The Japanese-era Sai­wai-cho Official Residences stand at the heart of the Taipei neighborhood bounded by Qidong Street, Jin­shan South Road, and Ji­nan Road. Comprised of 11 historic buildings that have already been or are slated to be restored, the residences are in the process of being transformed into an urban “cultural village.”

A memorial to the poet Chou Meng-tieh occupies one corner of the salon. Chou passed away in May 2014.

The exhibition hall of the Chinese Gu Qin Association is one element of this budding cultural village. Located at No. 11, Alley 53, Qi­dong Street, the fully refurbished Japanese-style building has been a lovely addition to Tai­pei’s cultural landscape.

The two buildings located at Nos. 25 and 27 Ji­nan Road Section 2 are another. The Tai­pei City Department of Cultural Affairs began restoring the residences in 2009 at the request of the Council for Cultural Affairs (now the Ministry of Culture). After 18 months of diligent renovations, the MOC reintroduced them to the world as the Qi­dong Poetry Salon.

Renowned designer Ray Chen, who planned and oversaw the project, restored the exteriors to their original glory as a Japanese residential compound, but had to approach the interiors somewhat differently. Because the latter were slated to become exhibition spaces for the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, he strove to enhance their functionality while maintaining as much of their original appearance as possible.

Much of the funding for the project came from Scott Ou­yang Ming, the founder of Globe Union Industrial Corp., which prompted the literary community to express its profound gratitude. As Minister Lung said: “A businessman who sells faucets to every corner of the globe donated NT$50 million to bring Taiwanese poetry to the world. What a lovely thing to do!”

Poetry lovers flocked to the salon’s inaugural exhibition, “Traces of Poetry.”

Globe Union is an international manufacturer of plumbing supplies with annual revenues of NT$20 billion­. An inveterate business traveler, Ou­yang uses poetry to reinvigorate himself in his few spare minutes. “No matter where I go, I always pack a collection of poems for the trip.”

The opening of the salon marked the start of a “Poetry Renaissance” program that has excited the literary community. Author Wang Ding­jun even went so far as to exclaim: “Supporting poetry and reviving literature are serious national issues!”

The salon’s inaugural exhibit, “Traces of Poetry,” featured the National Museum of Taiwan Literature’s collection of original manuscripts of poems by 46 poets and authors, as well as a glass panel in the exhibition area inscribed with a poem by Wang Ding­jun:

As long as the sky has the merest streak of blue, there will be poetry....
If human beings didn’t write poetry, the birds would;
If the birds didn’t, the wind would; if the wind didn’t, the snails and insects would.
—“There Will Be Poetry”

The literary community’s great hope is that the salon will seed our living spaces with poetry, helping it take root in people’s hearts.

“Poetry is a gateway,” says poet Yan Ai-lin, Qi­dong’s events coordinator. “The salon brings together different schools of thought and sub-genres in hopes of planting the seeds [of literature] in the hearts of the younger generation. Those seeds will sprout and spread their leaves, causing the reading, understanding, and love of poetry to spread.”

The poet Hsiang Yang’s seminars on modern poetry are always packed.

The salon’s manuscript exhibition and its poetry talks have enticed visitors to wander over from the nearby Huashan 1914 Creative Park to take in the Japanese-style architecture and enjoy a few moments of quiet. But this success has also caused Yan to fret about how the salon will fit the growing number of visitors into its small space.

Much of the charm of these old Japanese-style wooden buildings stems from how meticulously they are put together. But they are not large: events held in the building at No. 27 have a maximum capacity of just 40 people or so. The building’s small size notwithstanding, staff managed to cram in more than 50 for songwriter Vincent Fang’s talk on lyricists’ use of rhyme. “We had people packed into every corner of the space,” says Yan, “and couldn’t cool the room even with the air-conditioner at full blast and extra fans running. Fang was sweating buckets while he spoke, and yet everyone had a great time.”

On another Sunday afternoon, a group of young women stumbled into a class on modern poetry led by the poet Chen Li. Impressed by Chen’s introduction to the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for literature, the women returned the following week with some friends, bought collections of Szymborska’s poetry, and asked Chen to inscribe the flyleaves.

General Wang Shu-ming, known as “Tiger Wang,” used to live at No. 27 Jinan Road.

Poetry recitations ring out from the salon, where poets and audiences interact via the art form. “It’s like traveling back in time to an ancient private academy, but instead of hearing the Four Books and Five Classics, you get modern poetry. It’s just lovely!”

Yan is especially excited that people who’ve never really read or spent time with poetry, much less purchased any, are turning up at the salon. Their presence has filled her with confidence in the salon’s capabilities and in the future of poetry. “Over the long term, this momentum is sure to build!”

Poetry heavyweight ­Hsiang Yang has also lauded the poetry renaissance plan, saying: “The Qi­dong Poetry Salon provides a venue for poetry-related events and exchanges. It may well bring about a renaissance in contemporary Taiwanese poetry, fostering new ideas in the younger generation. Over time, it will become a repository for cultural memories.”

Cultural memories are one of the cornerstones of a major metropolis. In 2006, the Tai­pei City Government designated Qi­dong Street’s cluster of old trees and Japanese structures a conservation zone. The street itself dates to the Qing Dynasty. Then known as San­ban­qiao Street, it was an important thoroughfare as far back as the Qing Emperor ­Kangxi’s reign (1662–1722).

During the period of Japanese rule (1895–1945), the neighborhood was designated the Sai­wai-cho administrative district, and housed numerous Japanese officials. Following Taiwan’s return to Chinese rule, the ROC government took possession of the homes and used them to house central government officials. General Wang Shu­ming, a one-time head of the ROC Air Force and chief of the General Staff, lived at No. 27 from 1949 until 1992.

Restored to its original appearance and surrounded by old trees, the exterior of the Qidong Poetry Salon is magnificent once again.

The street not only tracks the course of the city’s development, but has also intersected at key points with Taiwan’s “New Poetry” movement.

For example, the Independent Evening News used to be located just one door down from the salon. The paper had deep ties to many important Taiwanese poets and published Taiwan’s first New Poetry journal, New Poetry Weekly. The neighborhood has also given birth to several other journals of modern poetry.

In addition to creating a “modern poetry seminar,” the salon has, with help from the government, industry and poets, introduced a series of “poetry salon” talks, a recurring “playing with poetry” event, poetry-themed tours, and an international poetry festival, scheduled for the end of the year. Several notable poets, including heavyweights like Yu ­Kwang-­chung and ­Zheng ­Chouyu, have pitched in as well.

The salon has also established the “Flower Bud Prize” for outstanding young poets. The award includes a NT$200,000 cash prize and access to Taiwan’s “Wandering Poet Program” as a means to interest young people in poetry and cultivate their talent.

Xu He, a member of the younger generation of poets and author of the New Poetry collection The Girls Don’t Want to Marry A-Bei, has taken a very different approach to promoting modern poetry.

Among his many ideas for interesting young people in modern poetry is the “X19 World Chinese New Poetry Award,” a prize for poets up to the age of 19 that he established in conjunction with the Poetry Playing Cooperative.

He also started the “Say Goodbye to Good Poems” movement on Facebook two years ago.

Xu argues that the standards for good poetry are so high that they leave most people too intimidated to ever try their hand at the form, and he therefore believes that the first step to promoting poetry is to lower the barriers to entry to poetry writing. With that in mind, he encouraged his Facebook friends to write a poem a day on whatever they happened to see, hear, or feel at the time, and to post the result on Facebook.

Xu’s “Jigsaw Puzzle,” which he uploaded to Facebook, was one of his own off-the-cuff daily compositions.

We face so many broken pieces
Once nestled all together
Breaking them up
Then reuniting them once again
But we don’t know whether
Their
Feelings might have changed

Xu currently runs the Simply Feeling Bookstore in Tam­sui and often comments on developments on the ­poetry scene and in the creative–cultural sphere.

He stresses, “Whether my poems are good or not is beside the point. My yardstick is whether my attempts to ‘stir the pot’ change the environment.”

The changes in thinking and approach, and the involvement of younger people, are all helping to increase both the size and the quality of Taiwan’s poetry scene.

The number of Taiwanese poetry collections being published has exploded since 2010. “Over the last three or four years,” says Yan, “publishers large and small have released nearly 1,000 volumes of poetry of all kinds. I’ve received over 20 collections in a single month. The numbers are unprecedented.”

Poetry-related events are also proliferating. The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, the alma mater of the members of Mayday and of Wu ­Tsing-fong, lead singer for the band Sodagreen, plans to hold a “modern poetry unplugged” band competition at the end of this year. The school has even arranged for literary notables such as poet Lo Chih-­cheng to serve as judges. The school hopes the event will succeed in reintroducing young people to modern Taiwanese poetry via folk-music adaptations from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and spark a revival in Taiwanese folk music.

The Qi­dong Poetry Salon has been busy as well, organizing a variety of activities to fascinate poetry lovers and spread poetry to the general public. With the echoes of the manuscript exhibition still reverberating, the salon has already begun working on a “Handwriting Local Poems” program with 7-Eleven. The project will offer cup sleeves inscribed with lines poets have penned about their hometowns, written in their own hand. The idea is to bring poetry to a wider audience, and to make even our daily caffeine fix a poetic experience.

With the Qi­dong Poetry Salon fueling the fire, Taiwan’s poetry scene is sure to blaze even brighter. As ­Hsiang Yang put it: “The salon will make Taiwan a land of poetry, cultivate still greater numbers of young poets, establish poetry as the foundation of Taiwan’s culture, introduce poetry into everyday lives, and grace everyone with the gentle temperament that poetry brings. That ought to be enough.”