Street Porticos and the Shops Behind Them

In the cities of ancient China, up until the Tang Dynasty (618–907) the imperial rules for urban planning required residential zones to be strictly separated from areas where commercial activities were permitted. During the subsequent Song Dynasty (960–1279) this separation was relaxed, and from the year 1120 onward shophouses, which can be used for both residential and commercial purposes, began to appear in cities in the Fujian and Guangdong regions of China’s southeastern seaboard.

In contrast with the spaciousness of traditional courtyard structures, shophouses are long and very narrow. The front of a shophouse is typically just a single bay width, but that never kept anyone from making masterful use of the interior space. At the front, one or two shops face the street, ready to welcome customers or take deliveries of goods. Further inside, beyond an inner courtyard, two other structures provide living quarters. Along the edge of the courtyard there is always a passageway that can do double duty as a kitchen and a storage space.

Lee Tung-ming, who has published numerous ­studies on Taiwanese shophouses, argues that after people migrated from Fujian and Guangdong to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and elsewhere, it would be more appropriate to refer to these sorts of structures as “architecture of the Chinese diaspora.”

When visiting Dadaocheng, why not take a look at the interiors of some shophouses? You might come across neighboring premises that have been joined together to create “super-sized” courtyards.

Minimalism vs. embellishment

In the commercial districts of the oldest cities of Taiwan, shophouses were usually built along both sides of the streets. The people of those earlier days, not always flush with extra cash, would pool their money to fund the joint construction of cheek-by-jowl shophouses that shared adjoining walls, thus combining to form tightly packed but orderly neighborhoods. Seen from above, a row of these shophouses looked a bit like a wriggly centipede, which was an excellent shape to assume back in the old days, when communities had to rely on themselves fend off thieves and robbers, not to mention violent attacks by armed groups from rival communities.

Early shophouses were built with relatively simple construction methods and materials. Examples include fishscale-like siding tiles hung on the outside of rammed-earth walls to protect them from the elements, and “urn windows” with window gratings made from stacked urns (found today only in the Lukang area of Changhua County), a decorative way of repurposing damaged or defective ceramics into building materials. Among the Southern-Min-style shophouses that still survive in the Dadaocheng district of Taipei, some were built before the development of facades that hid the fronts of the buildings. These structures typify the very earliest form of the Taiwanese shophouse.

After Taiwan was opened to foreign trade through designated treaty ports in 1858, European and American trading companies, consulates, and warehouses began to be built with colonial verandah-style structures, thus ushering arcaded brick walkways into Taiwan.

As for the vase-shaped balusters used in balustrades or flower stands, “When Taiwanese people back then saw how classy you could make your house look once you engaged in lucrative business with Westerners, they began to imitate Western architectural styles, which led to shophouses with Western-style facades,” says Lee, who notes that Western trading companies had constructed six Western-style buildings in Taipei near what is now the intersection of Nanjing West Road and Tacheng Street, so that the area came to be known as “Six Trading Companies Street.” This was one reason why that same area played a major role in the Westernization of the buildings that housed businesses in Dadaocheng.

The use of stone columns and ballast stones to support the upper floor of a shophouse is typical of how Western architecture was first applied in Taiwan. According to Lee Tung-ming, it is often said there was once a time when it cost about as much to install a stone column as to build the rest of the shophouse.

The Lin Wu-hu family residence, built in 1851, is regarded as the oldest shophouse on Dihua Street in Dadaocheng, and the best preserved Southern-Min-style shophouse still standing today.

Competition through architecture

In the 19th century, Taiwan experienced momentous social and economic change, which brought huge changes in the field of architecture. Apart from Western trading companies, another big force pushing such change was the thinking of many Japanese architects, who introduced architectural concepts from all around the world.

The colonial government of that time introduced technologies for building with bricks and concrete, bringing in new techniques that were applied in notable projects such as the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office, the Taiwan Monopoly Bureau, and the Taipei Guest House. The use of new materials and techniques gave rise to a building style known as “pattern architecture.” It enabled people to build shophouses up to two or three stories high, and remained popular for a long time.

One particularly notable change, brought on by the influence of baroque architecture, was the introduction of decorative peaks atop building facades, in contrast with the simple linear forms of earlier times. The new facades were topped by peaks that took various shapes, including semicircles and pyramids. Nor can we overlook all the new two-story facades, many sporting decorative elements in washed aggregate or in molded stucco formed into motifs such as flowers, tree branches, and leaves. The first-floor street porticos outside the shop doors, meanwhile, were supported by round columns, some of stone in the Greek style, and others built of quarter-circle or one-third-circle radius bricks.

Shophouse facades were a way for businesses to compete with each other and show off their wealth. Among shop owners in the commercial districts of those times, there was a tacit understanding that sellers were not to hawk their goods in a loud voice to passing shoppers. Under those conditions, the intricately crafted shophouse facades seemed to speak a language that was intelligible only among the buildings themselves as they vied to show the world who was the fairest of them all!

Lee Tung-ming notes that when the Japanese authorities formally launched an urban improvement program throughout Taiwan in 1912, they required that shophouses everywhere be renovated in accordance with local ordinances. During urban renewal work in 1919 in the town of Daxi, in today’s Taoyuan City, local authorities built a sewer system and adopted plans to widen streets, which meant that shophouse owners would need to renovate their facades. The black cloths that covered the facades during the renovations were an apt metaphor for the jockeying that was going on between the business owners behind the scenes. In the end, a clear winner emerged—Lan Shi Tea House, operated by the social elites Lü Yingyang and his son Lü Tiezhou. Following the renovation work, the high-­relief figure of an eagle in flight emerged at the peak of their facade, and the building itself incorporated style elements inspired by Matsunosuke Moriyama and Norman Shaw. To this day, countless aficionados still stop by to admire this building.

After the end of World War II, modernism swept the world, triggered by the Bauhaus design movement, and reached the shores of Taiwan. Shophouse facades began to change once again as designers turned away from the ornate styles of the past and took a much more minimalist path. However, the shophouses of this era did not on that account “stop talking.” For example, the modernist facade of the Qianyuan Chinese Medicine Pharmacy features ginseng roots in low relief, an allusion to the type of products sold by the pharmacy. Indeed, the type of business being run there would have been clear to one and all even in those times when not everyone walking down the street was literate.

Intricate decorations and sharply varying lines and curves on facades enable shopping streets to create pleasing skylines.

When modern architecture came into vogue, intricately ornate facade peaks fell out of fashion. Instead, architects began using more low-key methods to make storefronts special. Shown here is the likeness of ginseng roots in low relief around a window in the facade peak above the Qianyuan Chinese Medicine Pharmacy.

Most of the face of this building is decorated with washed aggregate, to which is added molded stucco panels bearing Greek ornamental patterns. It exemplifies Taiwanese architects’ ingenuity in melding Western with traditional Taiwanese architecture.

All about street porticos

As shophouses underwent countless changes over the years, they served as a sort of oversized painter’s canvas that recorded the march of time. Besides the facades discussed above, we would be remiss to let street porticos go unmentioned.

The street portico built on the street side of the first floor of a shophouse is called a tîng-á-kha in Taiwanese or a qilou in Mandarin. It provides pedestrians an excellent place to take cover from the rain.

There were two types of street portico in Qing-­Dynasty Taiwan. One of them—the “bukou” type—was structurally integrated with the shop building, with the first-floor entrance recessed from the street and the overhanging upper floors supported by columns. The other—the “xuanting” type (often seen in harbor districts)—consisted of a row of consecutive pavilions that were structurally independent from the buildings to which they were linked. These pavilions backed up against each other, providing shoppers with shelter against wind and rain along the entire length of the street. Such streets came to be called “streets where you never see the sky” or “bujiantian” streets, i.e. covered shopping streets. One of the best known such streets in Taiwan was located in the city of Lukang.

People have always used street porticos to hang laundry out to dry, to worship the gods on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month, to separate the stems from tealeaves, to sun-dry tealeaves, to display goods for sale, to serve as a temporary staging ground for receiving and dispatching goods, or to serve as a reception area to entertain customers and visitors with tea and snacks.

The urban improvement program carried out by the Japanese authorities put an end to the days when, as it was said at the time, “the three things you never see in Lukang are the sky, the ground, and women.” This was a reference to covered shopping streets that blocked out the sky, walkways that kept people from walking in the mud, and the many local women who had bound feet and so only traveled by palanquin, hidden behind curtains. The improvement program eliminated the “bujiantian” streets and gave birth to the street portico style that sets Taiwan’s shophouse neighborhoods clearly apart from the unstandardized “five-foot way” roofed walkways of Southeast Asia.

Lee Tung-ming has published several books in recent years to help preserve the rich shophouse culture of the Dadaocheng district.

Extended street porticos enable pedestrians to stroll at their leisure even on rainy days, and attract countless shutterbugs to capture the charming scenery on camera.

Taiwan links up with the world

The charm of Taiwan’s shophouses comes not only from a process of historic accumulation. It is also the love child, one might say, of the many different cultures that have met and melded in this land over the years. The shophouses started out in a traditional way back in the Qing Dynasty, picked up all sorts of Western design concepts during the Japanese colonial period, and then moved on to a modernist minimalism in the postwar years. In all of these periods, Taiwan showed itself to be closely in synch with the rest of the world. “In each case,” says Lee Tung-ming, “Taiwan was displaying something totally unique.”

Taipei’s Dadaocheng district is one of the few places where one can find shophouses dating back to every different period of their development. Lee urges anyone who is thinking of taking a stroll there to take their time, carefully observe the details of the street porticos, and get a feel for how the Taiwanese people of different eras borrowed from the latest inter­national styles. And while you’re there, you can enjoy a selection of awesome eats from Taiwan and around the world.

After you’ve eaten your fill and finished your stroll, don’t forget to listen to some stories about the history of the shops. For example, there’s I Yu Trading Company, which started out as a textile manufacturer before re­invent­ing itself as a maker of food products. The decoration on the peak of its facade is a pineapple, seemingly predicting the international fame that the company’s founder Hsieh Cheng-yuan would later bring to Taiwan with his renowned pineapple cakes. And even though the facade of Lian-Hwa Foods Corporation is now only three buildings wide, as compared to five in the company’s heyday, it still preserves the sumptuous splendor of the good times during the Japanese period when the governor-general personally visited the Lian-Hwa dance hall. Animated descriptions such as these seem to transport us back to a golden age long gone, and remind us of the close ties that have always existed been Taiwan and the rest of the world.

Under a street portico full of goods, with shoppers milling about, the past prosperity of once thriving commercial communities seems to have returned.

Under a street portico full of goods, with shoppers milling about, the past prosperity of once thriving commercial communities seems to have returned.

When visiting the old quarters of cities and towns throughout Taiwan to catch a bite or buy some gifts, we suggest you look up at the architecture and notice the details, all of which tell stories about times gone by. Shown here is an old street in Tainan’s Xinhua District.