Taipei's Evolving Modernity

Early on the morning of July 21, 1999, the last train pulled out of the old street-level Wanhua Station. The western district it left behind faded away, and in the clothing market on nearby Dali Street, time seemed to come to a halt.

Bangka's Longshan Temple is Taipei's oldest Han Chinese religious center. When processions from other temples pass through Bangka, a stop at Longshan Temple is a must.

The heyday of the Dali Street clothing market was in the 1990s. It filled the area between Juguang Road, Heping West Road, and Huanhe South Road, with one shop opening after the next, and business was booming.

"At its peak, there were 2,000 industry wholesalers," says Hong Wenhe, head of the Bangka Clothing Industry Promotion Society. He makes tea, narrows his eyes in an effort of recollection, and relates the glory of the past.

In those days, so many people would come right before the Lunar New Year that Dali Street would have to be blocked off to traffic. Shop owners would get into fights with each other as they vied for turf.

"In terms of the international market of the time, we won out with low prices, good quality, up-to-date designs, and efficient factories," he says. "You could place an order and pick up the goods the next day."

At the time, Dali Street was the only ready-made clothing wholesale market in the nation. A few years later, eastern Taipei took off and Xinyi District's Wufenpu came onto the clothing wholesale scene. After the Bannan line of the MRT became operational in late 1999, the Dali Street market shrank to an area behind Longshan Temple Station of only 600 stores.

Hong sighs, "Even if the market were right in front of the station, the environment as a whole would still be unrecoverable."

"The structure of the entire world's clothing market has changed. We don't expect to see our wholesale market go back to the way it was, but we hope we can hold it where it is and stop the decline," he says.

The decline of western Taipei wasn't something that happened overnight. Taipei's eastern expansion was set in motion more than 20 years ago.

The "Rainbow Bridge" linking Neihu and Songshan is only open to pedestrians and cyclists. It is an example of the city's aesthetics and livability.

History can be so cruel.

But at the same time, history always has its warmth. In 2000, the Taipei City Government put forward its revitalization plan for the Wanhua and Datong districts. Thanks to subsequent mayors Ma Ying-jeou and Hau Lung-pin, the face of western Taipei is quite different than it was 20 years ago. Sections of town that were on the decline regained their vitality.

In the city government's blueprint for future development of the western parts of the city, commercial areas east of the Danshui River like Wanhua and Datong as well as areas around historic buildings have been designated as pedestrian areas. This forms a single strip of activity in the hopes that that will carry over into the historic areas and revitalize them.

Spatially, this strip strings together Bangka's Longshan Temple, the clothing market, Bopiliao, Qingshui Zushi Temple, the Ximen shopping area, Zhongshan Hall, Dadaocheng Wharf, Dihua Street, Dalongdong's Bao'an Temple, and the Taipei Story House. Temporally, it brings together the Republican, Japanese, and late Qing eras, going all the way back to Taipei's seventeenth-century roots and highlighting the city's old spirit that lies beneath its modern shell.

Dihua Street is Taipei's most intact historic street. It was also the starting point for Dadaocheng.

In the mid-eighteenth century, immigrants from from Jin-jiang, Nan'an, and Hui'an, the "three cities" of Fujian's Quanzhou region, settled in Bangka (which means "small boat" in a Plains Aboriginal language) on the banks of the Danshui River. Two hundred years later, the area became popular once again due to the movie named for it (spelled "Monga").

Immigrants from the three cities established a branch of Jinjiang's Anhai Longshan Temple in Taiwan. They collected funds and built Bangka's Longshan Temple in 1738. It became a local center for both religion and trade.

But struggles over territorial control and business brought immigrants from the three cities into conflict with those from Tong'an, a neighboring district back in Quanzhou. The latter lost out and moved north, taking their religious beliefs with them. They ended up in Dadaocheng.

Since Bangka was located along the banks of the Danshui River, it became Taipei's first important commercial settlement. But later, as the riverbed became clogged with silt, Dadaocheng took its place as the center of activity.

The old-fashioned feel of western Taipei comes from the historic buildings and also the patterns of life left over from long ago. Bopiliao is a good example: the name comes from "bopi," or "peeling bark." Nowadays, people imagine from the name that it once was a marketplace for imported logs from the wharf.

Bopiliao features Taipei's oldest remaining Qing-era streets. After renovations from 2003 to 2007, the streets' original facades were preserved. Lin Dawei, a young expert on historic buildings who took part in the reconstruction, says that Bopiliao's buildings are not fancy. Rather, they reflect the average person.

What is now the intersection of Guangzhou Street and Kangding Road was once Bopiliao's coal market. Tricycle rickshaw drivers gathered there to chat and take a rest. If they were thirsty, they could go to the nearby Xiuying Teahouse to have some cool tea. After it was restored, one part of Bopiliao was made into the Heritage and Culture Education Center, and another was made a design gallery. On weekends and holidays, these are favorites of younger visitors. But at the same time, the old streets seemed to slip further from the pulse of locals' lives after the reconstruction.

"It's out of character!" Mr. Guo, a volunteer guide to historic buildings in Dalongdong who grew up in Bangka, describes the ill fit between the "new" Bopiliao and old Bangka.

Gao Chuanqi, a local antiquarian, admits that the Bopiliao historical and cultural area has raised Bangka's visibility and drummed up locals' self-confidence and sense of identity. But at the same time, he says, with the designer feel of Bopiliao it's hard to bring back the feel of everyday life in the old days. He recommends that local specialties like Chinese herbal tea and massage be brought into Bopiliao to give people the feeling that it is more connected to their contemporary lives.

The Taipei Story House on Zhongshan North Road was built in 1914 and was originally known as Yuanshan Villa. The building, in a style that is a cross between Tudor and 19th-century neoclassical, was one of Taipei's first luxury homes. It was owned by the Dadaocheng merchant Chen Chaojun.

Dadaocheng's historic streets are another example of preserved and revitalized cultural resources in western Taipei. Dihua Street, famed for its shops selling traditional foods, Chinese medicine, and cloth, has come to be called "Lunar New Year Street" in recent years, as the city government has held New Year celebrations and organized street stall rentals there.

But it's not just around Lunar New Year time that Dihua Street becomes bustling. Through a system called floor area ratio shifting, landowners give the rights to their properties to the city in exchange for floor-area credits in other developments. This has kept the majority of old houses preserved. As of August 2011, 28 Dihua Street structures had been registered as historic buildings.

After retrocession, many rich businessmen built luxurious homes on Dihua Street. The residences of many famous Taiwanese captains of industry are found on this short stretch. On the northern section from Guisui Street to Taipei Bridge is mostly Qing-era buildings in the Southern Min style, characterized by their slanted red roofs, wooden doors and windows, and their arcaded walkways. Buildings on the central and southern sections starting at Nanjing West Road are mostly baroque or modern, Western style.

In the 1970s, when historic buildings lacked legal protections, a plan to widen Dihua Street raised protests in the academic community. An "I Love Dihua Street" campaign begun by writers and local residents in 1988 called for the preservation of the historic settlement, and the old street has been preserved through to the present day. Now the question is, how can it be brought to life?

Ding Yun-chyurn, commissioner of the city government's Department of Urban Development, says that there are now three "urban regeneration stations" in Dihua Street buildings. One is provided to young designers to work out of, one is the Dadaocheng story workshop, and the third is the Dadaocheng Academie Urbaine.

A similar re-appropriation of cultural resources is taking place in Ximending's Red House.

The Japanese governed Taiwan with a view to modernization. When they arrived in 1895, the chaotic traditional market streets created many headaches for them. In 1908, they accordingly built a brick building that was an octagonal structure in front connected to a cruciform structure in the back. It was Taiwan's first public indoor market, and later it became Ximending's Red House.

Through the Red House, Japanese living in Taiwan could soothe their homesickness. The market there sold Japanese sweets, dry goods, fried foods, and other tastes of home.

Additionally, the Japanese brought Western-style leisure to Taipei by building movie theaters. After retrocession, Taipei people kept the habit of going to Ximending to see movies, and the Red House became the Red House Theater in 1963. It closed down in 1997.

In 2002, the city government provided a concession to the Paper Windmill Foundation to run the Red House, and invested a large sum in renovating it and transforming it into a performance space. In September 2007, the Taipei Culture Foundation took over, restyling the area. In addition to the theater, it also put in a teahouse, a shopping area, and a crafts market, expanding the overlap between culture new and old, the cutting edge and the familiar.

Through the ages, Ximen-ding has remained the place to go to see movies and catch up with the latest stars. The Central Motion Pictures Corporation's first color production Oyster Girl premiered there in 1964. Now fans contend to catch a glimpse of their favorite idols.

The Taipei City Government's latest plan to shift the axis of the city is to give old western Taipei a modern landscape-the Gate of Taipei, designed to be built in the area around Taipei Station. The integrated transportation hub below this pair of skyscrapers, one 74 floors tall and the other 56 floors, will bring together the "six lines" (TRA, HSR, the airport MRT, and three city MRT lines) as well as long-distance buses. Projected to be finished by 2016 at the earliest, it will replace the Shin Kong Life Tower as western Taipei's new landmark.

According to the designers, as soon as all of the transportation systems are linked up beneath the Gate of Taipei, land between Taipei Station, Civic Boulevard, and the Danshui River will be freed up. It will link to Ximending to the west and Dadaocheng to the north, and the run-down appearance of western Taipei will be improved.

With the Gate of Taipei as a center, the city's planned new western section will have museums, a wharf, and bike paths in addition to the old streets and historic buildings. Also, the Gate of Taipei will be Taipei residents' new "door to the world": you'll be able to check in for flights, check your baggage, and change money all right there.

The Gate of Taipei, which is still in the "invitation to tender" stage, looks set to ignite a bidding war in western Taipei real estate and pull up property values in surrounding areas.

However, architecture scholars remind us that when residents invest in real estate, they take the side of developers and look for profits. That can put a stranglehold on the city's imagination.

Swinging between the old and the new, western Taipei's development has limits but it's full of potential. Looking at western Taipei's past on the occasion of the centennial, there's cause to be hopeful about its future.

The Taiwan Governor-General's Office (right) was once Taipei's tallest building, an honor now held by Taipei 101 (left, building at center background). The shift symbolizes the city's transformation from a purely political center to one of business.

Through the ages, Ximen-ding has remained the place to go to see movies and catch up with the latest stars. The Central Motion Pictures Corporation's first color production Oyster Girl premiered there in 1964. Now fans contend to catch a glimpse of their favorite idols.

Bangka's Longshan Temple is Taipei's oldest Han Chinese religious center. When processions from other temples pass through Bangka, a stop at Longshan Temple is a must.