Five Cent Driftwood House:Hsieh Li-hsiang's Fantasy World

In Taipei's Neihu District, an odd-looking building draws the gaze of commuting motorists. Standing at the base of the 1650-square-meter building, one sees gargantuan helical columns climbing upward three stories toward two spiral-adorned conical roofs, upon each of which is mounted an abstract female figure. One must observe from a distance to make out the full structure of the building: two long-haired dancers with billowing skirts.

At night, points of atmospheric lighting make this four-story building appear even more bizarre. Young trend-seekers made special trips here thinking it was a newly opened dance club, but upon walking into the sloped, winding entrance and arriving at the counter on the second floor, they discovered it to be a restaurant. The interior fittings are even more exaggerated and fanciful than on the outside: long hair of sculpted clay flowing downwards naturally from the ceilings envelops the entire building like moonlight; beneath it, a two-story tall iron sculpture of a woman looks down upon a shallow fishpond on the first floor like Mother Earth bursting forth with compassion for all of creation.

After paying the bill, diners enjoy taking the open staircase to tour the building floor by floor and see the antiques and sculptures placed arbitrarily about. The earthenware images of wildly dancing women, the iron sculpture of a female hair dancer, flowers and waving hair sculpted from clay, and feminine figures slapped together out of old wood and branches kindle passionate exchanges, as if in the gallery of a famous artist. Some may assume that the artworks filling the restaurant are the creations of several artists working together. In fact, the pieces large and small--including even the earthenware crockery offered to patrons--are the work of Hsieh's hands.

For Hsieh, who has few material needs, creating is the most important thing in her life. It is the wellspring that nourishes her.

A colorful umbrella skirt

With no college background in art, Hsieh was once unaware of her inborn artistic sense. But when she started creating she was awakened to her own potential, finding that she could see female forms in pieces of driftwood longing for someone to carve them out, or could place building materials and artworks in ideal positions without measurement or planning.

Her family was poor and had other priorities, so they paid little attention to her childhood love of painting. She has an indelible memory of her mother sewing her a short, colorful skirt out of pieces of cloth from old umbrellas; she gazed elatedly at this beautiful skirt for ages. This was perhaps the key that unlocked her creativity.

When Hsieh was in elementary school, she chose to record her daily life in drawings in a journal that she handed in to her teacher each day. Her teacher thus discovered her artistic gift. By the time she completed junior high school, she had been the perpetual top choice to represent her class in painting contests. But, growing up in the countryside of Tainan County, she had no opportunity to enter a big city art school.

On graduating from junior high, Hsieh bade adieu to school life, concluding her brief engagement with art. After that she whiled away much of her time in her hometown, just hoping for a good husband with whom to raise children and live the life expected of a woman. Until 15 years ago, that is, when, aged 27, she reentered the field of art creation with a major project that most people would not think of taking on--building two houses. Although this action became the butt of villagers' jokes, the houses, enclosed by walls made of shells and red bricks, nevertheless became the most eye-catching structures in the village. She thus developed an interest that fueled her long-hidden creativity.

Hsieh repeatedly astounds visitors with her natural creativity. Even the restrooms (third picture from top) are adorned with her hand-made sculptures of faces.

Building homes by hand

The year she built the houses was the darkest time in Hsieh's life. She had no fixed address due to her husband's unstable career, and when she wanted to bring her family back to her hometown of Chinsha Village in Tainan, they had no place to stay, only a plot of ancestral land given to her by her mother. Unwilling to succumb to this predicament, she resolved to build houses for herself and her parents.

Hsieh's father worked in the cement industry, but even the combined savings of her entire family was not enough to build two houses. To save money, instead of hiring an excavator, she and her father dug the foundations themselves, shovelful by shovelful. Then she went to a nearby brickworks to buy batches of misfired, deformed bricks at low prices, and she and her mother spent several weeks selecting usable ones. With a hammer, she then knocked them into geometric forms that fit the shape of the wall and applied mortar mixed by her father. The three of them built the four walls brick by brick under the harsh sun of southern Taiwan.

The seemingly simple wall construction took them a whole year to finish. Hsieh spent two months alone shaping the bricks, and due to their poor water they had to wait for the mortar to dry and fuse to one course of bricks before they could lay the next. At first, several areas built by the inexperienced Hsieh collapsed, and her unexpected pregnancy further slowed the construction process.

Once the exterior walls were erected, it was up to a professional to build the roofs. But the walls of these two houses were slightly curved, not having been professionally built. Master carpenters, despite lifelong experience, did not know how to accommodate and build the framework. The first two carpenters she approached shook their heads in refusal. Only after Hsieh made a rough model out of toothpicks and polystyrene foam did the third carpenter clearly understand her proposal, and thus it could finally be completed.

The house was essentially done; however, the all-important living and dining areas lacked tables and chairs. Hsieh thought, why not just build them out of stacked driftwood and stone? Using her imagination, she fashioned a half-arc of driftwood following the curvature of the walls, and also made a curved table. It was as if she had returned to her childhood, playfully taking sweet potatoes her mother was preparing to cook and carving them into telephones, chairs and other household items with a small knife; only this time she was making real household items for the family.

Hsieh repeatedly astounds visitors with her natural creativity. Even the restrooms (third picture from top) are adorned with her hand-made sculptures of faces.

The first Driftwood House

After the houses were done and Hsieh's dream of homebuilding had come to fruition, she nevertheless felt a sense of loss: she had suddenly lost a goal in her life. To rekindle the zest for life that she had had while building the houses, the petite yet tough Hsieh donned a farmer's hat and rain boots and drove a truck to Tsengwen Reservoir to gather driftwood and large slabs of stone, oblivious to the freckles that the sun burned onto her face and the bruises on her shoulders--just so that one day she could continue her dream of building houses. She waited seven years for that day to come.

During the wait, she was unable to suppress her desire to create. She found a pottery shop where she served as an unpaid apprentice. The boss admired her talent and after two years asked her to start working for him regularly, punching the time clock. But she could not abide such constraints in her life and never went back. As luck would have it, a friend lent her the money to buy a gas kiln so that she could continue her creative endeavors. And when she felt the time was ripe for building again, the pottery shop owner offered her a vacant lot with the condition that she would build him an art showroom.

The first Five Cent Driftwood House restaurant came into being in Paiho, Tainan County. To make her dream of building come true, Hsieh took out a NT$2 million loan from a farmers' cooperative by mortgaging her father's farmland, but it was only enough to build half a house. She reluctantly pooled together the other NT$2 million from friends and family, and at long last finished.

Without ads or fanfare, Five Cent Driftwood House opened the day after Chinese New Year, 2000. Carload after carload of passing travelers soon packed the 230-square-meter restaurant to capacity. They were all drawn by the unique outward appearance and the rustic, old-fashioned flavor permeating the interior of this "strange" restaurant. The rich scene of French windows facing a tree-lined pond was particularly admirable. Even with the staff running around frantically and the orders arriving slowly, the diners were still willing to sit there, soaking in the scene while they waited.

Hsieh repeatedly astounds visitors with her natural creativity. Even the restrooms (third picture from top) are adorned with her hand-made sculptures of faces.

A turn for the worse

Every weekend thereafter, Five Cent Driftwood House was crammed with diners who came to experience the ambience, overwhelming Hsieh, who had not wanted to open a restaurant but only to satisfy her urge to build. She also never imagined that her thriving business would invite disaster. An overseas Chinese couple offered to help Hsieh open another branch. However, the couple suddenly turned on her, secretly informing the authorities that Five Cent Driftwood House was illegally occupying land zoned for farming. The couple thought that if they got the old restaurant closed down, they could open a new restaurant, soliciting existing clientele, and also purchase existing building materials from Hsieh at a low price, thus killing two birds with one stone.

To Hsieh, who was unfamiliar with construction and business codes, building this restaurant was at first just a dream. But now she was faced with the prospects of having her illegal building torn down without being able to pay back her loans or proceed with new building projects. Even harder to bear was her loss of faith in human nature.

Just as she was hurtling toward this precipice in her life, in the nick of time providence intervened in the form of Chen Wei-i. Chen was able to see Hsieh's creative genius with the sharp eye of an art broker, and volunteered to help her solve this problem and fulfill her dream. Thus began the collaboration between these two, one taking on the task of fundraising, the other immersing herself in creative work. The second and third Five Cent Driftwood House branches were built thereafter, enabling more people to admire Hsieh's fantasy world.

A woman driven to create

In 2001, the second Five Cent Driftwood House took root in Chiayi, attracting substantial media coverage and making Hsieh into a public figure. What surprised the media was that this brick structure, with even more original sculptures and levels of space, looked as if it had been built by a master architect. But it had in fact been built by a woman who had no knowledge of architecture, with no blueprints or careful measurements, all relying on her bountiful imagination, plus some simple models so that the craftsmen on the site could finish it step by step.

Not only did this heretofore-unseen building technique astound legitimate builders, but some architects who heard about the building greatly admired her understanding of architecture. The media dubbed her a "self-taught architect," and some even compared her to the Spanish architectural genius Antoni Gaudi. Not knowing who Gaudi was, Hsieh learned from a book lent to her by a journalist of a world on the other side of the globe that seemed entirely familiar to her.

Hsieh says that she does not build for the sake of architecture or even for the sake of opening restaurants, but because she is compelled by her creative drive and has no choice but to keep building.

"I never know when I'm going to be inspired. It's just that when the images in my mind become clear, I want to make them real in the shortest possible time." Her inspiration was at its most copious when she was building the second Five Cent Driftwood House. When the Chiayi branch was newly completed, she hastily sought out a suitable spot in Tainan for her third restaurant. When the construction plans for the new building were finalized, she set her sights on a lakeside orchard in the city of Hsinying, not far from Tainan.

Chen Wei-i, in charge of fundraising, did not approve of such a rash building plan, but he could not dissuade Hsieh from her fervor and was obliged to stand together with her. After the funds were secured, Hsieh started shuttling between the three sites daily, just like a busy mother attending to each of her hungry children.

Self-taught architect Hsieh Li-hsiang, known as "Taiwan's Gaudi," has added two towering, surrealistic dancing women to Taipei's urban landscape, the product of her unrestrained, original architectural ideas.

Grander dreams

Currently there are only four Five Cent Driftwood House restaurants in existence, each one richer and more varied than the last, in pace with Hsieh's growing architectural maturity. The demolished first and second restaurants had retained the down-to-earth feel from the time Hsieh built her own house, constructed with raw building materials, and the space amongst the black brick and driftwood framework had conveyed an idyllic sense of communion with the countryside and nature.

The gradual addition of her handmade carvings enhanced the depth and variety of the space in her third and later restaurants; still, the space that needed interpretation was also bigger. From the 33 square meters of the Tainan restaurant to the 4600 square meters of the Neihu branch, these restaurants allowed Hsieh to indulge herself creatively, but also exhausted her strength.

When creating the Taipei restaurant, the two immense sculptures on the exterior had to be pieced together at one go, with the final act being the placement of the sculpted heads. Two cranes and six workers were mobilized, and several hours of a cold, rainy day were spent adjusting the positions before they could be mounted properly. Halfway through, the heads even tumbled to the ground. This dismayed Hsieh so much that she let out a scream tht scared the workers half to death. Each time a project is completed, she thinks, "This is the last one. I won't do this anymore!" But when she is hit by a flash of inspiration, she will pack her bags again and journey in search of the ideal building site pictured in her mind's eye.

In the Taipei branch of Five Cent Driftwood House, located in Neihu, Hsieh single-handedly built a sculpted landscape four stories high, bringing this space made of inanimate wood and stone to life with flowing light and shadow.

The female body, meditation, dance

Of the two branches of Five Cent Driftwood House that are most striking, one is built in an orchard: the Hsinying branch's exterior walls are entwined with rhythmic lines like the tentacles of an octopus, while inside, a latticed wall of glass beads and shells gives a delightful appearance to the simple structure. Logs unmarred by chisel marks and a mango tree left where it was planted form the main structure of the two-story building. Large translucent glass curtains give the impression of coherence with the surrounding forest, giving the patrons an anarchic sense of being in a forest despite being in a restaurant.

Large clay sculptures began to appear at the Taichung branch, known to locals as the "mud dream-house." Above the entrance, four young girls, hand in hand, gaze down on the guests, and within the restaurant is a corridor formed by an arched concrete wall, conveying the distinctive style of a grotto, a departure from typical restaurant layouts. Two female clay statues extending from the wall to the ceiling, a floral relief, and the numerous clay sculptures of women hanging on the wall give visitors to Five Cent Driftwood House the feeling that one is stepping into an art gallery.

The worlds Hsieh creates never stray far from the female body, for that is the theme she is most familiar with.

"Innate in women are abundant body language and curves. This is a theme I can never stop creating on." Careful observation of these feminine sculptures reveals a lack of distinct facial features; there is only a sense of motion from the long, curly hair and the unusual postures of these sculptures. These come from the notes Hsieh takes when in meditation and dance.

"Meditation and dance are the driving forces behind my inspiration," says Hsieh. She acknowledges that she is a "lazy" person, unassuming in everything she does. Despite her devotion to her three children, she chose to leave them in the care of her parents, while she immersed herself in a spiritual world that others may find incomprehensible. When she is alone, she prefers spending the whole day relaxing in deep thought or making up her own dance rhythms to music, doing nothing formal, but simply letting her creative juices flow.

Another element commonly found in her work is the patterns of the natural world. Whether it's logs, shells, totems or what-have-you, Hsieh is able to freely make use of them, allowing each work and region of space to be infused with the peace and joy of communion with nature, so much so that some suspect that she is of Aboriginal descent.

Hoping to harmonize gentle feminine curves with the hard structure of the building, Hsieh has placed sculptures of female forms throughout the restaurant. This is a view inside the Tainan restaurant.

Awaiting a resurgence

Stressing that she has no Aboriginal background, Hsieh is obliged to mention her happy childhood when explaining her creative development. Born in 1964, she grew up in an impoverished rural village, at one with the fertile orchards in her back yard. She would pluck fruit from a tree when hungry or tie together a crude treehouse to make a temporary sanctuary. When she was tired of playing, she would rest in a tire swing and wait for her busy but contented parents to come home at the end of the day and call her in for dinner.

"Now when I feel dejected, I run back to nature to seek comfort. Even a brief nap under a tree does wonders." Admitting she is scared to face crowds, Hsieh rarely appears at her restaurants unless necessary, instead going to spend time alone at "Woman's Island" to rest or paint. The country house she calls Woman's Island is located in an undeveloped area in rural Chiayi County. After her first sight of this scene lush with mountains and streams, she decided to buy it and turn it into a haven for nurturing her creative inspiration.

Building the Neihu branch of Five Cent Driftwood House exhausted Hsieh's energy and maxed out Chen Wei-i's credit, costing nearly NT$200 million in total. But this colossal creation received an indifferent treatment from Taipei's consumers and the media. "I may have overestimated city folk's curiosity," says Chen.

The financial straits forced Hsieh to take a break from her creative work. "I still have a strong creative impulse, and I've already finished sketching the layout of the next Five Cent Driftwood House. It will be even bigger, propped up by four wildly dancing women, with even more statues and other ideas," Hsieh reveals. Several businesspeople who like her work have expressed a willingness to back her, allowing her to hold fast to her creative dreams. She will never give up, no matter how long she has to wait.

Hsieh purchased a plot of land from a farmer to build a creative haven for herself--"Woman's Island." Countless pieces of driftwood flow by from a reservoir upstream, providing fine raw material for her projects.

Five Cent Driftwood House is in these locations:Taipei branch	Women and primitive dance	(02) 8501-1472Taichung branch	Amazing urban utopia		(04) 2254-5678Tainan branch	Sojourn amongst trees and birds	(06) 299-3321Hsinying branch	Wooded lakeside wilderness	(06) 659-2182

Hsieh repeatedly astounds visitors with her natural creativity. Even the restrooms (third picture from top) are adorned with her hand-made sculptures of faces.

This sculpture made of cement mounted on driftwood exudes an unexpected elegance, and is Hsieh's favorite piece. It can be seen in the Five Cent Driftwood House in Taichung.