Dadaocheng: A Stroll By means of Time

The timeless but concurrently progressive Dadaocheng neighborhood, by the Tamsui River on Taipei Metropolis’s west facet, is a must-check day-outing expertise with worldwide guests. This is among the unique pioneer settlement places, based in imperial occasions, round which immediately’s fashionable metropolis was constructed. Go to the neighborhood to discover a few of its many vibrant younger cultural-creative ventures whereas immersing your self in its deep historical past.

Let’s begin our day tour by filling up our gastronomic gasoline tank at one in every of Dadaocheng’s most beloved hangouts for conventional scorching snacks, the boisterously busy massive sq. fronting Dadaocheng Cisheng Temple, one of many old-time non secular and cultural hearts of the district.

Dadaocheng Cisheng Temple

All through Taiwan’s historical past, the squares earlier than temples have generally been hotspots of business exercise, attracting meals and different distributors catering to the wants of worshippers arriving from close to and much. In occasions previous it was additionally frequent for a serious enterprise thoroughfare to then take root, rising outward from the sq..

The unique model of this temple – devoted to Mazu, Goddess of the Sea – was erected in 1866, positioned very near immediately’s Dadaocheng Wharf and overlooking the flourishing native riverport scene. It was rebuilt at its current location within the 1910s after the primary was torn down by the Japanese (rulers over Taiwan 1895~1945) to facilitate street replotting, utilizing unique pillars and stones. Guests to Dadaocheng have lengthy made particular journeys to its courtyard meals market, house to 40-plus distributors, to attempt the culinary specialties, many island-renowned.

Ye Household Meat Congee

Sufficient discuss – let’s get consuming! The signature providing at Ye Household Meat Congee, immediately run by the fourth era, is taken into account among the many prime offered in Taipei. Congee options grains softened from cooking that stay complete whereas solely minimally starchy. Pork and candy potato chunks are usually added to the delicately flavored broth, and the dish is normally accompanied by savory facet dishes. Probably the most-ordered sides at Ye Household are the fried squid, pork liver, and oysters, plus the soy-braised pork stomach.

Xu Zai Pork Trotter Vermicelli

Xu Zai Pork Trotter Vermicelli, like our just-visited congee operation, is a family-run enterprise, making bellies glad for over 50 years. The clear broth that comes with the signature dish is wealthy and reasonably zesty whereas being freed from any greasiness, and the chewy, tender meat, at all times exceedingly contemporary, is flippantly fatty giving it a pleasing texture. Your bowl is topped with ginger slices for a touch of spicy warmth.

Among the many different snack classics ready on the vendor bazaar are four-tonics soup, squid soup, pig blood soup, pork rib soup, and whitebait fried rice. In Taiwanese xiaochi (“small eats”) snacking tradition, sampling slightly little bit of the whole lot is the definitive modus operandi. Right here, chowing down beneath shady outdated banyan bushes in a temple forecourt provides a novel attraction to the expertise.

Qinjing Previous Warehouse

Qinjing Previous Warehouse is a classic/antiques retailer instantly south of Cisheng Temple, alongside the identical slim lane on which the temple’s meals distributors are strung out. That is an archetypal old-time Taiwan alley of aged narrow-front mixed-use residential/business buildings, three to 4 tales tall with further smaller jerry-built buildings added on the roofs, the primary ground given over to outlets, remaining flooring to residing lodging.

The “warehouse” is a store jammed to the rafters with treasures from on a regular basis Taiwan life the proprietor has collected over a lifetime, beginning in his childhood, when he developed a ardour for visiting just-abandoned houses and companies to hunt for collectibles. Every little thing displayed is on the market.

Your journey down reminiscence lane – properly, new “Taiwan recollections” for vacationers from overseas – will embrace such unique take-home memento objects as oil-paper umbrellas made in Meinong – a Hakka township in southern Taiwan – Chinese language deity collectible figurines, Japanese-style money-beckoning cats from izakayas, guide shaved-ice machines, pop bottles with Hey Music Sarsaparilla and ingesting glasses with Taiwan Beer and different local-brand logos, and each conventional Taiwanese and Japanese doll figures. The proprietor’s amassing goes ever on, and he guarantees clients new treasures with every go to.

Qinjing Previous Warehouse | 秦境老倉庫
Add: No. 11, Ln. 49, Bao’an St., Datong Dist., Taipei Metropolis
(台北市大同區保安街49巷11號)
Tel: 0921-067-050
Hours: 11:30am-5:30pm (closed on Solar)

First Document Store

Your information on a sensory-rich journey into the sounds of Taiwan’s previous is First Document Store. It inhabits a heritage business constructing courting from the Japanese interval sporting a façade that curves across the road nook it sits on, as does the arcade that runs alongside at road degree. Shade-providing, rain-protection arcades are a quintessential function within the business structure of this period, launched by the Japanese after seeing their efficacious use in Southeast Asia.

The report store is a Dadaocheng icon, in operation for over six many years now. This can be a retro gold mine – “golden oldies,” that’s – packed to the gills with classic Taiwan-idol vinyl data and LPs, cassettes, and CDs. In its heyday, Taipei folks would come to identify celebrities right here, who would come to browse within the hip store after leaving the favored theaters, dance halls, and different large-scale locations of leisure within the space. The shop took its identify from the famed, now-defunct First Theater, positioned diagonally throughout the road. Including to the old school taste of your expertise when you hunt on your Teresa Teng serendipity memento would be the visible of one of many aged proprietors with eyes glued to the outdated field TV propped up on a nook shelf.

First Document Store | 第一唱片行
Add: No. 88, Bao’an St., Datong Dist., Taipei Metropolis
(台北市大同區保安街88號)
Tel: (02) 2557-9029
Hours: 8am-5pm (Sat/Solar from 9am)

Sin Hong Choon Tea Store

Tea, together with camphor, was on the coronary heart of Dadaocheng’s speedy growth after its settlement within the 1850s. Leaf was grown within the hills surrounding the Taipei Basin, introduced right here for processing, and river-boated to ships awaiting on the port of Tamsui on the north coast to be then sailed across the globe.

The elegant Sin Hong Choon Tea Store is in a stately three-story constructing erected in 1934 as a tea-processing manufacturing unit – the world’s largest. Sporting a yellow-tinted exterior, it’s a synthesis of Taiwanese and Western architectural components, together with terrazzo stairs and red-brick partitions inside. The power was utilized by the resident owner-family in tea export to Southeast Asia.

After being deserted for a time and slowly deteriorating, the constructing was bestowed protected heritage standing in 2009 and, after thoroughgoing restoration, was reopened with a brand new tourism-oriented mission in 2015 – museum, cultural training heart, and store.

The premises have been faithfully given the countenance of a Thirties tea service provider operation. The shows and shows, with some English accessible, roll out an understanding of Taiwan’s old-time tea commerce, kinds of leaves, processing strategies, and the historic constructing’s restoration. You’ll particularly benefit from the presentation of the proprietor household’s residing quarters and of the heritage tea-processing equipment, studying how leaf was separated from stems and sorted by measurement, the way it was slow-roasted over charcoal, and many others. (you’ll nonetheless see these conventional practices used at tea farms all through Taiwan). Then, on the quaint traditional-look retail store, browse high quality teas, tea-theme books, and different choices.

Sin Hong Choon Tea Store | 新芳春茶行
Add: No. 309, Minsheng W. Rd., Datong Dist., Taipei Metropolis
(台北市大同區民生西路309號)
Tel: (02) 7756-3910
Hours: 10am-6pm (closed on Mon/Tue)

Kuo’s Astral Bookshop

Kuo’s Astral Bookshop, one in every of Dadaocheng’s largest impartial bookstores, is on Dihua Road, Taipei’s oldest business road, which started to kind within the 1850s when the location was settled by refugees from the upriver Bangka (Wanhua) settlement after preventing between Han Chinese language settlers from totally different areas in China’s Fujian Province. Dihua and its offshoot streets teem with family-run heritage shophouses promoting medicinal herbs, traditional-style materials, and regional specialty items. In latest many years Dihua Road has undergone compelling beautification, with the ornate constructing façades revivified and the roadway paved with brick.

Household-operated Kuo’s is a storied enterprise, an intrinsic a part of the panorama for Dadaocheng locals since 1922. First a basic retailer, conversion to a bookseller was undertaken by the founder’s grandson. At immediately’s store, the comeliness of the refurbished neo-Baroque exterior is matched by the smooth aesthetics of the cleverly redesigned inside, placing Kuo’s amongst Dadaocheng’s most photogenic business institutions. One among many evocative examples is a placing wood-and-burnished steel staircase stretched by the shophouse atrium between the second and third flooring; such atriums had been a typical yesteryear architectural function permitting in solar and contemporary air.

Kuo’s Astral Bookshop | 郭怡美書店
Add: No. 129, Sec. 1, Dihua St., Datong Dist., Taipei Metropolis
(台北市大同區迪化街一段129號)
Tel: (02) 2550-8291
Hours: 12pm-8pm (Sat/Solar 11am-10pm)

Olympus Plaza Taipei

Alongside the identical road part as Kuo’s is the award-winning Olympus Plaza Taipei, one of many brightest new stars on the Dadaocheng tourism stage. This can be a renovation/retail flagship-store venture undertaken by Japan’s illustrious Olympus model, greatest identified for its elite pictures gear. Emphasis was positioned on respecting native Dadaocheng/Taiwan tradition by retaining the utmost quantity of unique wooden, brick, and stone supplies within the three-story shophouse constructing, which was constructed in 1919.

For the façade, massive distressed-steel signage, terrazzo pavement alongside the arcade pedestrian sidewalk, and rich-stained wooden for home windows above and panel doorways at floor degree calmly complement the inherited yellow-tint wall brick and bright-green ceramic tile trim, accentuating the vintage visage. For the newly crafted retail-display part inside, darkish wooden was used to create a stylized arcade, in homage to the road arcades so intrinsic to the neighborhood’s nostalgia-laden character.

The brand new enterprise’s “mission tripod” is to function an area for retail gross sales, an oasis of pictures artwork, and a base for pictures buff interchange. There’s a retail showcase part, artwork gallery, pictures studio, pictures training house, and multifunction exhibit/assembly/particular occasion corridor.

Olympus Plaza Taipei
Add: No. 142, Sec. 1, Dihua St., Datong Dist., Taipei Metropolis
(台北市大同區迪化街一段142號)
Tel: (02) 2553-8826
Hours: 12pm-8pm (Sat/Solar 11am-10pm)

Dadaocheng Wharf Container Market

The utilization of cargo-container clusters in cultural-creative ventures has turn out to be a “factor” in Taiwan over the previous 10~15 years. Across the nation, you’ll see them used to accommodate tourist-focused cafés, boutiques – even 7-Eleven and Starbucks shops. The Dadaocheng Wharf Container Market is correct by the Tamsui River, within the riverside park discovered on the west finish of Minsheng West Highway, instantly past the yawning dike-gate entrance on the street’s finish.

The fashionable younger complicated has turn out to be an enormous hit with home and worldwide vacationers: sightseeing yacht cruises launch from the wharf, the town’s welcoming riverside biking path system rolls proper by the market, and cheap high-quality bike leases can be found each inside and instantly outdoors the dike gate, the market gives scrumptious food and drinks together with much-loved alfresco seating in a lined picnic-table space and proper atop the containers, and the nighttime cross-river views are particularly glowing.

The delicacies accessible, excessive in commonplace and most cheap in expense, travels Taiwan and across the globe: espresso and tea drinks (together with bubble tea, in fact), draft beer and cocktails, edible Taiwanese quintessence within the type of hotpots and mango popsicles, Americana within the type of burgers, fries, and pizza, Korean within the type of crispy Korean fried rooster and dakgalbi, Thai, Japanese, and extra.

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Rick Charette

A Canadian, Rick has been resident in Taiwan nearly frequently since 1988. His ebook, article, and different writings, on Asian and North American locations and topics—encompassing journey, tradition, historical past, enterprise/economics—have been printed extensively abroad and in Taiwan. He has labored with Nationwide Geographic, Michelin, APA Perception Guides, and different Western teams internationally, and with many native publishers and central/metropolis/county authorities our bodies in Taiwan. Rick additionally handles a variety of editorial and translation (from Mandarin Chinese language) initiatives.