In 2006, Jeffrey Lin was working for a TV station as a planner for Fun Taiwan, a program filmed in different locations around Taiwan, and his footsteps had passed through practically every town on the island. When gazing upon the vistas of other towns, Lin, who had left his home in San­xia after high school, would often think of home.

Mei Sheng Tang, a soap company founded in the 1940s by Lin’s grandfather, was a family business for many decades. Later, following the rise of shower gels, the soap-making industry had steadily declined, and the factory was facing closure. Having been working away from home, Lin decided to return to San­xia and give new life to the old firm.

Publishing a newsletter, holding art seminars, and hosting concerts of local singers, Can has become a well-known cultural gathering spot in Sanxia.

Lin called together four friends who each invested NT$200,000, founding Cha Shan Fang, whose chief product is a natural green-tea soap. Lin was in charge of planning and brand marketing, while his brother was responsible for managing the factory and controlling the manufacturing process.

After taking over his grandfather’s soap company, which had been in business for five decades, Lin started thinking about what comprises the culture of his grandfather’s generation. The image of elderly vendors toting shoulder poles in the streets to support their families, calling out their wares, came into his mind. This is a memory from the lives of people of his grandfather’s generation. When shaping his brand image, Lin placed a picture of a shoulder pole on the ad.

After returning to San­xia, Lin combed through the town’s history with his own observations and the help of a local cultural and historical group, trying to trace San­xia’s lost culture and artistry.

Thanks to the efforts of local antiquarians, San­xia has redeveloped its local indigo industry over the last decade. Lin has incorporated Assam indigo (Strobilanthes cusia) into his handmade soap, filling it with a gentle vegetal scent. Indigo fabric is also part of the product’s outer packaging, enhancing the cultural cachet of the product.

Lin brushed up the outside of an old house, adding color. He also led a team of employees at Youmu Elementary School, deep in the mountains, to create a “Loofah Squad” so students can grow their own vegetables.

“Having been away from home for seven years myself, I often feel that young people don’t have the chance to see the problems of their own hometowns when they live elsewhere,” says Lin. After his return, he became reacquainted with San­xia, but he also saw the town’s limitations.

The historic section of Sanxia is the town’s most important­ area for culture and tourism. The centuries-old Zushi Temple sits side by side with novelties like croissant shops, forming a mix of old and new. Since the old streets were restored in 2006, tourists have been flocking here during weekends and holidays, but in Lin’s view, the pristine new facades lack local flavor. So Lin once again exercised his talent for planning; this time, the protagonist of the story is his San­xia itself.

In 2010, Lin decided to leave Cha Shan Fang, which he had built almost on his own, because his management philosophy differed from that of the shareholders. By the river, not far from the old part of town, he rented an old house of nearly 330 square meters, with a large courtyard out front, taking pains to preserve the old structure’s cypress window frames. There, he founded a new business. Based on the concept of a small-scale culture park, he set up a dining space that doubles as a venue for craft sales, musical performances, and art exhibitions—a mélange of trendy and retro.

Lin gave the brand the Chinese name gan le (“sweet joy”), hoping to make the experience sweet and enjoyable. The pronunciation in Taiwanese sounds like “spinning top,” a cultural icon of San­xia. The English name is “Can,” expressing the idea of accomplishment.

Lin is constantly coming up with ideas. Between the time the inaugural firecrackers were lit and the time the last one exploded, he came up with the idea of making red envelopes with leftover shreds of firecracker paper and handmade paper from the Guang­xing Paper Mill. The resulting envelope design is full of cultural flair. Auspicious woodblock characters are printed on it, embellished with red lines, expressing good luck for the coming year. In this unique, culture-imbued product, folk belief meets environmentalism.

To give San­xia’s temple fair culture greater allure, Lin, a pious Mazu devotee, pressed for the Mazu statue from Bei­gang’s Chao­tian Temple to be brought to Sanxia for a procession. It was a major local event that heightened Can’s renown.

Lin brushed up the outside of an old house, adding color. He also led a team of employees at Youmu Elementary School, deep in the mountains, to create a “Loofah Squad” so students can grow their own vegetables.

After Can was up and running, Lin decided to publish a newsletter, becoming editor in chief of Can Culture Art and Nature.

In September 2010, Lin published the first of 14 issues (so far) of Can Culture Art and Nature. It is now a bimonthly, with 4,000 copies distributed per issue. The theme of the latest edition is “tools for making a living,” covering traditional yarns used for facial threading as well as jelly cutting tools used by grass jelly shops.

Lin’s concerns about his hometown extend to the environment. In the second week of each month, Can appeals to young people from San­xia and elsewhere to clean up the local river. The first activity they held, nearly 100 young people showed up; this touched Lin deeply.

After Lin’s parents divorced when he was a kid, he grew up in a single-parent household. Brought up mainly by his grandfather, Lin understands the plight of disadvantaged children. After returning to San­xia six years ago, he called employees and friends together to create a loofah garden at ­Youmu Elementary School in a remote mountainous region of San­xia, and formed a “Loofah Squad” of schoolchildren so they can learn about the value of fostering life through farming. And the profits from the sales of loofah grown by the Loofah Squad go to the children themselves.

Lin hopes that his efforts since his return to San­xia—building the Cha Shan Fang brand, establishing the Loofah Squad, appealing to youth to clean up the river, and so forth—will encourage local people to become champions for this community’s future, taking the torch to convey San­xia’s local culture.

After two years in business, Can has risen from its initial negative revenues to breaking even at the end of 2012. On this stone-paved street, Can’s sign is not especially noticeable, and Lin, having brought new ideas to San­xia, has not thought about whether he is able to change the thinking of the older generations.

“You have to actually do something before people will support you, and once things are on a firm footing you will naturally get recognition,” says Lin.

If you ask Lin what changes there have been in San­xia, he says that we must be patient. If you press forward one step at a time, you’ll eventually see what wonderful things a locality is capable of.