台灣文化

Sankanten Shrine (三崁店社)

Over the last few months of 2024, I spent a lot of my time completely encapsulated in a project that required a tremendous amount of research, translation, and searching for the physical locations of the well-over four hundred Shinto Shrines that were constructed in Taiwan during the half century period of Japanese Colonial rule. Instead of going out and taking photos, or making an effort to write about the ever-increasing backlog of articles that I have on my list of locations to introduce to all of you, I spent a countless number of hours at coffee shops and at home working on this project, which I’ve yet to complete.

Having spent so much time on the project, I eventually decided I needed to take a break, to relax my brain, and work on something else. Taking a look at my long list of articles to write, I thought I’d choose a couple of places that I could write about quickly, so that I could get back to work on my shrine project during the Lunar New year holiday. Hilariously, I’m probably a glutton for punishment, but the first place I chose to write about in my downtime would be an article about the ruins of a historic Shinto Shrine.

I rationalized this decision by telling myself that with all of this information fresh in my mind, I’d be able to complete this article relatively quickly, and then be able to move onto something else. Whether or not that’ll actually be the case remains unclear, but here we go. Today, I’ll be introducing the ruins of a Shinto Shrine in Tainan, and one that is currently undergoing a restoration project by the local government.

For the average reader, or the average tourist, the ruins of a Japanese-era shrine are probably pretty low on the priority list of places to visit, which is something that I completely understand that, especially given how many historic tourist destinations there are in Tainan. But for my part, documenting this piece of history is pretty important given that of the hundreds of shrines that were constructed around the island during that fifty year period, more than 95% of them have been completely destroyed.

The shrine I’ll be introducing today is located on the outskirts of Tainan City, on the grounds of a historic sugar factory. Constructed for use by the staff at the sugar factory, and for the students at a school that was constructed for the convenience of the factory’s employees. These days, if you take a look at Google Maps, you’ll see that the shrine is officially referred to in English as the ‘Yongkang Sankandian Sugar Refinery Shinto Shrine Remains’ (永康三崁店糖廠神社遺蹟), a bit of a long one, if you’re asking me, but it does tell you a lot, all of which I’ll explain below.

I’ll start by introducing the the history of the Yongkang Sankanten Sugar Factory, then I’ll provide an introduction to the shrine’s history and its architectural design, the kami who were enshrined within, and what you’ll see today if you visit.

Yongkang Sankanten Sugar Factory (永康三崁店糖廠)

It would be an understatement to say that the cultivation of cane sugar over the past century has played an instrumental role in Taiwan’s economic development. Even though sugarcane isn’t a native crop to Taiwan, it adapted well to southern Taiwan’s climate and soil, and its cultivation, while perfected by the Japanese, was something that actually starting bringing wealth to the island hundreds of year before.

The history of sugarcane cultivation in Taiwan got its start during the short-lived Kingdom of Tungning Era (東寧王國) between 1661 and 1683, and was something that was continued during Qing rule as it became a precious trading commodity with western powers. When the Japanese took control of Taiwan in 1895, the cultivation and refinement of sugarcane was something that would quickly mature, and quickly go into overdrive. During that fifty year period, more than forty factories were constructed by over a dozen companies, mostly spread throughout southern Taiwan.

Map with Sankenten Sugar Refinery in the 1930s

What’s even more amazing, and probably difficult for a lot of people to understand is that for the benefit of Taiwan’s sugar industry, more than 3000 kilometers of private railways were constructed to transport sugarcane to factories, and then the finished product, ranging from sugar, molasses, fertilizers, ethanol, etc. were put onto the main railway line to be exported around the world.

One of those early sugar factories was constructed in the Yongkang (永康) area of Tainan in 1906, by a British firm who named the factory, ‘the Bain & Company Sugary Refinery’ (ベィン商會製糖場). The factory was later purchased by the ‘Formosa Sugar and Development Company, Ltd’, which invested in modern production machinery, which helped to increase the factory’s output. However, just a few years after the group purchased the factory, it was devastated by the 1911 Formosa Typhoon (1911年台灣南部颱風), which put construction to a sudden halt. Shortly after the typhoon, the Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台湾製糖株式会社 / たいわんせいとう), which would have been the largest sugar company in Taiwan at the time, took control of the factory and renamed it the ‘Sankanten Sugar Refinery’ (三崁店製糖場).

Working in conjunction with the nearby Shiyaroken Sugar Refinery (車路墘製糖所), Wanri Sugar Refinery (灣裡製糖所) and the Shanhua Sugar Factory (善化糖廠), Tainan’s refineries quickly became the most profitable on the island, which over the next few decades would allow their growth to continue. By the 1930s, the Sankanten Refinery had more or less constructed its own self-sustaining community with housing provided to its employees and a school for their children. The factory not only constructed a school for the children of its employees, but they also allocated space and funds to construct a shrine for the staff and the local community.

Note: This is something that I’ll explain a bit later, but it’s important to note that it became quite common, and almost necessary in some cases, during the Japanese-era for private companies to construct shrine on the grounds of their factories. These shrines were classified as ‘private’ or ‘Factory Shrines’ (工場の構內社 / こうしょうのこうないしゃ), but one of the reasons why you rarely see them counted in the total number of shrines in Taiwan is due to the fact that they weren’t always officially recognized by the government.

When the Japanese surrendered control of Taiwan after the Second World War, sugar production continued under the control of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台灣糖業股份有限公司), a state-run enterprise that to this day remains one of the most prosperous companies in the nation. That being said, there has been a massive decline in the production of sugar in Taiwan, and the number of sugar factories has declined from forty-two to just three. Similarly, the vast majority of the 3000 kilometers of railway that was constructed for the sugar factories have since been removed, and in a lot of cases have been replaced by roads for cars.

The Sankanten Factory continued production until 1990 (民國79年), when its management was merged with the nearby Shanhua Factory, but just three years later, it would officially shut down.

Taking into consideration that these sugar factories have been an important part of Taiwan’s economic miracle, you’ll find that a few of the larger factories around the country have since been repurposed into cultural parks, and there are several in Tainan that have become quite interesting for tourists. The Sankanten Factory, however, wasn’t afforded such preservation, and today the land where it once stood is home to a transport and logistics company. Still, if you take some time, you can find some of the historic parts of the factory remaining near the shrine, most notably its air-raid shelters.

Sankanten Shrine (三崁店社 / さんかんてんしゃ)

Compared to the more than 33,000 places of worship you’ll find scattered across Taiwan today, it might not be so impressive when I tell you that the nation was once home to more than four-hundred Shinto Shrines. The staggering number of religious sites in Taiwan is one that is actually difficult to keep track of, because they’re constantly being constructed. Still, in the half century that the Japanese controlled Taiwan, the construction of shrines was likely only comparable to what has taken place across the country in the past few decades.

Another one of the similarities between the number of places of worship in Taiwan today, and during the Japanese-era, is that the majority of shrines (something that I alluded to earlier) that were constructed around the island were considered either ‘official’, ‘unofficial’ or ‘private’ whereas today they’re simply designated as ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’

To expand on that point, the larger, officially-ranked shrines, such as the Taoyuan Shrine (桃園神社), for example, were constructed mostly with public funding by the colonial government, and their management was something that was tightly controlled. Taiwan was home to about a hundred of these officially ranked shrines divided between Imperial Ranked Shrines (官幣社), Nationally Ranked Shrines (国幣社), County-Level Shrines (縣社) and District-Level Shrines (郷社). and Unranked Shrines.

However, these ‘official’ shrines made up less than a quarter of the total number of shrines that were constructed around the island, with the vast majority of them considered ‘unrecognized’ or ‘unranked’ (無格社), and were located within indigenous villages, educational institutions, factories, military bases, etc.

Suffice to say, almost every Sugar Factory constructed around the island had its own on-site Shinto Shrine, set up for the benefit of its employees, and for the economic success of the business. The shrines that were set up within these factories tended to be quite small, and unlike the larger ranked shrines, it was uncommon for them to have staff at the shrine. In most cases, the responsibility for the upkeep of the shrine rested upon the staff at the factory, with the local community volunteering to help maintain them.

The Sankenten Sugar Factory made an official application with the government to construct an on-site shrine, and once it was approved, construction started on October 25th, 1930 (昭和5年), with a budget of 2800 Yen (Approximately 30,000USD in modern currency). Construction was completed a few months later on May 16th, 1931 (昭和6年), and was officially named Sankenten Shrine (三崁店社 / さんかんてんしゃ).

Note: The Japanese pronunciation of the area is ‘Sankanten’ (さんかんてん), while the Mandarin pronunciation is ‘Sankengdian’ (三坑店), which is quite similar. You’re likely to see it referred to by the latter romanization today.

What’s somewhat unclear about the establishment of the shrine is whether the enshrinement ceremony took place on May 18th or May 20th. What we do know, though, is that the shrine’s annual Spring Festival (例祭 / れいさい) was held on October 10th or 18th, and Harvest Festivals (祈年祭 / きねんさい) were held several times throughout the year.

What happened to the shrine after the Second World War isn’t entirely clear, with parts of the shrine removed, vandalized or destroyed. At some point, a post office was constructed on the elevated cement section of the shrine, but it didn’t seem to last very long as it was probably torn down when the sugar factory was shut down in the early 1990s.

Ultimately, the grounds were left in ruins after the closure of the factory, and it was eventually overtaken by the natural environment. In 2009 (民國98年), the shrine grounds were recognized by the Tainan City Government as a Protected Historic Property (直轄市定古蹟), which meant that efforts would have to be undertaken to have the site preserved. With the amount of historic properties in Tainan, though, there was a long list of other historic properties that required funding for restoration. Ultimately it took more than a decade for the restoration of the shrine to start.

As I’m writing, the restoration process is still on-going, but should be completed in the near future. So, if you’re in the area and you take the time to visit, you’re likely to encounter the ruins of a shrine that hasn’t been as well-kept since the 1940s!

I’ll end this section by sharing an interesting story about the restoration of the shrine.

In the decades since the Japanese surrendered control of Taiwan, the vandalism and destruction of cultural and religious elements from that period of Taiwan’s history has become common. There are, of course, very understandable reasons for this. That being said, even though there are people who elect to destroy these relics of Taiwan’s heritage, you’ll also find people who are actively engaged in preserving these things.

In this specific case, when the Sankenten Shrine was officially recognized for preservation, a former volunteer at the shrine (at least that’s how it was explained) contacted the government to let them know that they had taken it upon themselves to preserve the shrine’s name pillar, which was originally thought to been destroyed. The individual returned the pillar to the government, and it was locked away for safe-keeping.

Today, a beautifully reproduced shrine pillar stands on the grounds identifying that this was once the Sankenten Shrine.

Link: 古蹟「三崁店社」石柱 重見天日 (自由時報)

Kami Enshrined at Sankanten Shrine

When it comes to the kami who were enshrined within Sankanten Shrine, there’s not much of a variation with those who were enshrined at the hundreds of other shrines constructed across Taiwan. The Japanese were initially quite selective with the kami they chose to promote in Taiwan, and were mostly deities, who the people of Taiwan could relate to, given that within Taiwanese folk religion, you’ll find similar figures.

As a colony, the government placed considerable emphasis on Taiwan’s agricultural and natural resources, and for much of the half century of Japanese rule, they offered massive incentives for farmers to come to the island to contribute, especially since a lot of the farmland in Japan was being industrialized at the time. Moreover, within Sugar Factories, like the Sankanten Factory, the kami chosen for these shrines, were those that offered spiritual assistance to people working in this sector.

The following were the five kami originally enshrined at Sankanten Shrine:

  • The Three Deities of Cultivation (開拓三神 / かいたくさんじん)

    The Three Deities of Cultivation, consist of three figures known for their skills with regard to nation-building, farming, business and medicine. 

    The Three Deities of Cultivation are as follows: 

    1. Okunitama no Mikoto (大國魂大神 / おおくにたまのかみ)

    2. Okuninushi no Mikoto (大名牟遲大神 / おおなむちのかみ)

    3. Sukunabikona no Mikoto (少彥名大神 / すくなひこなのかみ)

    While these deities are also quite common among Japan’s Shinto Shrines, they were especially important here in Taiwan due to what they represented, which included aspects of nation-building, agriculture, medicine and the weather. Given Taiwan’s position as a new addition to the Japanese empire, ‘nation-building’ and the association of a Japanese-style way of life was something that was being pushed on the local people in more ways than one.

    Likewise, considering the economy at the time was largely agricultural-based, it was important that the gods enshrined reflected that aspect of life. 

    Toyoke no Omikami (豐受大神 / トヨウケビメノカミ) 

    ‘Toyoke no Omikami’ is a female kami hailing from Japanese mythology. Known simply as the Japanese ‘Goddess of Food,’ she is more formally referred to as the ‘Kami of Agriculture and Industry’ serving a role similar to the Three Pioneer kami mentioned above.

    Residing at the Ise Grand Shrine (伊勢神宮), one of her roles is to provide food for her counterpart, the sun goddess Amaterasu (天照大神), which means that when you encounter a shrine dedicated to Amaterasu, you’re also very likely to find a shrine dedicated to Toyoke no Omikami, as well.

    Link: Toyouke-hime (Wiki)

    Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa (北白川宮能久親王)

    Prince Yoshihisa, a western educated Major-General in the Japanese Imperial Army, and a member of the Japanese imperial family was commissioned to participate in the invasion of Taiwan after the island was ceded to the empire.  Unfortunately for the Prince, he contracted malaria and died in either modern day Hsinchu or Tainan (where he died is disputed), giving him the dubious honor of being the first member of the Japanese royal family to pass away while outside of Japan in more than nine hundred years, in addition to being the first to die in war. 

    Shortly after his death he was elevated to the status of a ‘kami’ under state Shinto and was given the name “Kitashirakawa no Miya Yoshihisa-shinno no Mikoto“, and subsequently became one of the most important patron deities here in Taiwan, as well as being enshrined at the Yasukuni Shrine (靖國神社) in Tokyo. Of the more than four-hundred shrines constructed around Taiwan during the Japanese-era, its safe to say that Prince Yoshihisa was enshrined within at least ninety percent of them, making him one of the most prolific kami in Taiwan.

    Link: Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa (Wiki)

Even though I’ve already detailed most of the important events that led up to the construction of the sugar factory, its shrine, and what happened after the Japanese-era, I’ve gone ahead and put together a concise timeline of events below. For anyone interested in a summarized look at the shrine’s history, click the drop-down box below:

    • 1906 (明治39年) - A British firm constructed a sugar refinery in the Sankanten area of Taiwan with an investment of 200,000 Yen, under the name ‘The Bain & Company Sugary Refinery” (ベィン商會製糖場) with a production capacity of about 300 tons.

    • 1909 (明治42年) - The Bain & Company shifts its focus from the production of sugar to honey and sells its shares of the factory to the ‘Formosa Sugar and Development Company, Ltd’, which invested a further 80,000 Yen in the latest machinery, increasing the factory’s output to 850 tons.

    • 1911 (明治44年) - The 1911 Formosa Typhoon (1911年台灣南部颱風) causes considerable damage in Southern Taiwan, resulting in 290 deaths, and also considerably damages the sugar factory. As a result, the Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台湾製糖株式会社 / たいわんせいとう) took control of the factory and oversaw its repairs. The factory was once again upgraded to a production capacity of 1200 tons, making the three Tainan factories the most profitable on the island. It was also at this time that the refinery was formally renamed the Sankenten Sugar Refinery (三崁店製糖場).

    • 1919 (大正8年) - Due to the growth and the the profitability of the sugar factory, a school is constructed nearby for the benefit of the children of its employees. The Sankanten Branch of the Tainan First Elementary school (臺南第一小學校三崁店分教場) opened for the 1919 school year.

    • 1920 (大正9年) - In April, the sugar factory’s school becomes independent of the Tainan First Elementary School and is renamed the Sankenten Normal Elementary School (三崁店尋常小學校).

    • 1930 (昭和5年) - Construction work on a shrine for the sugar factory officially starts on October 25th with a budget of about 2800 Yen (About 30,000USD in modern currency).

    • 1931 (昭和6年) - Construction is completed on May 16th, with the enshrinement ceremony taking place a few days later, either on May 18th or May 20th.

    • 1993 (民國82年) - The Yongkang Sugar Factory formally ends operations.

    • 2009 (民國98年) - The shrine is recognized as a Protected Historic Property (直轄市定古蹟) on May 27th.

    • 2012 (民國101年) - Once thought to have been vandalized and destroyed, the Sankenten Shrine’s Shrine Pillar (標柱 / しめばしら) was returned to the Tainan Bureau of Cultural Affairs by volunteers who had taken it upon themselves to have the historic marker preserved. However, the pillar that you’ll find on the grounds today is a replica.

    • 2024 (民國113年) - The restoration project of the Sankenten Shrine Ruins (三崁店糖廠神社遺跡) gets underway with efforts to clean up the site, repair damaged parts of the shrine, and reproduce some of the elements of the shrine that have been lost. The project was funded by the Tainan City Cultural Assets Management Office (台南市文化資產管) with a budget of about 10,000,000NTD.

Architectural Design

There are many things that can be said about the Japanese during their fifty-year period of rule over Taiwan, both negative and positive, but as far as I’m concerned, one of the more admirable aspects of that period of Taiwan’s history, given the technology, is that they were great at documenting things with photos. Obviously, the camera technology of the day wasn’t anything even remotely similar to what we have today, so the concerted effort that was made to take photos of what was happening in Taiwan in those days is something that we can appreciate today. Such is the case that now, whenever I write about one of Taiwan’s historic buildings, its usually easy to find photos of how it looked more than a century ago. This goes for both buildings constructed during that era, but also temples and other places of worship that predated the Japanese-era.

That being said, writing about the Sankenten Shrine’s architectural design hasn’t been an easy task. I’ve spent a lot of time looking, but there aren’t any photos of the shrine in its original state to be found. However, given the layout that we can still see today, historic record, and what would have been rather typical for shrines like this, I’m confident that I can offer readers a good indication of how the shrine originally appeared with a comprehensive list of all of the pieces that made it whole.

Below, I’ll start by introducing each specific part of the shrine, and then I’ll move onto some of the more in-depth design specifics, offering some illustrations of the style of architectural design that was used to construct it.

The first thing to remember about the Sankenten Shrine is that it was located on the grounds of a factory, and like the vast majority of Taiwan’s Shinto Shrines that were located on school grounds or on the grounds of a private company, it was considerably smaller than a full-fledged shrine. Despite its relative size, though, the shrine included quite a few important elements that you’ll find at most Shinto Shrines.

  • Visiting Path (參道 / さんどう) - The Visiting Path included a stone pathway to the shrine, a stone ‘shimebashira’ (標柱 / しめばしら) shrine pillar at the entrance, indicating the name of the shrine, a shrine gate (鳥居 / とりい), six sets of stone lanterns (石燈籠 / しゃむしょ) lining both sides of the path, a flag pole (竿 / さお), and a set of komainu (狛犬 / こまいぬ) lion-dog guardians.

  • Purification Fountain (手水舍 / ちょうずしゃ) - located on the western side of the Visiting Path, the Purification Fountain was a simple stone water fountain where visitors could perform a purification ritual prior to worshiping at the shrine.

  • Shrine Fence (玉垣 / たまがき) - a small stone fence that surrounded the sacred area of the shrine, preventing people from wandering into a space where they shouldn’t be.

  • Main Hall (本殿 / ほんでん) - Elevated on a ‘kidan’ (基壇 / きだん) stone platform, the Main Hall was a small wooden structure that was the home of the shrine’s kami.

With an idea of what once existed at the shrine, its time to talk about what continues to exist today.

Starting with the traditional Visiting Path, otherwise known as the “sando” (さんどう), this is an essential aspect of the layout of shrines, no matter how large or small they are. To the average person, the path may just seem like a long walkway that leads visitors to the shrine, but these paths actually serve both functional and symbolic purposes. In Japanese, the word ‘Shinto’ can be translated literally into English as the “Pathway to the Gods” (神道),  so the “path” is one that you take on the road to spiritual purification, and the path contains several elements that assist with that journey.

In this case, the original stone path that led to the shrine remains intact, which is great for helping people better understand the original layout of the shrine. At the entrance to the Visiting Path, you’ll find the shrine pillar (標柱 / しめばしら), a replication, as I mentioned earlier, with the name of the shrine ‘Sankenten Shrine’ (三坑店社) written in Kanji horizontally on the front.

Just beyond the pillar, you’ll find pedestals on either side of the stone path, which were once the home of the shrine’s pair of stone guardians. Whether they have been vandalized, stolen, or destroyed is unknown, but all that remains today is their cement pedestals. That being said, in some cases, the stone guardians that once guarded the hundreds of Shinto Shrines around the country, most of which were beautifully crafted and quite expensive, can be found guarding the entrances of nearby temples. It’s possible that the shrine’s guardians are still performing their duties, but their location remains undocumented.

Similarly, all six sets of the original stone lanterns (石燈籠 / しゃむしょ) have either been removed or destroyed. However, one of the pedestals where the lanterns were located features the original shaft (竿 /さお) that connected to the base on the ground and was used to support the upper parts of the lantern. What’s surprising about the shaft is that it still has the inscribed words ‘Constructed in May of the 6th year of the Showa Era’ (昭和六年5月建之). What’s significant about this is that in most cases, these inscriptions referring to either the Meiji (明治), Taisho (大正) or Showa (昭和) eras of Japanese rule, have mostly been vandalized over the years.

In this case, May of the Sixth year of Emperor Showa’s reign refers 1931, and since the shrine was officially opened on either May 18th or May 20th of that year, the pedestal is one of the few markers that indicate the complete history of the shrine.

Just beyond the pedestals, where the first set of lanterns once existed, you’ll find two circular pieces of cement on either side of the path. These were originally part of the base that held up the shrine gate, which has also either been removed or destroyed. Following the path, there are another two sets of lanterns before you’ll encounter a space on the western side where the path branches off to where the purification fountain (手水舍 / ちょうずしゃ) is located. While the stone fountain itself remains on site, whether or not there was a roof-covered building surrounding it is a bit of mystery. Looking at the space around the fountain, though, there isn’t much evidence that there was once a cement base as there are in other areas of the shrine, so it’s likely that the fountain that you see now was a standalone part of the shrine.

Now, onto the main section of the shrine, the Visiting Path ends in a short set of stairs that visitors would have taken to the front of where the small shrine was originally located. The worship area of was elevated on a stone base, which still exists today, and the same goes for the stairs. The elevated worship space of the shrine features a cement shrine fence (玉垣 / たまがき) on all four sides. The fence is still there, but it looks like there has been some work done to restore it as its looks quite new.

One of the major differences between this shrine, and the larger more full-fledged shrines is that there weren’t dedicated buildings for the Hall of Worship (拜殿 /はいでん) and a Main Hall (本殿/ほんでん) behind it. Instead, the shrine was just a miniature version of a ‘Main Hall’ that was propped up on an elevated base, known as a ‘kidan’ (基壇 / きだん). The original shrine has long since been removed, but amazingly, the base remains in its original position.

Even though there aren’t any historic photos of the shrine available, what we do know is that it was constructed using the ‘shinmei' (神明造 / しんめいづくり) style of architectural design, which actually tells us a lot. The shinmei style is a spinoff of what is claimed to be a style of design that is more than two-thousand years old. Most commonly associated with the design of the Ise Grand Shrine (伊勢神宮 / いせじんぐう), arguably the most important Shinto Shrine in Japan, the ‘shinmei’ style is characterized by its extreme simplicity and antiquity, and is thought to imitate the design of Japan’s early rice granaries.

Link: Shinmei-zukuri | 神明造 中文 | 神明造 日文 (Wiki)

In this case, in lieu of a much larger building, the shrine made use of what is known as a ‘hokora’ (祠 / ほこら), which is essentially a miniature version of a much larger shrine, and shares similar architectural designs, albeit on a much smaller scale. In this style of design, these buildings tend to have a rectangular-shaped base, known as a ‘moya’ (母屋 / もや), which is surrounded by a ‘hisashi’ (廂) veranda on all four sides.

In the front, there would have been a narrow set of stairs in the center that led to the front door of the shrine, where the repository of the kami would have been placed. However, unlike in other styles of Japanese design, you wouldn’t have found pillars on the exterior of the building, which are typically there to support the weight of the roof.

In the Shinmei-style, the roofs that cover the buildings generally make use of the asymmetrical ‘kirizuma-yane’ (切妻屋根 / きりづまやね) gabled roof style of design, but even though the roof eclipses the base, the columns aren’t necessary because the ‘moya’ is able to support its weight. In modern times, these gabled roofs are typically covered with copper sheeting, cypress bark or Japanese cedar shingles, but since there isn’t any information regarding the materials used to construct the roof, it’s difficult to guess what was used. In terms of decorative elements, though, roofs that cover shinmei-style buildings are typically adorned with what are known as katsuogi (鰹木/かつおぎ) and chigi (千木 / ちぎ) ornaments.

To explain, the ‘katsuogi’ are long cylindrical timber-like pieces of wood that rest on the flat base of the roof. The ‘chigi’ on the other hand are located on the two gable ends and can be cut either horizontally or vertically, known as uchi-sogi (内削ぎ) and soto-sogi (外削ぎ), respectively. How they’re cut is determined by the kami who reside within the building, so even though we don’t have any photos of the original shrine, it’s easy to assume that they were cut vertically in the ‘uchi-soto’ style given that the kami within are predominately male deities.

Links: Katsuogi | Chigi (Wiki) 

Unfortunately, the best I can do is offer diagrams of this style of design to better help readers understand what once existed on top of the stone pedestal. Like most of the Shinto Shrines that were constructed around Taiwan, not much of the original shrine remains in place today, but in this case, there is more than enough to assist anyone who visits in understanding what once originally stood in this location, and as far as these things go, the ruins of the Sankenten Shrine is an excellent reminder of the past, and one of the more complete shrine experiences you’ll have in Taiwan today.

Getting There

 

Address: Intersection of Ren’ai Street and Sanmin Street, Yongkang District, Tainan City (臺南市永康區仁愛街與三民街交界)

GPS: 23.054472, 120.244833

Alright, now for the bad news. Unlike a lot of Tainan’s tourist destinations, without your own means of transportation, this one isn’t easy to visit.

The shrine ruins are located north of Tainan City in Yongkang District (永康區), and even though there’s a bus that can get you there from Tainan Station, it’s not convenient, and you may find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere waiting for another one to come. So, if you don’t have a car or a scooter, I’m not sure how much I recommend the average tourist heading over to check it out.

Still, if you’re in the area and you insist on visiting, you have a couple of options for public transportation.

The first option is to take the train north from Tainan Station to Yongkang Station (永康車站) and from there hopping on a Youbike for the ten minute ride to the shrine. However, even though this seems like a relatively straight forward route, especially if you have access to Google Maps, you’ll have to cross some pretty busy roads, which in southern Taiwan tend to be dangerous, and not very pedestrian-friendly.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend downloading the Youbike App to your phone so that you’ll have a better idea of the location where you’ll be able to find the closest docking station.

Link: Youbike - Apple / Android

The second option is to take Tainan Bus #21 (火車南站 - 永康工業區) from the Southern Side of the Tainan Train Station all the way to the Yongkang Industrial Park. However, if you take a look at the schedule, it’s important to note that the bus only comes eight times a day, which means that you may end up having to wait a while for another one to come by to pick you up.

Otherwise, the best option for getting around the more rural areas of Tainan City is to simply rent a scooter near the Tainan Train Station.

If you have a Taiwanese drivers license or an International Drivers License, you shouldn’t have much trouble. If you have neither, you might still find a rental company that is willing to rent to you, but driving without a license isn’t recommended, especially for insurance reasons.

My visit to the Sankenten Shrine ruins came at a time when the site was in the process of being restored by the city government. Personally, I would have preferred to have seen what the shrine was like prior to the start of the restoration process, so I could have experienced it in its original rundown state, but now that its been cleaned up, its much easier to see all the different aspects of the shrine that might have been missed due to overgrowth. I’m not sure what the future holds for the shrine ruins once it officially reopens, but I really hope they leave it more or less as it is.

References

  1. 三崁店社 中文 | 三崁店社 日文 (Wiki)

  2. 永康糖廠 (Wiki)

  3. 臺灣製糖 中文 | 台湾製糖 日文 (Wiki)

  4. 永康三崁店糖廠神社遺蹟 (台灣宗教文化資產)

  5. 永康三崁店糖廠神社遺蹟 (國家文化記憶庫)

  6. 永康三崁店糖廠神社遺蹟 (國家文化資產網)

  7. 永康三崁店糖廠神社遺蹟 (文化部)

  8. 台南古蹟三崁店神社 年底修復完成 (聯合新聞網)

  9. 古蹟「三崁店社」石柱 重見天日 (自由時報)

  10. 台南「三崁店糖廠神社遺跡」年底修復 蔣公堤功德碑「美容」中 (自由時報)

  11. shinmei-zukuri 神明造 (JAANUS)


Taiwanese Hokkien-style Architecture (臺灣閩南建築)

When I first started writing on this website, I spent quite a bit of time focusing on Taiwan’s historic places of worship, or at least, some of the more popular and well-known temples in the country. Why? Well, its pretty simple, its what I was interested in, and it goes without saying that temples here are absolutely beautiful.

Later, when I branched out and started publishing articles about other kinds of tourist destinations and attractions around Taiwan, I made sure to maintain a focus on the subjects that I enjoy, which for the most part have to do with the local religion, mountains and nature, and urban exploration. It takes quite a bit of my personal time to write these articles, so its important that I write about the things I care about. Thus, one of the common themes that you may have noticed by now is that the places I write about almost always share a relationship with the history of Taiwan, and are destinations that have an interesting story to tell. Afterwards, when I started writing about destinations related to the fifty year period of colonial rule, known as the Japanese-era, my research forced me to spend a considerable amount of time learning more about the architectural design characteristics of those historic places I was writing about, so that I could better explain their significance.

On a personal note, something I’ve probably never mentioned is that both my father and my late grandfather are (were) highly-skilled and widely-sought master carpenters back home. After my parents divorced, I’d sometimes get taken to a work site where they were in the middle of constructing some beautiful new house (likely in the hope that I’d carry on the family tradition), and although our relationship was never really that strong, I had to respect the mathematical genius it took for them to construct some of the things they were were building. Looking back, I probably never expected that years later, I’d be spending so much time researching and writing about these things, but in order to better understand the complicated and genius designs of those historic places I was writing about, I had to put in the extra effort to learn about their design characteristics.

Getting to the point, recently, while writing an article about Taipei’s Jiantan Historic Temple (劍潭古寺), I figured I’d do what I normally do and spend some time writing about the its special architectural characteristics. Sadly, writing that article forced me to face the sad truth that after all these years learning about the intricacies of traditional Japanese architectural design, that I actually knew very little about traditional ‘Taiwanese’ design. Finishing that article ended up taking considerably longer than I originally expected because I spent so much time researching and learning about the various elements of local architectural design, and the terms, many of which were completely new to me, that would be necessary to properly describe the design of the temple.

Suffice to say, much of what I ended up learning during those days spent in coffee shops researching the topic were things that I could go back and apply to dozens of articles that I’ve published in the past, but going back and adding descriptions of the architectural design of all of those places feels like a daunting task at the moment - so, for the time being, I’ve decided to make use of a collection of photos that I’ve taken over the years to offer readers a general idea about the intricacies of one of Taiwan’s most common styles of architectural design, and more specifically the decorative elements that make these buildings so visually spectacular.

While this might sound corny, when it comes to traditional Taiwanese architectural design, the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is something that I think can be expanded upon as “a Taiwanese temple is worth a thousand stories,” each of which you’ll find is depicted in great detail in every corner of a temple. Unfortunately, for most people, locals included, these stories remain somewhat of a mystery, and for visitors to Taiwan, this is a topic that hasn’t been covered very well in the English-language.

Obviously, the intent here is to help people better understand what they’re seeing when they’re standing in front of one of these buildings, however even though this article will be a long one, it’s important to keep in mind that I’m only touching upon the tip of the iceberg of this topic, which is something that is deserving of years of research.

‘Hokkien’ or ‘Taiwanese’?

To start, I should probably first address the wordage I’m using here, which should help readers understand some of the complicated cultural and historic factors involved. People often find themselves in heated arguments online when it comes to this topic, and although that’s something I’d prefer to avoid, as is the case with almost everything in Taiwan these days, there are some political factors involved. Whether or not you agree, when I use the term “Taiwanese-Hokkien,” I’m doing my best to use an inclusive term that reflects the history of Taiwan, and the current climate we find ourselves in with regard to the complicated relationship that Taiwan shares with its neighbor to the west.

Over the years, one of the things I’ve noticed that causes the most amount of confusion, and debate, is with regard to the difference between ‘nationality’ and ‘ethnicity.’ This is something that I’ve always found particularly confusing, mostly due to my own personal background; So, if you’ll allow me, let me make an analogy, I’ll try to explain things that way.

If you weren’t already aware, I grew up in the eastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia, an area that has been colonized by both the French and English. However, for much of its modern history, Nova Scotia, which is Latin for ‘New Scotland,’ was predominately populated by immigrants hailing from Scotland.

Being of Scottish ancestry myself, people at home would probably think I had mental issues if I suddenly started claiming that the province was part of Scotland’s sovereign territory, simply because of the history of immigration.

Similarly, in Nova Scotia, we speak a dialect of French, known as ‘Francais Acadien’ which, unlike the language spoken in Quebec or France, is a variation that hasn’t really changed much over the past few hundred years.

Thus, if I were to contrast the history of my homeland with that of Taiwan’s history, Chinese immigration to Taiwan is an example of how colonization in the early seventeenth century brought about a divergence, and a split, when it comes to language and culture.

The earliest Chinese migrants to the island hailed from what is now China’s Fujian Province (福建省), more specifically Chaozhou (潮州), Zhangzhou (漳州) and Amoy (廈門), and like the Scots who fled to Canada, many of those who came to Taiwan did so to escape economic hardship and persecution at home. This mass movement of people, the vast majority of whom were of ‘Southern-Fukienese’, or ‘Hokkien’ (閩南) in origin, sent most people on their way to more hospitable locations, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Southern Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and is why you’ll still find considerably large ethnic Chinese populations in those countries today.

Similarly, Taiwan just so happened to be another one of the destinations where the immigrants came by the boatloads, but unlike the other areas mentioned above, the island wasn’t exactly what would be considered the ‘choice’ destination for most of the migrants due to the lack of development and the harsh conditions on the island.

Coincidentally, this is a topic that I covered quite extensively after a trip to Vietnam with regard to the Assembly Halls (會館) that were constructed in the historic trading port of Hoi An (會安), where groups of migrants pooled their resources together to create places to celebrate their language and cultural heritage.

Link: Chinese Assembly Halls of Hoi An (會安華人會館)

With regard to those Assembly Halls, what is interesting is that the Hokkien were just ‘one’ of the ethnic groups hailing from that particular region of China that ended up migrating south, starting mostly during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In fact, even though the term “Hokkien” refers to the people from “Southern Min”, they are part of a large number of ethnic groups, whose ancestry originated in the Central Plains of China several thousand years ago. However, similar to Taiwan’s other major ethnic group of migrants, the Hakka (客家), the Hokkien people are renowned for being well-traveled, and within ethnic-Chinese communities around the world, you’ll be sure to find a large portion of Hokkien people who have brought with them their own own particular style of architectural design, folk arts, cuisine, religious practices, and folklore, they have also adapted influences of their new homelands.

In Taiwan’s case, over the past few centuries, Hokkien language and culture has been influenced by their interactions with the Hakka, Indigenous Taiwanese, Europeans, and the Japanese. Such is the case that linguistically-speaking, the language spoken in Taiwan makes it difficult (not impossible) for speakers of the language hailing from China or South East Asia to comprehend, which have also had linguistic divergences of their own. Sadly, though, the Hokkien language has had a complicated history in Taiwan given that it was suppressed by both the Japanese and Chinese Nationalist colonial regimes.

Yet, despite the language going through a period of decline in the number of speakers over the past century, it has gone through somewhat of a revival in the decades since the end of Martial Law (戒嚴時期), thanks to the ‘mother-tongue movement’, which seeks to revive, restore and celebrate Hokkien, Hakka and Taiwan’s indigenous languages.

Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, an area of contention with regard to the language has to do with its official name, which tends to be quite political, and how it is named really depends on who you’re talking to. As is the case with Mandarin, which is referred to in Mandarin as the “National Language” (國語), “Chinese” (中文), or the “Han Language” (漢語), Hokkien is often also referred to as “Taiwanese” or “Tâi-gí” (台語). People who refer to the language as Hokkien often do so because they feel the name ‘Taiwanese’ belittles the other languages spoken on the island while the opposing side considers the term “Hokkien” inadequate because it refers to a variation of the language spoken in China, and not a language that is part of the beating heart of Taiwan’s modern identity. I’m not here to tell you what name you should use to refer to the language. That’s entirely up to you, and no matter what term you prefer, you’re not likely to end up insulting anyone.

Obviously, many things have changed since the seventeenth century, and both China and Taiwan have developed separately, and in their own ways. Shifting away from the divergence of the language, one of the other more noticeable areas where the two countries share some similarities, yet also diverge at the same time (at least from the perspective here in Taiwan) is with regard to the way Hokkien architectural design, and its adherence to cultural folklore is both created and celebrated.

One claim you’ll often hear on this side of the Taiwan strait is that Communism, and more specifically, the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命) resulted in an irreparable amount of damage to traditional Chinese cultural values and traditions, whereas in Taiwan, you’ll discover that traditional culture is widely celebrated. Personally, having lived in both countries, I’d argue that this is a massive over-simplification of the issue, and not necessarily always the case, but it is true, especially in the case of religious practices, that many of the traditional cultural values that are widely practiced and accepted here in Taiwan have not fared as well in China over the past century.

If you’ve spent any time in Taiwan, it should be rather obvious that traditional culture is widely celebrated here, and most would agree that the nation is home to some of the most important examples of Hokkien architectural design and folklore that you’ll find anywhere in the world. This isn’t to say that you won’t find a considerable amount of traditional architectural design in China, or in immigrant communities in South East Asia, but no where will you find such a large concentration as in Taiwan.

Even though Taiwan has its own fair share of folklore and heroic figures, one aspect of Hokkien culture that you’ll find celebrated here is with regard to its cultural history, especially with events that took place in China hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. The historic events and legends that you’ll find displayed on the walls and roofs of these buildings across Taiwan are quite adept at putting that relationship on display. This is the case not only with the architectural and decorative elements of Taiwan’s temples, but also with regard to the local folk religion figures who are worshiped inside, many of whom are historic Hokkien figures who have been deified for their heroic actions, but for the large part, have never stepped foot in Taiwan.

So, even though the topic might be uncomfortable for some, it doesn’t change the fact that Taiwan’s rich cultural history has been guided in part by immigrants from China, who brought with them their cultural values. That being said, even though the two sides of the strait share links with regard to culture, language and ethnicity, that doesn’t mean that they inextricably linked with one another, or that one side has the right to claim sovereignty over the other.

Link: As Taiwan’s Identity Shifts, Can the Taiwanese Language Return to Prominence? (Ketagalan Media)

Whether you refer to the language as ‘Taiwanese’ or ‘Hokkien,’ it is estimated to be spoken (to some degree) by at least 81.9% of the Taiwanese population today, and while it was once more commonly associated with older generation, and informal settings, Taiwanese has become part of a newly formed national identity. In recent years, the youth of the country have embraced the language as a means of differentiating themselves not only from the neighbors across the strait, but the Chinese Nationalist Party (國民黨), which ruled over Taiwan with an iron fist for half a century prior to democratization. Sorry Youth (拍謝少年), EggplantEgg (茄子蛋) and AmazingBand (美秀劇團) are just a few examples of some of the musical groups that perform primarily in Taiwanese, and television production has gone from low-budget soap operas for the older generation to contemporary large-budget Netflix-level productions that have become pop-culture hits.

Link: Beyond Pop-Culture: Towards Integrating Taiwanese into Daily Life (Taiwan Gazette)

The resurgence of Taiwanese since the end of Martial Law, however, is just one area where traditional ‘Hokkien’ culture has experienced a revival. One of the more admirable things about Taiwan, and is something that is (arguably) missing in China, is the amount of civil activism that takes place here. In China, for example, if the government proposes urban renewal plans that will ultimately destroy heritage structures, and displace people from their homes, there isn’t all that much in terms of opposition (this has been changing in recent years), but here in Taiwan, people have little patience for this sort of behavior, and are very vocal and willing to take to the streets to vigorously fight for the preservation of the nation’s heritage structures. Some might argue that this level of civic participation slows development, but when a government at any level is held to account, it is a good thing isn’t it?

Given that most the oldest heritage buildings that you’re likely to find in Taiwan today, are of Hokkien origin, what you’ll experience at some of the historic buildings that have become popular tourist attractions is a showcase in the masterful beauty of this style of architectural design. The Lin An Tai Mansion (林安泰古厝) in Taipei and the Lin Family Mansion (板橋林家花園) in Taoyuan are just two examples of historic mansions that have been restored and opened to the public in recent years. Similarly, places of worship, where this style of design shines at its brightest, such as Taipei’s Longshan Temple (艋舺龍山寺) and Bao-An Temple (大龍峒保安宮) are highly regarded as two of the most important specimens of Hokkien-style architecture anywhere in the world.

While the examples above are just a few of the more well-known destinations for tourists here in the north, its also true that no matter where you’re traveling in the country, you won’t find yourself too far from an example of this well-preserved style of architectural beauty. So, now that I’ve got that long-winded disclaimer out of the way, let’s start talking about what makes Taiwan’s Hokkien-style architecture so prolific.

Taiwanese Hokkien-Style Architecture (臺灣閩南建築)

Before I start, it’s probably important to note that Hokkien-style architecture in Taiwan shares similar elements of design with many of the other traditional styles of Southern Chinese architectural design. You may find yourself asking what makes this particular style of design so special and you’d probably also expect a long and complex answer, but that’s not actually the case. What stands out with regard to this architectural style is that (almost) every building is a celebration of their culture, history and folklore - and the means by which these celebrations are depicted is through a decorative style of art that is most common among the Hokkien people.

While its true that the Hokkien people who migrated to Taiwan originated in Southern China, and it’s also true that you’ll find some of these design elements adorning traditional buildings there as well, as I mentioned earlier, during the period that the two have been split, alterations to the style and the method for which these things are constructed have changed. Today, Taiwan is home to a much greater volume of buildings making use of this architectural design, and the Hokkien craftspeople here have perfected their art as they have adapted to their new environs, with modern construction techniques streamlining the process.   

In this section, I’m not going to focus on specific construction techniques or the materials used to construct buildings. Instead, I’m going to focus on two elements that define Hokkien style architecture: The Swallowtail Roof (燕尾脊), and the cut-porcelain mosaic (剪瓷雕) decorative designs, both of which are the means by which the Hokkien people so eloquently tell their stories.

The Swallowtail Ridge (燕尾脊)

If you’ve been following my blog for any period of time, you’re probably well-aware that I spend quite a bit of time describing the architectural design of the roofs of the places I visit. For locals, these things are probably just normal aspects of life, so I doubt they put much effort into thinking about the mastery of their architectural design, but for me (and possibly you if you’re reading this), a foreigner, whenever I see these impressive roofs, whether they’re covering a Hokkien or Hakka building, or a Japanese-era structure, I’m always in awe of the work that goes into constructing them.

For most of us westerners, a roof is just a roof, it doesn’t really do all that much other than cover your house, and protect you from the elements. Here in Taiwan, though, when buildings are constructed, a lot of thought and consideration goes into the design, especially when it comes to the decorative elements that are added. So, even though the Hokkien-style Swallowtail Ridge roof has become one of the more common styles of traditional architectural design that you’ll find here in Taiwan, they’re still quite amazing to behold.

The ‘swallow’ (燕子) is a pretty common species of bird here in Taiwan, so common in fact that as I’m sitting in a coffee shop writing this article, there are about twenty of them relaxing on a power line just outside the window. Even though swallows are considered to be quite beautiful, I’d (probably unfairly) compare them to crows back home in Canada. The biggest difference between the two, though, is that crows in Canada are considered pests, and if they construct a nest near your home, you do your best to get rid of it. In Taiwan on the other hand, if a pair of swallows construct a nest near your home it is considered to be good luck and people will often make an effort to ensure that the nest is safe, and that that babies won’t fall to their deaths.

With that in mind, it is common in Taiwan for people to say that ‘swallows always return to their nest,’ a metaphor for the feeling of ‘homesickness’ people have while living far away. Given that the Hokkien people are a well-traveled bunch, the swallow, and more specifically, the swallowtail roof is a reminder of home, childhood memories, and is one of the reasons why this is a style of design that never gets old, as it is so culturally entrenched in the hearts of the people here.

So what exactly is a Swallowtail Roof? Well, that answer is something that I personally found surprising.

Speaking to the different styles of roof mentioned earlier, before I give you the answer to the question above, it’s probably a good idea to provide some ideas of the common styles of architectural design that are common in Taiwan. I’ve seen estimations that there are at least sixty different variations of roof design common within Southern-Fujianese architecture, but those variations can be easily divided up into six specific styles of design, many of which can be found all over Taiwan today.

  1. Hip Roof Style (廡殿頂) - a style of roof with four slopes on the front, rear, left and right. It is the highest ranking of all of the styles of architectural design and is reserved only for palaces and places of worship. The National Theater and Concert Hall (國家兩廳院) at Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall are pretty good examples of this style of design.

  2. Hip-and-Gable Style (歇山頂) - One of the most common styles of roof design, the hip-and-gable roof is a three-dimensional combination of a two-sided hip and four-sided gable roof. Many of Taiwan’s places of worship, ancestral shrines, and historic mansions use this style. It is a style of architectural design that is thought to have originated during the Tang Dynasty (唐朝), and is used all over East Asia, most significantly in Japan.

  3. Pyramid-Roof Style (攢尖頂) - a style of roof that is more common for ‘auxiliary buildings’ rather than temples. You’ll often find this style of roof covering pavilions in parks, drum towers at temples, etc. Within this specific style, it is uncommon to encounter swallowtail designs, although they might be adorned with some of the porcelain art that I’ll introduce below.

  4. Hard Mountain Style (硬山頂) - a basic style of roof design that features two slopes on the front and rear of the building. This style of design is most common in Hokkien houses and mansions around Taiwan. Despite being more subdued compared to the other styles of roof, it is a functional and practical roof that is easily repaired.

  5. Overhanging Gable Style (懸山頂) - a style of roof that became common in Taiwan during the half century of Japanese Colonial rule. This type of roof is a variation of the hip-and-gable roof mentioned above and features steep sloping hips in the front and rear of the building with triangular ends on both sides of the building.

  6. Rolling Shed Roof (捲棚頂) - considered to be similar to both the Hard Mountain and Overhanging Gable styles above, this specific style of roof is common in historic homes in Taiwan, but doesn’t feature a vertical ridge on top.

Of the six styles of roof listed above, it has been most common for the Hokkien people to make use of the ‘Hip-and-Gable’, ‘Hard Mountain’, and more recently, the ‘Overhanging Gable’ styles of architectural designs for their homes and places of worship. Notably, these particular styles of design were the three that are most easily adapted to Hokkien decorative elements, and the natural environment of Southern Fujian and Taiwan. It’s important to remember that in both of these coastal areas, any building that was constructed would have to be able to respond to the area’s natural environment and thus, sloping roofs like these helped to ensure that they were protected from periods of torrential rain.

Ultimately, the alterations that the Hokkien people made were to better fit their needs in ways that were both functional and decorative at the same time. To answer the question above, though, one thing that doesn’t often get mentioned in literature about Hokkien ‘Swallowtail Roofs’ is that they’re not actually a specific style of architectural roof design. In fact, the so-called ‘swallowtail’ is just a decorative modification of a traditional style of roof. The ‘swallowtail’ as we know it today, though, comes with several additions and decorative elements to a roof’s design that helps to ensure its cultural authenticity.

Obviously, the most important aspect is the curved ‘swallowtail ridge’ (燕尾脊 / tshio-tsit) located at the top of the roof of a building. With both ends of the ridge curving upwards, it is a design that is likened to the shape of a sharp crescent moon, and the straight lines on the ridge add beautiful symmetry to a structure. The Mid-Section (頂脊 / 正脊) of the curved ridge tends to be flat, and is an important section of the swallowtail where decorative elements are placed that assist in identifying the purpose of the building. The curved ridge also features a flat section facing outward, known as the ‘Ridge Spine’ (西施脊), where you’ll often find an incredible amount of decorative elements in the form of Hokkien cut porcelain carvings (剪瓷雕). Connecting to the ridge spine, you’ll also find Vertical Ridges (規帶) running down both the eastern and western sides of the sloping roof. These ridges are functional in that they help to keep the roof tiles locked in place, but they’re also decorative in that they feature platforms (牌頭) on the ends where you’ll find even more elaborate decorative additions.

Finally, one of the more indicative elements of Hokkien style roofs are the red tiles that cover the roof. As mentioned earlier, it is important for these roofs to be able to take care of rain water, so you’ll notice that these roofs feature what appear to be curved lines of tiles that look like tubes running down the roof. Between the tube-like tiles (筒瓦), there are also flat tiles (板瓦), which are meant to allow rainwater to flow smoothly down the roof. Crafted in kilns with Taiwanese red clay, the tiles might not seem all that important, but they do offer the opportunity to add more decorative elements in that the tube-like tiles have circular ends (瓦當) where you’ll find a myriad of designs depending on the building.

Suffice to say, when it comes to the addition of a swallowtail ridge to a building’s roof, there are a number of considerations that factor into their construction. The length, degree of curvature and decorative elements are all aspects of the design that are carefully planned, but are mostly determined by the size of a building, and more importantly the amount of money that is willing to be spent.

You’ll probably notice that the grander the swallowtail, or the number of layers to a building’s roof, is usually a pretty good indication of how important a place of worship is, or the deities who are enshrined within. In Taipei, Longshan Temple (艋舺龍山寺) is probably one of the best examples of the grandeur of a historic temple of importance, while the recently reconstructed Linkou Guanyin Temple (林口竹林山觀音寺) is probably one of the best examples of the spectacular things one can do with this style of design if you have deep enough pockets to throw at it.

Cut porcelain carvings (剪瓷雕)

Hokkien-style ‘Cut Porcelain Carvings’ come in several variations, each of which represent different themes or types of objects that are considered culturally or historically significant to the community, and the local environment. The art of cut porcelain carvings is thought to have been brought to Taiwan by Hokkien immigrants at some point in the seventeenth century, and while there are arguments as to whether Taiwan’s porcelain art originated in Chaozhou (潮州), Quanzhou (泉州) or Zhangzhou (漳州), it’s important to note that the craftsmen in Taiwan today have made a number of alterations to the traditional style which makes it difficult to determine the origin.

So, let’s just call it Taiwanese, then?

Another reason why its difficult to know how the decorative art arrived in Taiwan is due to the fact that authorities during the Qing Dynasty placed a ban on migration across the strait, which means that it was likely brought by undocumented migrants who fled the political situation in China, possibly during the late stages of the Ming Dynasty (明朝) when Koxinga (鄭成功) and his pirate navy arrived on the island given that they set off from the port in Amoy, which is today Xiamen City (廈門市) in Fujian.

One would think that this traditional style of art might be suffering from a lack of craftsmen in the modern era, few homes today are constructed in the traditional Hokkien style of architectural design, but you’d probably be surprised to learn that the creation of this cut porcelain art remains a thriving business in Taiwan, with newly constructed temples requiring new designs in addition to the thousands of already well-established places of worship across the country requiring some restoration work. Suffice to say, the creation of these carvings takes a considerable amount of time and craftsmanship, which also means that they’re quite expensive. Thus, you’ll find several large and well-known workshops owned by craftsmen, who have been working in the field for generations, but you’ll also find people who have branched out on their own and started creating their own work.

‘Cut porcelain carvings’, which are likened to life-like mosaics, are essentially a collage of small pieces of porcelain fixed to a pre-formed plaster shape, craftsmen recycle material from bowls, plates and pots, which they then crush into smaller pieces, dye with bright colors, and then attach to an object, which could be human-like figures, animals, flowers, etc. Decorative in nature, the carvings are also considered to represent themes such as ‘good luck’, ‘good fortune’, ‘longevity’, ‘protection’, etc.

As mentioned earlier, one of the major differences between the traditional Hokkien art and what’s practiced today is that artisans first form an object with wire frames that are then covered in high quality plaster with the porcelain then glued on top, which is a method that helps to ensure longevity.

When it comes to these carvings, you’ll have to keep in mind that what you’ll see really depends on the specific kind of building you’re looking at, and where you are, as the decorative elements tend to vary between different regions in Taiwan. With a wide variation of decorative elements, what you’ll see depicted on a Buddhist temple, Taoist temple, or even on a mansion may include some of the following elements:

Human Elements: The Three Stars (福祿壽), Magu (麻姑), the Eight Immortals (八仙), Nezha (哪吒), the Four Heavenly Kings (四大天王), Mazu (媽祖), Guanyin (觀音), and depictions of stores from the ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ (三國演義) and the ‘Journey to the West’ (西遊記), etc.

Animals and Mythical Creatures: Phoenixes (龍鳳), dragons (龍), peacocks (孔雀), Aoyu (鰲魚), carp (鯉魚), Qilin (麒麟), lions, elephants, tigers, leopards, horses, etc.

Floral and Fruit Elements: Peonies (牡丹), lotuses (蓮花), narcissus flowers (水仙), plum blossoms (梅花), orchids (蘭花), bamboo (竹子), chrysanthemum (菊花), pineapples, wax apples, grapes, etc.

While some of these elements are quite straight-forward, quite a few of them are completely foreign to people who aren’t from Taiwan, so I’ll offer an introduction to some of the most important of the ‘Cut Porcelain’ decorative elements.

The Three Stars (三星 / 福祿壽)

One of the more common roof-decorations you’ll find in Taiwan are the depictions of the three elderly figures at the top-center of a swallowtail roof. Known as the ‘Sanxing’ (三星), which is literally translated as the ‘three stars’, you might also hear them referred to as ‘Fulushou’ (福祿壽), a Mandarin play-on words for ‘Fortune’, ‘Longevity’ and ‘Prosperity’.

In this case, Fu (福), Lu (祿), and Shou (壽) appear as human-like figures and are regarded as the masters of the three most important celestial bodies in Chinese astrology, Jupiter, Ursa Major and Canopus. When you see the ‘Sanxing’ on top of a temple, they appear as three bearded wise men. Coincidentally they might also look a bit familiar to the average observer as ‘Fuxing’ (福星) is depicted as Yang Cheng (楊成), a historic figure from the Tang Dynasty, while ‘Luxing’ (綠星) is represented by the ‘God of Literature’ (文昌帝君), and Shouxing (壽星), who is represented by Laozi (老子), the founder of Taoism.

Within Chinese iconography, these ‘three wise men’ are quite common, and their images can be found throughout China, Vietnam and South East Asia. Here in Taiwan, you’ll most often find them adorning the apex of a Taoist or Taiwanese Folk Religion Temple.

The Double-Dragon Pagoda (雙龍寶塔)

Known by a number of names in both Mandarin and English, the ‘Double-Dragon Pagoda’ (雙龍寶塔) or the ‘Double Dragon Prayer Hall’ (雙龍拜塔) is essentially a multi-layered pagoda that is similarly placed at the top-center of a Buddhist temple, or a mixed Buddhist-Taiwanese folk-religion place of worship.

As usual, while acting as a decorative element, the pagoda also represents a number of important themes - it is used as a method of ‘warding off evil spirits’ and for disaster prevention, in addition to representing both filial piety and virtue. For Buddhists in particular, pagodas have been important buildings with regard to the safe-keeping of sacred texts, so having the dual dragons encircling the pagoda in this way can also be interpreted as ‘protecting the Buddha’ or ‘precious things’.

Whenever you encounter a temple with one of these Double-Dragon Pagodas, if you look closely, the pagoda will have several levels, with two green dragons on either side, or encircling it. In Mandarin, there’s a popular idiom that says “It is better to save a life than to build a seven-level pagoda” (救人一命、勝造七級浮屠), so having the dragons protecting the pagoda speaks to the salvation one might receive while visiting the temple as it is protected by dragons from the heavens. That being said, the number of levels you see on the pagoda is also quite important as the number of levels indicates the rank of the deity enshrined within the temple.

Double-Dragon Clutching Pearls (雙龍搶珠)

One of the other common images depicted in the center of a roof of a temple is the ubiquitous ‘Double-Dragon Clutching Pearls’ design. However, unlike the two mentioned above, when it comes to the dragons clutching pearls, there is a wide variation of designs, so even though it’s a common theme found on Taoist places of worship, you may not encounter the exact same design very often. Nevertheless, no matter how they might vary in appearance, what always remains the same is that there will be a glowing red pearl in the middle with dragons on either side.

Originating from an ancient folklore story, the image of two dragons surrounding a pearl is something that you’ll find not only on temples like this, but in paintings, carved in jade, and various other forms of artwork.

The origin of the story is a long one, so I’ll try my best to briefly summarize how the image became popularized - essentially, a long time ago, a group of fairies were attacked by a demon while resting near a sacred pond only to be saved by a pair of green dragons. When the ‘Queen Mother of the West’ (王母娘娘) heard about this, she gifted the two dragons with a golden pearl that would grant one of them immortality.

Neither of the dragons wanted to take the pearl, showing great humility to each other, so after a while the Jade Emperor (玉皇) gifted them a second pearl. Afterwards, the dragons devoted their immortality to helping others, and used their power to send wind and rain to assist with the harvest.

Thus, when it comes to this particular image, what you’ll want to keep in mind is that they are meant to highlight themes of ‘harmony’, ‘prosperity’, ‘humility’, ’good luck’ and the ‘pursuit of a better life,’ which makes them a perfect addition to a place of worship.

Dragons and Aoyu (雙龍 / 鰲魚)

In addition to being featured at the top-center of a roof, you’ll also find cut-porcelain depictions of dragons located in various other locations on the exterior of a Hokkien-style building. By this point, I’d only be repeating myself if I went into great detail about the purpose of the dragons, but it’s important to note that the ‘dragon’ is something that is synonymous with traditional Chinese culture, and given that people of Chinese ethnic origin consider themselves to be ‘descendants of the dragon’ (龍的傳人), and the emperors themselves regarded as reincarnations of dragons, they are particularly important within the cultural iconography of the greater-China region.

In the English-language, dragons are merely dragons, but in Mandarin, there are a multitude of names to describe these mythical creatures in their various forms. Similarly, for most westerners, dragons are regarded as fire-breathing monsters, but within Chinese culture, their roles are completely reversed. Dragons are noted for their power over water and nature, and instead of being aggressive creatures that bring about death and destruction, they’re known for their good deeds.

Most commonly found adorning the main ridge and at both of the ends, the cut-porcelain depictions of dragons that you’ll encounter on roofs in Taiwan are often the most complex decorative elements on a building and are meant to symbolize power, enlightenment and protection, especially with regard to their ability to prevent fire. The most common dragon that you’ll find adorning the roofs of Taiwan’s places of worship are of the ‘hornless-dragon mouth’ or ‘chiwen’ (鴟吻) variety. Translated literally as ‘owl mouth’, this type of dragon is known as one of the ‘Nine Dragons’ (九龍), each of which are known for specific protective functions. In this case, ‘chiwen’ dragons are known for their affinity for swallowing things, especially fire. They’re depicted as hornless dragons, with fish-like, truncated bodies, large wide-open mouths, and colorful scale-like spikes all over their bodies.

That being said, if you look closely at the ‘dragons’ that adorn the top of temple roofs, you might notice that they’re not always of the ‘chiwen’ variety and are often a complex fusion of other mythical creatures. While these creatures almost always appear with a dragon’s head, fooling most people, you’ll find that they may also feature the body of a phoenix, tortoise, horse, etc.

Similarly, sometimes what you might think is a dragon actually isn’t a dragon at all.

Which to tell the truth, can often be quite confusing if you’re not adept at examining the finer details of these decorative elements.

Even though these other creatures appear dragon-like, especially with regard to the ‘chiwen’ variety, its very likely that you’ve encountered another common variety of Hokkien cut-porcelain decorative elements. Depicting a mythical creature known as an “Aoyu” (鰲魚), these creatures feature a dragon head and animal body fusion. An ‘Aoyu’ is basically a ‘carp’ that is in the process of transforming into a dragon. With one foot in the door regard to the transformation process, an Aoyu features the head of a dragon, but maintains the body of a fish. Similar to the role that the chiwen play, you’ll often find Aoyu featured on both of the ends of the roof’s ridge as they’re likewise known for their ability to ‘swallow fire and spit water’ meaning that they’re also there to offer protection to the temple.

Of all the cut-porcelain art that you’ll find decorating places of worship in Taiwan, you’ll probably notice that the dragons are often the most complex in terms of their design and the attention to detail that goes into crafting their images. The complexity of the dragon’s head and the spiky-scales on their bodies require a tremendous amount of work, which should highlight just how important they are.

Cut-Porcelain Decorative Murals

While the larger cut-porcelain decorative elements are much easier to identify, you’ll also notice that there are smaller, yet very elaborate mural-like decorations located along the roof’s main ridge, on the ridge platform and on the lower sections of the roof. Even though almost every place of worship in Taiwan features these types of murals, they are often quite small, and you have to look very carefully to actually identify them. If you find yourself traveling the country with a local friend, unless they’re a temple experts, it’s safe to say they won’t be much help in identify what story these murals are depicting, which is part of the reason why these things can be so confusing. If you find yourself really interested in knowing exactly what was going on, you’d be better off asking one of the temple volunteers inside, or trying to find the information online.

Even though there is a wide variation of stories that each of these murals depict, they generally illustrate the following themes: Mythology (神話), events from the Investiture of the Gods (封神演義), events from the Spring and Autumn Period (春秋時期), events from the Chu–Han War (楚漢戰爭), events from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義), events from the Journey to the West (西遊記), Buddhist stories (佛的故事), and finally, Taiwanese Folklore Stories (台灣神明傳說).

To highlight the complexity of identifying what these murals depict, if I use the ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ as an example, the novel is over 800,000 words long, features 120 chapters, and more than a thousand characters. So, even if someone tells you that the mural is depicting a story from the novel, you’d have to be quite well-versed in Chinese Classics to be able to identify the specific event.

However, when it comes to the local stories that you’ll find depicted on these buildings, you’re going to find murals depicting events in the lives of the most popular religious figures in Taiwan, and those that hail from the Hokkien homeland. Some of these stories are likely to include: Mazu conquering Thousand-Mile-Eye and Wind-Following Ear (媽祖收千順二將軍), Mazu Assisting Koxinga (媽祖幫助鄭成功), Tangshan Crosses the Taiwan Strait (唐山過臺灣), the Eight Immortals Depart and Travel to the East (八仙出處東遊記), the Eight Immortals Cross the Sea (八仙過海), etc. Similarly, it’s important to note that while these events are often depicted with the help of Hokkien cut-porcelain art, you’ll also find them carved into wood, painted on walls, and carved in stone.

If you’ve ever seen a Lonely Planet, or any travel guide about Taiwan for that matter, its very likely that you’ve seen a photo of one of a cut-porcelain dragon in the foreground with Taipei 101 in the background. While it may seem cliche at this point, the mixture of these two elements helps to illustrate both the traditional and modern fusion of contemporary life in Taiwan today.

The Hokkien people make up an estimated seventy-five percent of Taiwan’s population today, so even though it may seem like they are the predominant cultural force on the island, its also important to remember that the modifications that have been made to their style of design over the years have adapted elements of Taiwan’s other cultural groups, including the island’s Indigenous people, the Hakka’s, etc.

What you’ll see in Taiwan today, while similar to that of Southern Fujian is a style of architectural design that has been refined to meet the needs of the people of Taiwan, and thus, no matter where you fall on the argument of ‘Hokkien vs. Taiwanese’, it goes without saying that this style of design has become ubiquitous as an aspect of the cultural identity of the Taiwanese nation today.

Obviously, as I mentioned earlier, this article is only touching on the top of the iceberg when it comes to this topic. Sadly, it remains a topic that isn’t widely accessible in the English-language, and information tends to be hard to come by. Still, I hope it helps clear up any questions any of you may have with regard to what you’re seeing when you visit a temple or historic building in Taiwan during your travels. If not, feel free to leave a comment, or send an email, and I’ll do my best to answer any other questions you may have.

References

  1. Taiwanese Hokkien | 臺灣話 (Wiki)

  2. Hokkien culture | 閩南文化 (Wiki)

  3. Hokkien Architecture | 闽南传统建筑 (Wiki)

  4. Architecture of Taiwan | 臺灣建築 (Wiki)

  5. 剪瓷雕 | 燕尾脊 (Wiki)

  6. 台灣建築裡的秘密:從天后宮到行天宮,每間寺廟都是活生生的台灣移民史 (Buzz Orange)

  7. 極具特色的北方歇山式屋頂 ,硬山與廡殿式的結合,仙人騎鶴帶頭鎮守 (廟宇藝術)

  8. 台灣傳統民居簡介 (文山社區大學)

  9. 最常見的動物裝飾 (老古板的古建築之旅)

  10. 台灣民間信仰 (Wiki)


Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914文化創意產業園區)

While it wasn’t my intention from the outset, this modest little blog of mine has transformed into one of the most extensive English-language resources on the net regarding heritage buildings from Taiwan’s fifty year period of Japanese Colonial rule. Starting several years ago with an article about one of the nation’s few remaining Martial Arts Halls, I’ve gone on to cover an ever expanding range of topics, in an attempt to better document that short, but very consequential period of Taiwan’s modern history and development.

There are some topics, however that are just too extensive to be covered with a simple blog post, and admittedly the topic of today’s post is one that I’ve avoided for quite a while. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to publish something about the Huashan 1914 Creative Park, it’s just that the subject is one that I knew would be overwhelming in the amount of work that would goes into writing about it in the way I write articles - and let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to take photos, research and write about locations that few people have no idea exist. So when it comes to writing about what is arguably one of Taiwan’s most well-known tourist destinations, there is a little more pressure to make sure that anything I publish does the place justice, and offers readers photos and information that they might not be able to find elsewhere.

Suffice to say, this article has been years in the making, combining years of research and knowledge about the Japanese-era, and photos from my numerous visits to the park, which has become one of the Taipei’s most well-loved tourist destinations for both international and domestic tourists, alike.

However, given how busy the park is, how large it is, and how quickly things change, it is difficult to take the kind of photos that I usually do for places like this, so this time, I’m not going to focus as much on the architectural design of the buildings within the park as I usually do, and instead spend more time talking about it’s history before introducing the creative park that occupies the space today.

For those of you who aren’t currently here in Taiwan and have landed here on this article wondering what ‘Huashan’ is, or why it has become such an important tourist destination, let me start by offering a brief explanation as to why it has become so iconic over the past decade.

Known officially as the ‘Huashan 1914 Creative Park’ (華山1914文化創意產業園區), or just ‘Huashan’ (華山) to locals, the park is located on the site of the former Taipei Distillery, a more than a century-old Japanese-era factory that stayed in operation until the late 1980s. Sitting abandoned on a tasty plot of real estate for quite some time, the historic park was set for demolition by the Taipei City Government until groups of artists and civil activists started a campaign to have it preserved and ultimately converted into a cultural space. Obviously successful in their efforts, the result was a ‘Creative Park’ that followed the model of urban-regeneration that has become popular in Europe, restoring the buildings and bringing them back to life.

The park today consists of a number of buildings and warehouses that were restored and transformed into one of the unlikeliest, yet hippest tourist destinations in the capital, home to one of Taipei’s best live-music performance venues, a prized independent film cinema, a constantly changing number of exhibition spaces, pop-up shops, and a number of restaurants, coffee shops and bars.

The best thing about Huashan is that one visit is never enough - every visit results in a completely different experience, so it doesn’t matter if you’re visiting just to check it out, to enjoy a film or a concert, or to see one of the exhibitions taking place, the success of the factory’s restoration has become a model for historic properties across the country to emulate. Thanks to the success of the ‘Huashan model’, today we’re fortunate to have an increasing number of these heritage-buildings-converted-into-creative-spaces popping up in almost all of Taiwan’s major cities.

The existence of the Huashan Creative Park is not only a celebration of Taipei’s history, but also an important space to show-case the creativity and artistry of Taiwan’s youth, the future of the country.

If you’re visiting Taipei, there are a number of important destinations to check out while you’re in town, but few places are arguably as prolific these days as Huashan, making it one of the spots that tourists absolutely have to visit when they’re in Taiwan.

Taihoku Distillery (臺北酒工場)

For most of us living here in Taiwan, whenever we refer to the historic Taipei Distillery, we simply just call it “Huashan” (華山), so whenever someone suggests a visit, no matter if they’re a local or a foreigner, they always just say: “Let’s go to Huashan!” However, as I mentioned earlier, the official name of the creative park that occupies the space today is a much longer one and even though few people ever refer to it by its full name, it is a name that holds considerable meaning and tells us a lot about its history.

Better known for much of its history as the ‘Taihoku Distillery’, or the ‘Taipei Distillery’, most visitors these days might find themselves wondering where the “Huashan” title comes from, likewise, why did they randomly add a ‘1914’ to the title?

Below you’ll find the answer both of those questions while I introduce the history of the distillery, which I’ll present with my own interpretation as well as with a concise timeline of events. I’m going to deviate from my usual writing style with this one though as I’m going to focus on the distillery as a whole, and won’t focus on each of the buildings until later when I introduce the park that is located on the site today.

Officially opened in 1914 (大正3年) as the privately-owned Houji Distillery (芳醸株式会社酒造廠) in the capital’s Kabayamacho district (樺山町 / かばやまちょう), the factory represented a massive investment in the quickly developing Japanese colony. Importing machinery and refrigeration equipment directly from Japan, the factory took a modern approach to the production of alcohol in Taiwan, which previously was a seasonal affair given the sub-tropical environment of the island.

On a large piece of land parallel to the railway, the factory was in a prime location within one of the capital’s most important neighborhoods, home to the Taihoku Prefectural Hall (臺北州廳), Taihoku City Hall (臺北市役所) and the Taihoku Jōdo Shinshū Temple (淨土宗臺北別院), all of which were a short distance away from the original Taihoku Railway Station (臺北驛 / たいほくえき).

Note: Taihoku (たいほく) is the Japanese word for Taipei (台北)

Huashan in the direct centre of this Japanese-era map of Taipei.

In the early years, the distillery focused primarily on producing Japanese-style sake for the market here in Taiwan, but later added Insam-ju (인삼주), which is a bit of a head-scratcher as it is an infused alcohol made from Ginseng, a traditional alcohol from Korea. While this type of alcohol is referred to literally in Chinese as ‘Ginseng Wine’ (人蔘酒), back in Japan it’s more commonly referred to as Goryeo Ginseng Wine (高麗人蔘酒), in reference to the historic Goryeo Kingdom (高麗國). To both the Japanese and Formosans, it was a foreign alcohol, and while people may have enjoyed it, it’s difficult to see them producing an entire line of alcohol for the thousand or so Korean residents of Taihoku Prefecture at the time.

Within a few years of the distillery opening for business, a piece of the land within the factory was leased out to the Nippon Camphor Company (日本樟腦株式會社), which opened a production and refinery facility on the northwest portion of the grounds. Then, in 1920 (大正9年), the president of the Houji Distillery, Konosuke Anbe (安部幸之助) had a brewery constructed on a large plot of land on the opposite side of the railroad, a short distance from the distillery.

With machinery imported directly from America (Hawaii to be specific), the newly established Takasago Brewery (高砂麥酒株式會社 / たかさごびーるかぶしきがいしゃ) sought to enter the beer market with cheaper, locally produced beer to compete with imported Yebisu Beer (惠比壽啤酒) and Kirin Beer (麒麟啤酒), both of which remain quite popular in Taiwan today.

Note: Despite the company experiencing considerably financial difficulties throughout the Japanese-era, Takasago Beer (高砂麥酒 / たかさごびーるかぶし) has endured for more than century, more particularly under its current name, Taiwan Beer (台灣啤酒).

Everything changed in 1922 (大正11年) when the colonial government instituted what is best described as a hostile takeover, establishing the Monopoly Bureau of the Taiwan Governor's Office (臺灣總督府專賣局), a government agency that was responsible for the production and sale of all liquor and tobacco products in Taiwan, in addition to opium, salt, and camphor.

Faced with the decision to cooperate with the takeover, or being forced out of business, the owners of the distillery weren’t given much of a choice, yet thanks to some clever maneuvering and political know-how, they were able to maintain portions of the ‘Takasago’ business thanks to some good timing and some loopholes in the monopoly set up.

That is a story for another day, though.

Note: The Takasago Corporation remains in operation today, known as the Takasago International Corporation (高砂香料工業株式會社 / たかさごこうりょうこうぎょう). Relocating back to Japan in 1945 with a new headquarters in Japan, and instead focusing on the chemical industry. The Taipei Brewery remained in operation after the war, becoming known as the Jianguo Brewery (建國啤酒廠), and is now a historic property and tourist destination.

Obviously, the colonial government wouldn’t have had the technical know-how for the production of alcohol, so the original owners were able to cooperate with the government for a period of time so that the transition could be completed smoothly. In 1929, the distillery became known as the ‘Taihoku Distillery’ (台北酒工場), or its more official bureaucratic name, “Taihoku Branch of the Taiwan Alcohol and Tobacco Monopoly Bureau” (台灣總督府專賣局台北酒工廠).

It was around this time that the distillery also started to diversify with a number of new varieties of alcohol on the production line (fruit wines and plum wine), in addition to the opening of a warehouse where imported alcohols were stored prior to being sent out to the market.

During this period the camphor production facility remained in operation, and business at both was so good that in 1937 (昭和12年), a freight station was constructed nearby to assist in the process of transporting products from the distillery and the camphor refinery to other areas of Taiwan.

Kabayama Station (華山駅 / かざんえき), which was within walking distance of Taihoku Station, remained in operation until it was phased out in 1987 (民國76年) when the railroad was shifted underground. Sadly, even though the original station hasn’t been demolished, it sits abandoned and is somewhat of a wasted space that could be a valuable addition to the culture park. Walking past the station today, few realize that prior to the arrival of the Taipei MRT, it was once a train station.

Note: It’s important to note that Huashan Station was notoriously used during Taiwan’s long period of Martial Law, known locally as the White Terror (白色恐怖), as a loading station to transport political prisoners.

When the Second World War came to an end and Japan was forced to surrender control of Taiwan, the Chinese Nationals swooped in and discovered that the way things were set up in Taiwan were already quite efficient, so not much was changed at first. The monopoly system remained in place with the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau (臺灣省菸酒公賣局) taking over.

Left with top-notch production facilities, the distillery shifted from the production of Japanese sake and instead produced Chinese-style rice wines (米酒) and a low-cost cassava-based (木薯) wine named “thài-peh tsiú” (太白酒), which became a staple in the early years of the post-war era.

Over the next few decades, not much changed at the factory, as it entered what they refer to as the ‘golden age’ of alcohol production in Taiwan. In the early 1960s though, camphor production in Taiwan came to a halt as the supply of camphor and the demand pretty much fizzled out.

Even though there was considerable profit in the production of alcohol for the thirsty residents of Taiwan, the cost of maintaining a production facility within the heart of Taipei became far too expensive, and the quality of water in Taipei became such an issue that considerable quality issues with the production line started to become a problem. Ultimately, this resulted in a necessary migration out of the city to a larger, modern facility in Taoyuan’s Guishan District (龜山區), where the distillery continues to produce a wide variety of alcohols today.

When the distillery moved, the original was left abandoned for a few years while the government was left to figure out what to do with it. There was some debate to have the whole thing abolished and developed into private land, but as the railroad was shifting underground, nothing could be dug in the area in fear of causing disruptions to the construction process. Then, the government came up with plans to construct a new Legislative Assembly Building on the land, but those plans eventually fell through as well.

It was during this period that local artists and other creatives started sneaking onto the property and using the empty space to display their art. After a while, the abandoned distillery became so popular that people started to campaign for it to officially become a permanent exhibition space.

From the early 1990s until the turn of the new millennium, nothing was decided, but the massive space left in its abandoned state was a waste, so the newly established TTL Monopoly Bureau (臺灣菸酒股份有限公司) leased it out for a period of three years to the Ministry of Culture (文化部) until they could figure out what to do with it permanently. The debate lasted well into the 2000s, even after the site was recognized as a protected historic property, which ensured that public funds would be provided for its restoration, but didn’t specify what should actually happen.

Plans ended up shifted back and forth for a few years, but ultimately the Huashan 1914 Creative Park opened to the public in 2007, becoming not only a massively popular tourist destination, but one of the most important places for the creative people of Taipei to show-case their talent.

Taipei Distillery Timeline

Dating back to 1914, the history of the Taipei Distillery is a long and complicated one, so in order to better explain in a more concise way, I’m going to split up the timeline into several different sections to make it easier to understand. Admittedly, this timeline is a compilation of several resources, but I’ve put it together in a way where I’ve omitted some of the unnecessary or unimportant aspects of the factory’s history in order to keep things clear and on topic.   

Japanese-era Taihoku Distillery (日治造酒場時期)

  • 1914 (大正3年) - The privately operated Houji Distillery (芳醸株式会社酒造廠 / ほうじょう かぶしきがいしゃ しゅぞうしょう) opens for operation. Producing sake under the name Moth Orchid Sake (蝴蝶蘭清酒), in reference to one of Taiwan’s most famous flowers, as well as Ginseng Wine (人參酒). With machinery and refrigeration equipment imported directly from Japan, the factory is able to produce sake throughout the year.

  • 1917 (大正6年) - The ‘Taihoku Branch of the Nippon Camphor Company’ (日本樟腦株式會社台北支店) opens a production and refinery factory on the northwest area of the grounds, but located separately to the Distillery in the red brick buildings.

  • 1922 (大正11年) - The colonial government consolidates control over a number of industries in Taiwan under its monopolization scheme, and wineries were either taken over by the government or forced to shut down.

  • 1929 (昭和4年) - The government officially renames the Distillery “Taihoku Distillery” (專賣局台北酒工場), or “Taihoku Branch of the Taiwan Alcohol and Tobacco Monopoly Bureau.” The factory is also expanded and diversifies into the production of a number of different alcohols as well as opening a warehouse for the import and repackaging of foreign alcohol.

Post-War Taipei Wine Factory (台灣省菸酒公賣局時期)

  • 1946 (民國35年) - Following the lead of the Japanese Colonial government, the Republic of China continued with the monopoly scheme and renamed the Taihoku Factory to the “No. 1 Distillery” (台灣省菸酒公賣局第一酒廠), referring to its importance and location in the capital. Other alcohol producing factories around Taiwan that remained in operation likewise changed their names to a numbered one.

  • 1957 (民國47年) - The name of the Distillery was once again changed to “Taipei Distillery” (台北酒廠) and continued its role as one of the top alcohol producing factories in Taiwan. By this time, the government had already shifted away from sake production to a low-cost alcohol made from cassava named “thài-peh tsiú” (太白酒), which became a staple in the country in addition to producing a number of fruit wines (水果酒).

  • 1961 (民國50年) - An decreasing supply and demand for camphor forces the refinery to shut down.

  • 1987 (民國76年) - Due The rising cost of land and serious water pollution issues in the capital, the factory shifts operations to a newly construction production facility in what is currently Taoyuan City’s Guishan District (桃園市龜山區), which remains in operation today.

Abandonment and Plans for the Future (閒置時期)

  • 1992 (民國81年) - Plans are drawn up by the government to have the factory demolished and converted into a space for the construction of a new Legislative Assembly (立法院), however the plans turned out to be quite controversial and the plans were later abandoned.

  • 1997 (民國86年) - Left abandoned for almost a decade, a number of local artists started using the space for underground exhibitions of their work. Proving to be quite a success, artists and a number of civic groups petition the government to preserve the site and have it converted into a center for the arts.

  • 1998 (民國87年) - The TTL Monopoly Bureau (臺灣菸酒股份有限公司) leases the property to the Ministry of Culture on a three-year basis to have it used as a venue for arts and cultural events, creating the model for the future use of the space.

Culture Park (文化創意產業園區時期)

  • 1999 (民國88年) - The Huashan Arts and Culture Space (華山藝文特區) is officially established

  • 2002 (民國91年) - The Executive Yuan (行政院), one of the highest legislative bodies of the Taiwanese government, issues a national development plan to convert several abandoned or disused spaces owned by the Monopoly Bureau into cultural parks, with a budget of around 5.7 billion NTD (US $190 million).

  • 2003 (民國92年) - Huashan is officially recognized as a “culture and creative park” (創意文化園區), giving it a special status among the nation’s protected historic buildings as plans are drawn up to have the buildings on site restored and converted into a park.

  • 2007 (民國96年) - Having restored the buildings and retrofitting them with modern lighting, air-conditioning, etc, the government opens up sections of the park for bids from private enterprises to take part in the park using the ‘build-operate-transfer scheme’ (BOT) that has become common in recent years for historic buildings in preparation for its official re-opening as the “Huashan 1914 Creative Park” (華山創意文化園區).

Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914文化創意產業園區)

Now that we’ve covered the history of the distillery, let’s talk about the creative park, and each of the buildings that are located within it today. Before I start though, I’m just going to put it out there that I’m not going to be promoting any of the private businesses that have set up shop within the grounds of the park. The vast majority of the space within Huashan today is used for exhibition and event spaces, but in order to recoup some of their losses with regard to the restoration of the area, the Huashan 1914 Creative park is operated with a mixture of public and private sector cooperation, which has become a successful formula in recent years for ensuring that buildings like this can continue to be restored across the country.

These spaces include restaurants, bars, coffee shops and pop-up stores, which are constantly changing. To save myself some time, I’m not going to list them here today, so that I don’t have to constantly update this article.

If you’re interested in the topic, I recommend you check out my article where I outline the government’s efforts to preserve historic buildings, while taking advantage of private sector partnerships to ensure sustainability.

Link: The role of Public-Private Partnerships in Conserving Historic Buildings in Taiwan

According to its official website, the Huashan 1914 Creative Park, which opened in 2007, successfully became a ‘profitable’ enterprise in 2015, thanks to the tireless efforts of its operating team, who have discovered through years of experience how to better ‘manage time, manage space, manage creativity, manage stories, manage sentiments, and foster brands’ in order to transform the park into Taiwan’s premiere base for the promotion of cultural and creative arts. With a focus on promoting the nation’s artistic talent, the park has also been promoted as a tourist hot spot as well as a place where entrepreneurs are provided with the opportunity to showcase their innovation and creativity.

For most people, the emphasis placed on ‘profitability’ in the opening statement of the park’s description of itself might come across slightly odd, but it’s important to remember the history of the park, and the decade-long battle to have it preserved as a venue for the arts. Originally a publicly funded park, being able to stand on its own legs without constant government funds being committed to keeping it afloat means that its operating team has the benefit of freedom in their decision-making processes. However, it does mean that you’ll find a considerable amount of ‘commercial’ stuff happening at the park from time to time, with some of the exhibition spaces specifically only rented out to large companies as show-rooms for their newer products. The commercialization of the space likewise has also forced out many of the original artists whose work was instrumental in bringing the space into the limelight as an important arts venue.

Essentially, Huashan has become Taipei’s most important venue for cultural events, large-scale exhibitions, art galleries, pop-up stores and markets, theater productions and musical performances in addition to also being home to a number of on-site restaurants, coffeeshops and bars. The great thing about the park is that there is always something happening, and with the rate of which things change, you’ll find yourself drawn back for multiple visits.

Home to ‘Legacy’, one of the nation’s most important concert venues for the emerging Taiwanese Indie music scene, as well as SPOT, an independent movie theater, you’ll find a mixture of hip young people, who have come to enjoy their favorite bands in one area of the park while famed directors, actors and actresses hang out nearby.

A local busker putting on a performance for a weekend crowd of visitors.

I could write pages of text introducing the park, most of which has already been written before, so taking into consideration that the restoration of Japanese-era heritage sites is a subject where I have spent a significant amount of time researching, I’d prefer to take a moment to highlight why I personally consider the park to be such a resounding success, especially with regard to the ‘profitability’ aspect of the park mentioned above.

For people like me, the importance of Huashan’s success is that it has become a model for the conservation of other heritage sites in Taiwan and as mentioned earlier, the success of this park has spawned a number of other venues around the country.

Note: These sies most notably include the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), Taichung Station Railway Cultural Park (臺中驛鐵道文化園區), Kaohsiung’s Pier-2 Art Center (駁二藝術特區), Hualien Cultural and Creative Industries Park (花蓮文創產業園區) and the Taitung Railway Art Village (鐵道藝術村), each of which was converted from a Japanese-era industrial site or railway station.

The key thing to remember is that the success of Huashan has proven to any of the bureaucratic naysayers that these large heritage sites can be converted into cultural parks or tourist destinations, attracting crowds on a regular basis. Having large venues like these available within Taiwan’s major cities offers the people of Taiwan a space to explore the history of the nation, while also promoting arts and culture. Additionally, these larger parks, when profitable, allow the government to focus its financial resources on the continued restoration of historic buildings, which can in turn become cultural parks or serve a role in the public-private partnerships introduced in the article I linked earlier.

Most of us appreciate Huashan simply for the art and cultural experiences that we can enjoy on a regular basis, to others, it has also served a much more greater role in the preservation of Taiwanese history, which has been a monumental success and in turn we all end up profitting from the continued investment in the nation’s heritage.

With more than two dozen buildings, it would be difficult (and time consuming) to go over the architectural design of each of them like I usually do. That being said, taking into consideration that Huashan was originally a distillery, most of the buildings within the park tend to be generic warehouses anyway, so there isn’t much to talk about with regard to their design. There are, nonetheless, a number of buildings within the park that are quite beautiful, so don’t let the ‘generic’ description fool you.

With regard to the photos I’m sharing today, it is admittedly difficult to gain access to the buildings when they’re empty as they’re always in some sort of transition period - So if I’ve got photos of the buildings, I’ll provide them for better reference, but this is an aspect of the article where I’ll provide updates as I continue visiting and collecting more photos.

On the map above, I’ve numbered each of the buildings, and below I’ll briefly explain their original purpose, and what they’re used for today, so that you can have a better understanding of each of them.

Today, the former distillery is split up into four different sections, namely, the ‘East’ (東區), ‘West’ (西區), ‘Central’ (中區) and the ‘Plaza’ (廣場區) sections - At any given time, the best way to know what is taking place at the park is to check out the map on the official Huashan website as these things are constantly changing; Admittedly, the Chinese-language map is the one that gets updated more frequently, so I’d suggest checking that one out instead of the English one.

Link: Huashan 1914 Creative Park: Map (English) | 地圖 (中文)


Eastern Section (東區)

  1. Garage Workshop (車庫工坊)

One of the first buildings you’ll encounter on a visit to Huashan is the distillery’s historic garage and workshop. Over the years the building, which is split in two has been used for a number of purposes, most notably as a fire-prevention garage for the distillery. Later it was used as a distillation room, storage space and rest space for the winery.

Today the buildings continue to be split into two spaces, the smallest section home to a shop while the larger section is reserved as a restaurant space that can be rented out.

2. Red Wine Storage Warehouses (紅露酒貯藏庫)

One of the areas where a lot of the writing and research about the Taipei Distillery gets lost in translation is with regard to four of the most important exhibition spaces within the park. Mistakenly translated at times as the ‘Chinese Red Wine Factory’, these four buildings weren’t actually involved in the production of alcohol. If you’re asking me, a better translation to describe the buildings is probably ‘Red Wine Storage Warehouses’ as they were constructed as storage space for all of the alcohol that imported to Taiwan prior to being sent out to the market.

Also known as the ‘four-connected buildings’ (四連棟), the buildings as they appear now differ in their appearance from how they would have when they were originally constructed in 1933 (昭和8年) - This is because in the early 1980s when the government was widening Jinshan North Road (金山北路), the size of three of the buildings had to be reduced.

Now, each of the four rectangular-shaped warehouses varies in length. Nevertheless, the buildings were constructed with reinforced concrete and steel beams to help stabilize the roof, which is supported by iron roof trusses. As one would expect with a warehouse, the interior space is simply a corridor-like space with various steel beams throughout that help to stabilize the roof.

Somewhat generic in their architectural design, one of the cool things about the buildings is that they have been overtaken by nature and are completely covered with Japanese ivy (爬牆虎), a type of vine that is somewhat hilariously translated into English literally as ‘Wall-Climbing Tiger.’ The vines cover much of the facade of the buildings, also covering up the their arc-shaped windows and stone-washed lattices, but admittedly do a pretty good job giving the buildings more character.

Today, the four buildings are reserved specifically as exhibition spaces and there’s always something interesting happening inside them. Whenever you visit Huashan, it’s quite normal to find lines of people outside of the buildings waiting to get into an exhibition or taking photos against the wall with the vines.

3. Plum Wine Distillery (烏梅酒廠)

The Plum Wine building is one of the newer buildings within the historic distillery, dating back to 1931 (昭和6年), it is architecturally distinct from the other buildings on-site. The long rectangular-shaped building was constructed with concrete and differing from the other buildings in with distillery, features iron roof trusses to help stabilize the roof. The sides of the building feature some windows, but in order to control the amount of natural light entering the building, they are equipped with window grills to ensure that the wine isn’t disturbed during its distillery process, but also allowing for some natural air to come into the building through the windows.

Today the building is referred to as the “Umay Theater” (烏梅戲院), “Umay” being a romanized transliteration of “smoked plum” (烏梅), and is used primarily as a space for performing arts, with a stage constructed within for live events. As an event space, the building isn’t open to the public as often as some of the others on site, so unless you’re attending an event within, it’s difficult to see what’s inside!


Central Section (中區)

The most complicated section of the park, the “Central Section” is home to a number of buildings that served as the beating heart of the distillery, especially with regard to the production of alcohol. The buildings within this section are not only some of the most important, but are also some of the largest within the park, and serve a number of roles today.   

4. High Tower Building (高塔區)

The so-called ‘High Tower Buildings’ section of the distillery are a collection of three buildings that are likely to be part of your first impression of Huashan as they’re the closest to the main entrance. The ‘high’ part is simply a three-storey ‘tower’, and not really all that high when you compare it with, uh, Taipei 101. The other two parts of the building consist of a a two-floor section and a single-floor section, all of which are connected.

Prior to doing research for this article, I had assumed that these three buildings were used as the administration area of the distillery, given their appearance, but in actuality they were integral parts of the production process. Split into three sections, the front sections were home to a research laboratory and a quality-control facility while the brick section later become home to a fruit wine production area.

One of the reasons why I assumed that the buildings were part of an administrative headquarters was in part due to their location near the front of the distillery, but the other was because of their architectural design. Constructed in 1920 (大正9年), the exterior of the two larger buildings feature a meticulous attention to detail, especially with regard to their symmetry.

The walls were finished with stucco, something that the other buildings on-site weren’t afforded and they both feature vertical windows on the upper levels, and beautiful arched windows on the ground level.

The longer rectangular section of the building was constructed with red brick, and looks as if it were a later addition to the other buildings. Although the roofs on each of the buildings are basic in their architectural design, you’ll want to take note of the direction that the slopes face, with the highest level and lowest level facing the same direction, while the middle building faces the opposite direction, a deliberate design technique for controlling the flow of rain water.

Today, the three buildings are split into six sections, each of which serves a different purpose - Home to a Tourist Information Centre (服務中心), restaurants, and stores that focus on Taiwan-centric design products. Together with the ‘Huashan Forum’ (華山劇場), a patch of grass in front of the buildings, this section of the park is always one of the busiest areas of the park as there is always something happening.

5. Sake Distillery (清酒工坊)

Dating back to 1914 (大正3年), the Sake Distillery building was one of the first buildings constructed within the Houji Distillery and as you might have guessed, it was used for the production of Japanese rice wine with the head office of the company located on the second floor. As one of the most important buildings within the complex, the sake distillery was constructed with Taiwan’s climate in mind with one-meter thick concrete walls that kept the interior of the building cool in summer and warm in winter.

Sadly, even though the Sake Distillery is regarded as the oldest building within the park, its important to note that it underwent some refurbishment in the 1960s which altered its appearance. Nevertheless, while the building is lacking in decorative elements, it does feature beautiful arc-shaped windows on all four sides of the second floor where an ample amount of natural light is able to enter the building.

Today, the second floor is used as a multi-functional cultural exhibition space while the first floor is home to the Fab Cafe, an interesting space where designers get together to discuss projects, hold seminars and workshops, while also acting as a space where the general public can enjoy light meals and hand brewed coffee.

6. Wine Production Buildings (紅酒米酒作業場)

One of the largest sections of the historic distillery, located directly in the middle of the park, you’ll find a collection of warehouse-style buildings that were once home to production facilities for Red Wine (紅酒) and Rice Wine (米酒). Although it may seem like this section of the park is just one large inter-connected building, it’s actually three workshops constructed side by side and sharing the same roof.

Constructed in 1933 (昭和8年), these two-storey buildings were constructed with reinforced concrete and bricks, and like the warehouses mentioned above feature iron truss columns that rise up from the floor to help stabilize the roof. Each section of the roof features a slope that runs north-south, perpendicular to the alleyways that run between the buildings, where you’ll find a number of trees and plants were planted to enjoy the rainwater that fell from the roofs.

Given that these buildings were instrumental in the production of alcohol, the doors are quite large, allowing for the alcohol to be easily transported elsewhere. The interior space of these buildings would have been quite spacious during the distillery’s heyday, but this is one area where the restoration of the park took some liberties to ensure that the large space could be used much more efficiently. The three parts of the warehouse are currently split up into eight sections with the larger front sections serving as exhibition spaces while the rear area has been opened up for private partnerships that feature restaurants and stores.

7. The Compounded Liquor Distillery (再製酒作業場)

Possibly one of the most popular buildings within the park today, the historic ‘Compounded Liquor Distillery’ dates back to 1933 (昭和8年) and is once again just a long rectangular warehouse. Unlike some of the other warehouses on site though, this one features a more traditional elevated roof, which was constructed with wood and doesn’t require columns within the interior to help keep it stabilized. This traditional approach to the building’s architectural design has become quite important given that the space is currently used for 'Legacy,’ one of Taipei’s most important concert venues.

Thanks to the large spacious interior, converting this space into a concert venue was one of the best decisions that could have been made, and as the building is nearing its centennial, the name ‘Legacy’ seems quite fitting. That being said, unless you’re attending a concert within the building, it’s not likely that you’ll just be able to walk in whenever you want. There’s a lot of expensive sound equipment inside and they don’t want random tourists messing around with it.

Link: Legacy (Official Website)

8. Packaging Factory (包裝工場)

Strategically located to the rear of the distillery, you’d find the Packaging Factory, which served a dual-role as a packaging and storage facility for all of the products passing through the distillery. Located to the rear of the distillery, products would have been easily transported the short distance to Huashan Station (Kabayama Station 華山駅) where they could be easily transported across the island.

The building dates back to 1931 (昭和6年) and its design is similar to most of the other rectangular workshops within the park. Divided between its eastern and western sections, the longest part of the building is a single-floor section with an arched roof while the western section is a modern-looking two-storey building with a flat roof. Over the years the western partition of the building served a number of roles with the Monopoly Bureau having offices within and in the post-war period, a police presence was added for security.

Suffice to say, even though the packaging and storage building was once one of the busiest sections of the distillery, it was also the area that suffered the most when the distillery was abandoned in the 1980s. During the restoration process, parts of the building weren’t able to be saved, but that also allowed for the restoration team to take some liberties as the plan for this section of the park was to install a movie theatre.

Losing much of its historic appearance, the packaging building today is home to the SPOT Huashan Cinema (光點華山電影館), the SPOT Design Studio (光點生活) and SPOT Cafe Lumiere (光點咖啡時光). Under the direction of the Taiwan Film Culture Association (台灣電影文化協會) and famed Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢), the theatre has become a popular spot for independent film and film festivals in the city and often holds events where people in the film industry show up with the local media following along.

Link: SPOT 光點 Huashan Cinema (Official Website)

9. Maintenance Workshops (維修工廠)

Located to the rear of the Sake Distillery, you’ll find the ‘Maintenance Workshop’ buildings, each of date back to 1931 (昭和6年). This space is split up into three different sections and was important with regard to the upkeep of the factory and its operation. The largest building appears similar to many of the other rectangular warehouse buildings within the distillery, but it was where the on-site engineers would repair machinery.

Within the same building was the Electricity Distribution Building (配電室), or the ‘Switching Room’, which housed an electrical substation that ensured that power was never an issue. Finally, to the rear of the building was a separate building, one of the smallest within the park, and was essentially just a nicely designed tool shed.

Today the main workshop building is reserved as a space for performance art events and exhibitions while the tool shed is often rented out for a variety of pop-up shops. Notably, the exterior of the building is home to a beautiful banyan tree and a space where people often sit to chat with friends and enjoy some of the street performers who occupy the space on the weekends.

10. Distillery Building (蒸餾室)

Constructed in 1933 (昭和8年), the three-storey distillery building was connected directly to the Rice Wine Workshop and helped to streamline the distillaition process with a space that was reserved specifically for distilling the alcohol rather than doing it all in the same building.

The interior of the three-floor building features circular perforations in the floors that allowed the tall distilling machines to stand upright without wasting space. Like many of the other buildings on site, the building features large arch-shaped windows and was constructed using thick reinforced concrete to help keep the heat of the hot summer out of the building.

Today the building is used as an exhibition space and a spot for pop-up stores selling locally-made products, and is located within the beautiful covered corridor where you’ll find a number of restaurants and shops.

11. Broiler Room and Smokestack (鍋爐室 + 煙囪)

Dating back to 1931 (昭和6年), the Broiler Room and its iconic smokestack were added to the distillery during the same expansion project as the Maintenance Workshops mentioned earlier. As the main source of power for the distillery, the building was home to a brick furnace that was a hub for supplying steam to the various buildings in the distillery. The exhaust from the generation process was released through the smokestack, which has a diameter of about 2.5 meters at its widest and is 50 meters high, although it was shortened in the 1970s when the boiler fuel was changed from coal to oil.

The Broiler Room is used today as a venue for performances and exhibitions, but to tell the truth, despite visiting the park on dozens of occasions, I’ve sadly never actually had the opportunity to enter the building as it tends to be one of most elusive places to gain access to within the park.


Western Section (西區)

12. Camphor Refinery Buildings (紅磚六合院)

The red-brick camphor refinery section in the north-west of the park are (for me) the most interesting buildings in the park, at least architecturally speaking. Dating back to 1917 (大正6年), the collection of seven buildings oversaw both the rise and the fall of the camphor industry in Taiwan, and were one of the most important processing facilities in the north, especially since they had direct access to the main railroad line via Huashan Station.

Originally a joint venture with the Mitsui (三井) and Suzuki (鈴木) companies, the refinery later became the Taipei Branch of the Nippon Camphor Company (日本樟腦株式會社台北支店).

Constructed with red-brick and reinforced concrete, the six buildings in this section (currently split into seven) feature the most decorative elements out of any of the buildings within the park today.

Despite the interior space of the buildings generally just consisting of open corridors, the exterior is where you’ll find much of the decorative elements and designs that are more Japanese in their inspiration.

Thanks to the reinforced concrete walls, each of the buildings feature a large number of windows on all four sides, which allow an ample amount of natural light. The roof of each of the buildings is supported by a genius network of wooden roof trusses within the interior that allow it to distribute weight evenly and eclipse the base of the building in size.

While not as decorative as what you’d expect from the roofs of more traditional Japanese-era buildings, the buildings festure double-layered four sided irimoya-style (入母屋) roofs that slope on both sides. Constructed with a ‘courtyard’ type of design, the buildings have beautiful passageways that would have offered easy access to anyone working in the refinery. Today those passage ways are lit by beautiful Japanese-style street lights that help to illuminate the beautiful red brick at night, making this a popular space for photoshoots.

Today, the largest of the seven buildings are used as exhibition spaces while others are reserved for private partnerships, which include restaurants, pop-up stores and coffeeshops. If it weren’t already obvious from the amount of photos I have of this section, this space is favorite part of any trip to Huashan as it tends to be a lot quieter (depending on what exhibitions are taking place) and because of the way that nature has been allowed to take control of the area, making it quiet and providing a comfortable amount of shade during the hot summer days.

Getting There

 

Address: #1, Section 1, Bade Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei

中正區八德路一段1號

GPS: 25.04381,121.52887

Conveniently located within the heart of Taipei, the Huashan 1914 Creative Park is a short walk from Zhongxiao Xinsheng MRT Station (忠孝新生捷運站), making getting there quite easy. A visit to Huashan is made even better in that visitors can also take some time to pay a visit to the nearby Qidong Street Dorms (齊東街日式宿舍), another recently restored set of Japanese-era buildings that have been reopened as a culture park.

Likewise, you’ll find the popular Guanghua Digital Plaza (光華商場) and Syntrend (三創生活園區), two of Taipei’s most popular technology shopping centers nearby. A visit to the area can include both a look at the history of the capital as well as its future with Taiwanese technological prowess on display nearby!

MRT

  1. Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station (忠孝新生捷運站) - From Exit 1 (1號出口) walk straight down Zhongxiao East Road (忠孝東路) for three to five minutes and you’ll arrive at Huashan.

  2. Shandao Temple Station (善導寺捷運站) - From Exit 6 (6號出口) walk straight down Zhongxiao East Road (忠孝東路) for about five minutes until you reach Huashan.

  3. Taipei Station (台北車站) - From MRT Exit M2, walk straight down Civic Boulevard (市民大道) for about ten to fifteen minutes until you reach the rear of Huashan. On the way you’ll pass by the Sun Yat Sen Memorial House (逸仙公園), a Japanese-era hotel where Dr. Sun Yat Sen once stayed during a short trip to Taiwan

Bus

Conveniently located a short distance from the front entrance to Huashan, you’ll find four major bus stops that will help you get to the park quite easily. Of the four, the most convenient is the Huashan 1914 Creative Park Bus Stop, but there are also a number of other options close by.

  1. Huashan 1914 Creative Park Bus Stop (華山文創園區站) - 247, 205, 212, 220, 232, 257, 262, 276

  2. Huashan Park Bus Stop (華山公園站) - 669

  3. Taipei Technological University Bus Stop (台北科技大學站) - 205, 257, 276

  4. Zhongxiao Elementary School Bus Stop (忠孝國小站) - 202, 212, 231, 232, 299, 600, 605

Click on any of the bus routes above for the route map and real-time information for each of the buses. If you haven’t already, I recommend using the Taipei eBus website or downloading the “台北等公車” app to your phone, which makes it easier to map out your trip and find the nearest bus stops to wherever you are located.

Link: Bus Tracker (臺北等公車) - Apple | Android

Youbike

Making your visit to Huashan even more convenient, the park is surrounded by three Youbike docking stations where you can pick up a bike or drop one off for your visit. Serviced by both Youbike 1.0 and 2.0, you’ll be able to ride a bike from wherever you are in the city.

You’ll find one of the docking stations to the left of the main entrance on Zhongxiao East Road (忠孝東路), the second next to Syntrend along the Civic Boulevard (市民大道), and the third at the rear entrance to the park along Beiping East Road (北平東路).

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend downloading the Youbike App to your phone so that you’ll have a better idea of the location where you’ll be able to find the closest docking station.

Links: Youbike 1.0 - Apple / Android | Youbike 2.0 - Apple / Android

Rich in history, the Huashan 1914 Creative Park brilliantly puts on display the artistic and creative future of Taiwan. As I mentioned earlier, no visit to the park will ever be the same, and as part of the beating cultural heart of Taipei, there is always something new and exciting to see and do whenever you visit - Whether you’re there simply as a tourist, or for one of the exhibitions, a concert, or just for a meal - a visit to Huashan is always going to be an interesting experience.

If you’re traveling to Taiwan, I can’t recommend enough that you take some time to pay a visit to the park. And if you’re living here, it’s also a pretty idea to keep track of the events and exhibitions that are taking place in the park, as there is always something interesting happening.

References

  1. Huashan 1914 Creative Park | 華山1914文化創意產業園區 (Wiki)

  2. Taiwan Monopoly Bureau | 專賣局 (Wiki)

  3. 臺北州 | 樺山町 (Wiki)

  4. 建國啤酒廠 | 高砂麥酒 (Wiki)

  5. 臺北酒廠 (國家文化資產網)

  6. 台灣日治時期總督府專賣局建築之研究-以台灣南部地區案例為例 (陳信安)

  7. [北市中正].台北酒廠(華山文化園區)(Tony的自然人文旅記)

  8. 本廠歷史沿革三道酒泉合流為一 (桃園酒廠)