The unwanted carnival
The Dream Parade has been getting bigger and bigger in recent years, with the 2020 edition being particularly spectacular. Twenty years ago, though, the scene was quite the opposite.
Back then, Tsai and a few residents of Dream Community had to rely on a little liquid courage to even head out, their heads hanging low, masks over their faces to avoid having to meet people’s gazes as they pushed their carts around. And they had to handle a tire blowout along the way. Even the residents taking part would shamefully shout out, “This is so embarrassing!”
It all went back to one midsummer night, when Tsai and his family held a meeting that would turn out to be decisive. They set up Songyuan Construction (later to become Dream Development) and began planning the first phase of Dream Community, a task that Tsai quit his work in advertising to dedicate himself to.
When homes in the community began to go up for sale, Xizhi was struggling with flooding issues, and so prospective buyers would often ask while visiting whether the homes came with their own lifeboats. Residents of Dream Community I and II were mostly first-time buyers who couldn’t afford to live in Taipei City. When floods hit Xizhi, they would either have to leave temporarily or would move out completely.
Despite the outside world not looking positively on his project, the tenacious Tsai was determined to prove that Xizhi could be a place for good homes. To that end, he began working on organizing hiking tours and cultural exchanges in the community, along with setting up music, dance, and cooking clubs, helping it gradually develop a life of its own.
Gordon Tsai has created his own dream community, where apartments have been in high demand for many years.