Navigating Tainan’s Soundscapes

We arrive in Tainan one sunny day in early summer. Our first stop is Zaifahao, a local eatery specializing in zongzi rice dumplings, established 150 years ago. It has just opened for the day’s business, and we are warmly greeted by the staff: “Is it too hot in here? Shall I turn the fans on?” The owner hails an old customer from a distance: “Two dumplings as usual, is it? No sauce?”

Savoring the delectable dumplings while listening to the gurgling water of the small fountain outside the eatery, we feel that the heat has subsided. The friendly dialogues between staff and customers capture that distinctive human touch which characterizes Tainan’s street food culture.

Sounds in a traditional market—friendly chats, vendors’ cries, and seasonal produce being chopped—offer vivid vignettes of people’s daily lives.

Listening to everyday life

Meandering around the West Central District of Tainan, Taiwan’s erstwhile capital, you will come across any number of century-old buildings and shops like Zaifahao. It was Tainan’s rich culture and history, its unique character and everyday life, and its flourishing industries that first led Noel Yang, director of ViVo, to focus on the place in his doctoral project on soundscapes.

ViVo’s mission is to collect sounds, as well as studying local culture and history. By examining auditory experience in the context of ordinary public spaces like streets and lanes, Yang has also crafted mini acoustic tours.

For example, if we walk a few steps eastward along Minquan Road from Zaifahao, we will arrive at Beiji Temple. During this short journey, Yang always invites his guests to observe the gentle upward slope. “We’re going to climb a mountain,” he quips.

It turns out that the rear hall of the temple occupies the highest point of Tainan’s Old Town: the place was called Jiuling (“Eagle Hill”) in days of yore. The best way to feel the varied topographical contours here is to keep our “ears” peeled. As soon as we leave behind the shopfront arcades and ascend the steps that lead into the temple, the bustle of the street begins to fade. The traditional music emanating from the heart of the temple makes us feel calm. Eventually, as we continue to ascend toward the rear of the temple, the din of the city is shut out completely. In front of a plaque dated “the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Jiaqing” (1810) and inscribed “Jiuling,” we close our eyes to listen to the wind swishing past, and the water trickling in a pond nearby. Yang compares this liberating experience to gaining a panoramic view on a mountaintop: here the line between the past and the present is blurred, and we conjure up visions of our predecessors setting foot on this very spot centuries ago.

Located in historic Jiuling, Beiji Temple shuts out the din of the city and gives us a feeling of liberation, as if standing on a mountaintop.

A brush with the past

Near Beiji Temple, and also within the confines of historic Jiuling, are the restaurant Uguisu Ryori and Tiangong Temple. The former dates back to the Japanese colonial period, opening its doors in 1912 as a high-end eatery. Now run by another of Tainan’s old establishments—Asha’s Restaurant—Uguisu has retained its Japanese garden and architecture. Yang tells us that sounds such as enka music and the creaking of the wooden floor confer a Japanese vibe on Uguisu.

Only a few steps away from Uguisu, we come to Tiangong Temple, completed in 1855 as an “Altar of Heaven” dedicated to the Jade Emperor. The cries of vendors hawking religious goods waft from adjacent lanes, and we hear whips striking the ground during Taoist exorcism rituals—something unique to this temple. Though in close proximity to each other, Uguisu and Tiangong Temple belong to very different eras. No wonder Yang says that the most special thing about Tainan is that we’ll forget the buzz of the modern city as soon as we turn into a lane: there, we’ll find ourselves brushing past several centuries of history.

Noel Yang and his colleagues at ViVo wander the streets of Tainan to explore the cultural charm of the city’s soundscapes.

Sounds as cultural clues

When we try to acquaint ourselves with a certain place, sounds can sometimes deepen our appreciation of it. In Tainan’s Old Town, the Koxinga Shrine and Koxinga Ancestral Shrine are the only temples that have bamboo groves. When giving guided tours in the ancestral shrine, Yang usually begins by inviting his visitors to listen to the wind soughing in the grove. Only after that will he explain what this particular bamboo is: Bambusa multiplex, a favorite of Koxinga’s wife. The shrine’s Japanese-style ablution pavilion also reminds us that Koxinga’s mother was from Japan, shedding more light on the feelings invested in this place.

Thanks to its bamboo grove, the ancestral shrine is graced with different sounds in different seasons. In autumn and winter, the path outside the walls is strewn with bamboo leaves, making a distinctive sound when someone walks on them. “When I hear the crisp crunch of dry leaves coming from a lane, I’ll know that someone is walking around the Koxinga Ancestral Shrine. This is a soundscape peculiar to this place—a so-called ‘sound mark,’” Yang says.

Through sounds, we can gain a profounder insight into a historic site. Rather than merely signifying the present moment, sounds sometimes offer clues to particular contexts in the past.

For example, when recording sounds near Qingshui Temple, Yang was surprised to hear the sounds of water flowing under the ground. He later realized that hidden underneath the tiled path was Fang Creek, which has a long history in Tainan’s Old Town. A plaque hanging on Qingshui Temple—with an inscription that means “crossing over on a precious barge”—echoes this stream.

Legend has it that in the Qing Dynasty, a log of wood shaped like a Buddhist deity was carried here by the creek. Local residents picked it up and made it into a sculpture of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of mercy and compassion. It’s hard to associate this story with the smoothly paved street in front of Qingshui Temple today. But if we walk toward a concrete drain cover inscribed “Shuiliu Guanyin” (“Waterborne Guanyin”), and prick up our ears to listen, the legend will turn into a vividly real experience.

Fang Creek flows by in front of Qingshui Temple in the West Central District of Tainan. Although we can no longer see the creek itself, its sounds remind us of its existence.

ViVo Creative Culture Workshop has collected the sounds of winds soughing in the bamboo grove at the Koxinga Ancestral Shrine.

Shifting soundscapes

Perceiving a city through its sounds, we find that different times of day endow the same soundscapes with different qualities. By day, around some backstreet temples, you may only hear bicycles and scooters swooshing past occasionally, as well as dogs barking in houses, the atmosphere being lazy and tranquil. In the evening, however, when eateries put out tables and chairs on the temple squares, the places come alive, with spatulas clanking against woks and people laughing and chattering. For example, in Tainan, both the Banyan Restaurant outside Zonggan Temple and the Yeh Family Grill outside Magong Temple make the local soundscapes noticeably different at night.

Also in Tainan’s West Central District, the You’ai Street market has a particularly interesting soundscape that changes as the day progresses. In the morning, local residents come here for grocery shopping and friendly chats. As noon approaches, the vendors begin to fry fish and vegetables at their stalls. The sounds of chopping, of broths bubbling, and of oil sizzling add texture to the existing soundscape. In the afternoon, as the traders wrap up their day’s work, the place no longer bustles with excitement. But in the evening, boards are mounted on the stalls to form tables, ornamental lights are installed, and atmospheric music is played—the market metamorphoses into a conglomeration of Japanese-style and other eateries and bars. The ingenuity of the Taiwanese people is embodied in this traditional market.

The tall colonnade of the Tainan Branch of the Land Bank of Taiwan creates a space that acts as a sound box. Standing on the ground below, one’s ears are filled with the sound of birdsong, expressing the vitality of the place.

The Hz Museum

Since its establishment more than seven years ago, ViVo Creative Culture Workshop has held true to its founding philosophy: “Contemporary sounds will be the history of the future.” ViVo maintains a database of collected soundscapes, develops mini acoustic tours in Tainan, and has compiled its research results into the first-ever “exploration book” about Tainan’s soundscapes, simply entitled The Soundscape. Be it temples, historic sites and buildings, characterful street foods, or even vanished watercourses, ViVo uses modern language to interpret Tainan’s soundscapes, offering fresh perspectives on places that are at once familiar and strange to us.

To raise public awareness of soundscapes, Noel Yang has turned his workshop in Tainan’s Blueprint Cultural and Creative Park into the Hz Museum. Visitors are welcome to attend various immersive activities. For example, if we move the crockery on a dining table there equipped with interactive audio devices, we’ll hear the sounds of xiaolongbao being steamed and of stir-frying. Within this 36-square-meter space, we can also make our own acoustic cards and listen to foreign soundscapes collected by ViVo. Showcasing soundscapes in diverse ways, this very special museum won a Golden Pin Design Award in 2020 and was shortlisted for the iF Design Award in 2021.

Yang says with a smile that when he established ViVo he wasn’t sure how long it would last. The more he engages with this endeavor, however, the more enchanted he is by sounds, and the more hopeful he is of opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. “Sounds are a city’s language,” Yang believes. As tourists, paying attention to our sense of hearing can help us appreciate a place in a more intimate way.

Within a 36-square-meter space, the Hz Museum exploits the interdisciplinary possibilities of soundscapes, helping enrich our sensory experience.

ViVo has designed a dining table with interactive audio devices. If we move the crockery on it, we’ll hear sounds reminiscent of the delicious foods of Tainan.

As tourists, we’ll encounter more pleasant surprises if we explore a city’s culture through sounds.