Mt. Ali). But in recent years this city where life moves at a comfortable pace has been gradually developing into a place where talent flowers. What has most surprised Chen since her return home has been that “this is a city that embraces anyone who has dreams.”

In the travel book The Place: Chiayi City, you can find many surprising statistics. In a city with a total area of just 60-odd square kilometers, you can buy shredded turkey meat on rice 24 hours a day, and it has Taiwan’s highest concentration of hand-shaken drinks shops, the second highest of coffee shops, the third highest of con­veni­ence stores, and the highest of parks. Looking at these superlatives, it seems that people here measure the city’s worth in terms of settings for daily life rather than technology or economic power. They have their own ways of doing things—for example, spreading mayonnaise on cold noodles or maintaining that tofu pudding only tastes right when accompanied by soy milk—and they walk their own road at their own pace.

As we leave Chiayi in House, Betty Chen recommends that we follow Second Avenue eastward and visit the Eastern Market, which still has its cypress-wood framework. This is a major dining space for the people of Chiayi. There is also Chenghuang Temple, a center of faith for local residents. Looking upward in the main hall we see a beautiful caisson ceiling. The human figurines that decorate the ceiling were made by Wang Jinmu, a master craftsman from the Xidi School of Quanzhou in China’s Fujian Province. They include not only figures from Eastern religions such as the Maitreya Buddha and deified military leaders, but also a number of Western gentry wearing suits and hats and carrying walking sticks, as well as winged angels.

The shops on Second Avenue have everything needed for daily life, and many interesting stories to tell. It turns out that walking is indeed the best way to discover the fascination of this city, for you have to go at a slow pace to fully appreciate it.

Lai Longyi, owner of Lai Shin Chun Incense, has a profound knowledge of religious rituals.

A painted-tile depiction of Mt. Fuji on the “dragon” side of the deities’ shrine in Chiayi’s Chenghuang Temple. On the other side (the “tiger” side) there is a depiction of Yushan, known in the Japanese era as Mt. Niitaka. ­

The figurines that decorate the caisson ceiling in Chenghuang Temple include Western gentry wearing suits and hats and carrying walking sticks. During tours of the temple, foreigners find these figures especially intriguing.

Timber Town

But there is another side to Chiayi—the legacy of the timber industry. According to a survey conducted by Chen Cheng-che, an associate professor in the Department of Architecture and Landscape Design at Nanhua University, there are still more than 6,000 wooden buildings in Chiayi, making it the city with the largest concentration of wooden structures in all of Taiwan.

Looking back at the history of the timber industry in Chiayi, the opening of the Alishan Forest Railway back in 1912 gave a big boost to the city’s development. As Chen Cheng-che describes it: “The forest on Alishan was like a mother, and Chiayi was the child she bore. The railway was like an umbilical cord, supplying the nutrients that enabled it to gradually grow.” This lasted until 1963, when logging was banned on Alishan, and this city that had prospered thanks to timber went into decline.

In 2014 Chen’s team moved into the former staff quarters of the old Chiayi Prison and began to restore these wooden buildings that had long stood idle. At the same time they considered how the restoration of some employee dormitories could be leveraged to spark the renaissance of a city. Chen proposed the concept of “Timber Town 2.0.” The lumber industry drove the prosperous era of “Timber Town 1.0” in Chiayi from 1912 through 1963, and now, with the rise of the issue of net zero carbon emissions worldwide, there is renewed interest in the construction of wooden buildings, under­pinned by innovations in timber technology.

To help the Timber Town 2.0 plan succeed, Chen proposed a program whereby tenants who leased premises in the old prison dormitories would pay for renovations rather than paying rent. The government would open existing idle dormitories for lease in order to attract the private sector to invest small amounts of capital into restoring the wooden buildings with the assistance of professional teams. The only precondition for businesses to move into the buildings would be that some part of their activities be connected with the timber industry, so that wood-related tenants would form a cluster here.

Chen guides us on a tour of “Department of Correction 1921,” which was the first of the wooden dormitory buildings to be fully renovated. The team that did the work introduced new technologies to the old building, combining new and old wood materials while using new techniques to enhance the structure’s safety. They demonstrated that the techniques used in wooden buildings can be modern and up to date, and that wooden structures can be energy saving and comfortable. “This is our show house,” says Chen, and it is aimed at enabling people to once again experience the beauty of wooden structures.

Meanwhile, the building next door is an experimental carpentry workshop made by removing the partitions between four dormitories. Woodworking machinery has been installed and skills training classes are being offered. This is needed, Chen says, because there are still thousands of wooden buildings in the city that require renovation.

Dayi Store, a candy shop on Zhongzheng Road, has exterior walls with a washed terrazzo finish, but inside the building is made of wood. There are still many buildings of this kind in Chiayi.

Chen Cheng-che has proposed the concept of “Timber Town 2.0” in hopes of reviving the fortunes of Chiayi’s lumber industry.

Revealing old houses’ true face

There is a different strategy for promoting the renovation of privately owned wooden structures. For old wooden houses where Chiayi residents still live and work, Chen proposed a program for “removing the makeup” from old buildings. Hoping to inspire people in the back streets to engage with the issue of old wooden structures, Chen advocated starting by renovating the facades. “We first take care of the facades, because these are in a sense public assets.” The approach is to remove additions to old houses and add lighting, and to return houses to their original appearance by restoring windows that had been sealed up, taking off sheet-metal cladding, and dismantling ramshackle porches and balconies. Only then do people realize how beautiful and elegant these houses were back in the day.

Chen mentions a number of locations where we can see the results of this program. Xinyangchun Pharmacy, located on Lanjing Street, is part of a corner row of two-story Japanese-era townhouses. Today the facade has been restored, including the round windows and curved balcony on the second floor of the corner house, and the board-and-batten wood siding has been repainted. It inspires people to think back to the glory days of the past.

Dayi Store, a candy shop on Zhongzheng Road, is a structure that once featured in a painting by Chiayi-born artist Chen Cheng-po (1895–1947). As we chat with the owner inside the shop, he points to a photo of Chen’s painting hanging on the wall and says: “That is this building.” Chen Cheng-che adds: “The best part of this structure is its gable wall, but it was unfortunately covered up by ugly corrugated steel.” He describes “removing the makeup” from old buildings as being like discovering a Marvel Easter Egg: every building that is uncovered is full of delightful surprises. For example, many houses have an exterior finish that looks like washed terrazzo, so at first glance one would conclude that they are built of brick or reinforced concrete, but when you remove the exterior they turn out to be constructed entirely of wood. Chen classifies these as “false fronted” structures, and this building technique is a reminder of the golden age of wooden buildings in Chiayi.

In fact, restoring houses can sometimes even restore family relations. The owners of one pair of adjacent wooden townhouses had set up separate households in the previous generation, and although the heads of these neighboring families were obviously brothers, they were no longer communicating with one another. But because their houses are connected, there were many matters that both had to deal with, and Chen Cheng-che thereby became a bridge for communication.

When a building’s original facade is laid bare, neighbors often come out to talk about the appearance of the old structures back in the day. Getting people to see and discuss the old buildings gives the buildings a chance to survive into the future.

Listening to these slowly emerging stories about old wooden buildings and the history of the timber industry, it seems to me that the itinerary for your next trip to Chiayi is already set!

Why not come to Chiayi and see its charm for yourself.