Mixing old and new
By the end of World War II, however, Dadaocheng’s port on the Danshui had been destroyed by bombing and the area’s days of glory were never to return. Once-luxurious houses took on a desolate air amidst the deserted streets. It was only in the 1980s and 1990s that things began to change. Both government and citizens grew more conscious about preservation, and the city began offering incentives for residents to maintain old houses. The city also launched the revitalization of the Chinese New Year Products Market, and the renovation and re-use of old buildings, bringing back some of the vitality of the old days.
Places with stories to tell will always attract people to tell them. Hsu Yi-hung, a PhD student in architecture at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who personally hand-drew and published A Cultural Map of Dadaocheng, says: “In the past tourists and young people didn’t come here, and it was always dark and moribund.” But, he observes, since 2011 a number of enterprises like ArtYard have moved in, and the area has steadily brightened up. Hsu remarks: “It’s very important that young people get a chance to appreciate the aesthetics of old architecture; this is the only way they will treat their own past as important.”
The categories which ArtYard has incorporated into its business model include teahouse, coffee shop, ceramics and porcelain shop, cloth merchant, bookstore, fruit vendor, handicrafts mart, and small-scale live theater. Jou Yi-cheng remarks: “When I started out I specifically wanted five lines of business that have long traditions in this area—tea, cloth, farm products (including Chinese herbal medicine), live theater, and architecture. We don’t have any type of business in the ArtYard family that has not had a presence in Dadaocheng over the last 150 years.”
The energy in this neighborhood, with a cityscape combining traditional firms with new creative and cultural shops, is palpable. It has become so well received, in fact, that some second-generation heirs to old businesses have decided to return to take up the baton and keep their companies up and running. On our visit to the area we saw old firms selling things like rattan furniture or farm and gardening implements that had—as a result of the inspiration provided by the newcomers—revamped their layouts and lighting to make their stores more welcoming and more accessible for idle browsing. Now they are proving attractive to the many day-trippers and tourists who make up the passing foot traffic, and are especially popular with foreigners, because these are unique places of the kind that they can see only in Taiwan.
Hsu Yi-hung, author of a book on Taipei under Japanese colonial rule, has also produced the hand-drawn A Cultural Map of Dadaocheng, an extremely popular guide to the cultural and historical sights of the neighborhood. (photo by Yeh I-chun)