Taipei Love: Guiyang Street

The weather yesterday was beautiful - one nice day out of 11 days (for me) off - so before some friends came over, we went to the Longshan Temple area to wander and take some photos on and around Guiyang Street.

Guiyang Street is one of my favorite overlooked streets in old Taipei - it's not as fancy or lengthy as Dihua Street nor as renovated and promoted as Bopiliao, but also usually not as crowded. It really only gets going once a year for 青山王's birthday festival  and otherwise a quiet, lovely place to take a quick stroll, see some old architecture, eat a few snacks, visit two historic temples and have a cup of coffee. The shophouses here aren't as "wealthy" as Dihua's, but that almost makes them more charming in their slightly decrepit way. My not-so-secret: deep down I was hoping I would have the chance to live in this area, and rent a renovated apartment in an old shophouse. That didn't happen - I ended up on the other side of the spectrum completely - but it really would be my Taipei dream come true.

Crab for sale!

First we wandered up Guangzhou Street, which is the non-touristy branch of the popular Huaxi Night Market (this part is often called Guangzhou St. Night market). At one end is Longshan Temple. Midway through you reach Huaxi Street, and if you keep going you'll hit Naruwan Indigenous People's Market and Xuehai Academy (also mentioned in the previous link). You'll also pass Mangka Gate  - worthy of a quick bite of history and also shown in a scene in the Taiwanese movie Monga. We had some food, did some people watching and walked north a bit.

I prefer the Guangzhou Street part of this market to Huaxi - the dingy, mostly-for-the-tourists sex shops (although the area does contain brothels) and mediocre food in the covered market keep me away, but Guangzhou Street is packed with good food, people to watch and interesting stuff to buy.

For Chinese New Year, the entire street was open during the day as it would be at night on other days -  rather like the area around Anping Fort outside Tainan. In fact the entire neighborhood was one big outdoor market that has been running for most of the week.

Shredded savory pancakes on Guangzhou Street

 Then, if you take Xiyuan Road north, up the left side of Longshan Temple (if coming from the MRT station), you'll pass lots of stores selling idols. Some are Buddhist, some are Dao/folk religion, some are for home shrines, other supplies are for actual temples. There's usually a bit of decent people-watching - and dog-watching - to do up this way as well.

I particularly like this one

One thing I really love about this neighborhood isn't just the old shophouses - it's the mid-century architecture of note (some of the stuff from that era is godawful - some is charming, though, and some give Taipei a special "look" that I really haven't seen in other Asian cities.

Other than living in a well-renovated shophouse, which is next to impossible (if not actually impossible) to pull off, though, living options in this colorful neighborhood tend to be run-down and cramped, and probably very much roach-infested (because the whole city is, and this area is a lot older and in many ways not well maintained). For example, I wouldn't want to live here and hang my clothes out to dry directly over a busy street, to pick up all sorts of grime and exhaust fumes:

 But then you make it up to Guiyang Street and more charming buildings come into view. I love this one and hope it can be more fully restored - the outside looks fine, but it seems to be unused, and possibly uninhabitable. I'd love to see that change - I've never seen any sign of life on the upper story, although there is some use made of the first floor.

Turn left and you reach Qingshan Temple - it is said that it was built here when settlers from Fujian carried Qingshan's idol up what is now Guiyang Street (it's that old, yo) and the idol suddenly grew heavy and immovable on that site. The carriers knew this was a sign that the Lord of Green Mountain wanted his temple placed there, so there they built it (interestingly, this story of idols becoming too heavy to move when they don't wish to be moved is not limited to China and Taiwan - Amitav Ghosh mentions similar stories in North Africa, the Middle East and India in his book, In An Antique Land, which I highly recommend).

I tell the story of Qingshan in the link to his birthday festival above.

Of course, these days kids just check their cell phones outside.

One thing I really love about this neighborhood is that it's not all shiny and perfect - that you get lovely little details such as these roof decorations on temples, right next to apartment buildings, many of which are older and downright ugly. There's a strangely pleasing contrast in that.

 Much of the ceiling work in this temple was put in without nails, by the way. Some master craftsmanship, that.

Some more photos of Qingshan Temple:

We didn't visit Qingshui Temple on this walk, because I actually sprained my ankle slightly at Qingshan, and we had to get back to Da'an to greet guests who were coming over (and who showed up five minutes early - a first for people I invite over). It's at the other end of this section of Guiyang Street and well worth a visit (photos in the link above, with some background and photos of Guiyang Street during festivals).

Guiyang Street is quite charming

Other than shophouse architecture and old temples, Guiyang Street is also home to an old incense shop, at least one Pu'er tea shop and a jade store. Many of the shops on this street are also historic, some dating back at least a century.

This is basically my dream apartment - maybe with nicer windows with wooden Chinese screens. It's hard to find something like this, though, to rent in Taipei.

Next door is a coffeeshop, kind of decrepit and ancient with an old cat (who may or may not still be alive) - tables for that shop and the street stand shown are positioned to take advantage of the pleasant street atmosphere. The coffee's dark and bitter, but the neighborhood makes up for it.

Walking back towards Longshan Temple MRT via Kangding Street, you pass a lot of this:

I feel like this is 50 years' worth of hardware, machinery and junk buildup. I have to wonder how long it would take to create something this dense and chaotic. It's almost like a modern art installation exploring neglect, hoarding, decrepitude, industrialism and chaos in the modern world.

Walking back this way you pass Bopiliao and, around New Year, a whole market full of stuff to eat and buy - something worth doing if you're in Taipei over Chinese New Year and want to get out and be around people.

The Oldest House in Xindian

"Xindian's first street, those who will tear down this culture are about to become historical criminals" (or something to that effect)

We went with our friend J this past weekend to seek out an old house/shrine in Xindian, near Dapinglin. J had learned that not only did the house still exist, but that it was slated for destruction despite being a fairly important historical relic - the first house built by the first people to settle Xindian in what used to be the only part of Xindian, which is now a forgotten lane off Minsheng Road.

You can reach this area by taking Minsheng Road (which starts near Dapinglin and is not far from the river separating Xindian from Taipei, very near our house in fact) to Lane 86, which is found after driving through a patch of farmland that nobody would really expect in this part of urbanized northern Taiwan, turning in and walking to the temple at the end past some old broke-down houses (which are older than they look I might add). Just before the temple to the left is a gateway with the name of the shrine on it. Go through there and walk down to the end - you can reach the inside by going in through the open door with the room full of junk (a local assured us this was OK to do) or see the outside by heading to the right and going around.

The house was built by the Liu family, the first to settle in Xindian, and they are apparently fighting to keep it (although from the look of the place they don't have the money for proper upkeep).

Meanwhile, the government along with the MRT company is planning to focibly buy up this and all the other land around it to build an MRT depot near the green and soon-to-be-dug yellow lines. Why they can't just build the depot 100 meters to the left is beyond me.

The temple, despite having plants growing out the roof (below), has a few parts (such as the above) where it looks like some restoration work has been done.

The pillars look recently restored, as well.

The lions and door gods are brightly painted.

As the sun set, we wandered back to the more settled area and ran into Mr. Wei, an ebullient, talkative man in his fifties who was polishing eggs (we guess by the sheer number of eggs that he is in the egg business), playing with his granddaughter and keeping an eye on his 90-year old half deaf father in law, Mr. Chen.

We learned from Mr. Wei that he and some other folks on the street, who are mostly Chens, are also opposing the forced tear-down and relocation, but they're more concerned with compensation than history. Basically, "you can take the house and property but give me a fair amount of money". (Although he used much more elliptical speech: "they prepared the bento box, but they won't give it to me unless I demand it" and "they know that if you are eating food and have some candy, a child will cry like my granddaughter. Give her a candy and she'll be happy. All I want is a candy" and "If I buy a scooter and you want to take it from me, and I paid ten thousand kuai for it, but now it's worth four thousand, well, even if you give me four thousand that's OK because I am not selfish and I don't want to cheat anyone. But don't offer me a hundred kuai!").

Basically, they feel that the compensation offered - nay, pushed on them - by the government is insufficient for what the property is worth and what it will cost to relocate.

There's more to it of course - most people in that neighborhood are old-school Hoklo and are deep green (Mr. Wei used to vote KMT, then realized he hated the KMT, and began voting DPP but is disillusioned by Chen Shui-bian's actions: "he promised soda for everyone, but only he got soda and we got water!") and the government of Xinbei city is, of course, KMT. I can't help but wonder if they want to break up a chunk of opposition party voters. That's speculation, of course, but not outside the realm of possibility.

As we talked, Mr. Wei told us that when his father-in-law, Old Chen, was four years old (so 86 years ago) a huge flood washed away much of the area, and the only thing not underwater was the roof of the Liu shrine. His father hid him up there and he survived - "he says you could see all the way to Gongguan and it was just water. Jingmei was underwater. This whole area was underwater."

As he told us the story, I looked at old Chen and realized for the first time that he wasn't wearing pants.

He went inside and came out, still in his wife beater and skivvies, and proceeded to stand in the doorway and look at us as he put on his pants. Ah, to be a 90-year-old man who can take off and put on pants wherever you like...

"Does he speak Chinese?" we asked.
"No, you have to speak Taiwanese to him," Mr. Wei answered.

"Have you eaten rice?" (jia-ba-buei?) we asked, and he just stared ahead.

"He's kind of deaf, you need to shout."
"HAVE YOU EATEN RICE?!"

Old Chen looked at us like we were the strangest things he'd ever seen - three foreigners speaking Taiwanese to him - smiled, and said something (I think it was "I've eaten" - jia ba - but I'm not sure). He then went inside to watch TV.

Mr. Wei gave us a tour of his own house, a rambling jumble of corridors built a hundred years ago of brick and wood shipped from Xiamen, with the old roof beams still intact, and lots of metal and old shingles where necessary - we went all the way out to the old pigsty, now a storage area, and the lemon and mango trees beyond that.

"It's a hundred years old or more," he said, "and they can tear it down I guess, but they have to pay me fairly."

Bopiliao

Some old advertisements pasted up on one of the walls along Bopiliao

On Saturday, as a side trip to our planned visit to Naruwan Indigenous People's Market (good food and good coffee), we stopped by Bopiliao - a newly restored segment of Qing Dynasty and Japanese era architecture in the historic Wanhua district. Bopiliao is basically a segment of intact Japanese-era shophouses, and behind that an alley of older, one-story late Qing shopfronts which have been turned into an exhibition space with a lot to interest kids (at least, kids who speak Chinese).

To get there, take the MRT to Longshan Temple. You can use any exit, but the easiest way is to head to Guangzhou Street - cross the street to Longshan Temple itself but turn right instead of entering (walking away from Huaxi Street Night Market). Walk past all the shops - this is also a nice area in which to look at cool old buildings - and you'll eventually come to the intersection of Kunming and Guangzhou. You'll notice that around here there are entire sections of shophouses - walk along those until you see an entrance to the inside, which will be directly next to the largest house on the end, which is a children's museum/history learning center.

Alternately you can exit at Longshan Temple's Heping W. Road exit, turn right, pass Sanshui Street and then turn on Guangzhou.

The section of old shophouse facades from Guangzhou Street

This is a lovely, atmospheric place to wander if you're in the neighborhood - perhaps sightseeing at Longshan Temple, but it's too early to head to the night market or dinner (for the record, I recommend the food in the night market along Guangzhou Street but don't bother with the food in the covered market along Huaxi Street unless you are dead set on trying snake - which I have).

The alley behind the shopfronts - main part of Bopiliao

The large building at the end - the only one open to the main street - houses a children's activity area on the first floor - kids can watch cartoons of George Leslie Mackay, James Maxwell and David Landsborough talking about bringing modern medicine to Taiwan. You can also see displays on "your grandfather's Taiwan" and learn about Lu A-Chang, a local doctor who also contributed quite a bit to the development of medicine in Taiwan.

The best exhibit? Clearly the one where you can pick up the receiver of a rotary phone to hear stories about old Taipei - the highlight is watching kids look at the old black phones like they're a relic of deepest, darkest history!

Upstairs there are more exhibits on medicine in Taiwan, mostly in Chinese.

The center is free to enter, but closes at 5pm.

It's a nice place to wander a bit, if only to see the inside of an old brick house, but it would be even better if there was English language signage so that tourists with kids would have it as an educational and kid-friendly choice for their non-Chinese speaking children.

Out back you can also play several easy, old-fashioned children's games, such as old-fashioned pinball:

I am completely in love with the old-skool robots.

...or "fish for the glass bottle" or that stick-and-hoop game:

After that - a pretty quick walkthrough if you don't have kids, don't speak Chinese and aren't fascinated by vintage robots (which I totally am because robots are awesome) - you can head into Bopiliao itself.

The entrance has a plaque in English and Chinese signed by "Dr. Hau Lung-bin". Apparently he really is a doctor (I didn't believe it so I looked it up), despite looking like a Muppet. Oh well, never judge a book by its cover. Apparently he has a PhD in Food Science from UMass-Amherst. Either he got into a PhD program because his father pulled some strings, or he's a genuinely smart guy who would have been a fantastic food scientist - but is just not that good at being a politician (although he keeps winning despite giving off the impression that he's all cotton between the ears). You know how sometimes being in the wrong vocation can make a person seem less motivated or intelligent than they really are? (I would know - I worked in back-office finance and probably seemed to others as about half as quick as I truly am because it was the wrong career for me).

Maybe - just maybe - if he'd stayed a food scientist and his company had hired me as his English trainer, Id've come home after class praising my clever, brilliant, insightful and intelligent student, Dr. Hau.

Or not.

Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Buildings are marked at the front with what they used to house - a tea shop, a barber etc. - and are now exhibition spaces. Most excitingly for foreigners interested in Taiwanese cinema is the room housing sets from the movie "Monga". This is also one of the areas where some of the signage is in English, and if you've seen the movie, you can appreciate it regardless. It is not clear if the scenes were actually shot here or the set was relocated here.

You may remember this set from the film

Nearby is the Daoist shrine where the young brothers prayed, the seating area where the older gangsters would congregate and displays of clothing and weapons from the movie, which I saw without subtitles and could only barely follow.

Not everything was open, but some of the storefronts looked authentically well-restored:

...but others didn't:

I'm glad they saved that Qing Dynasty painting of Astroboy.

The next section of the exhibit focused on famous artists of Taiwan, including an area dedicated to an old guy who makes heads for lion dancer costumes:

...as well as a Taiwanese opera singer, two puppetry masters and a few other people. This was entirely in Chinese so while it was fun to look at, there was nothing to keep us lingering.

The final few shopfronts are exhibits on naming statistics in Taiwan. Did you know that the largest percentage of Taiwanese people are surnamed Chen, with the next highest being Lin?! Wow, that was so totally unexpected! Heh. They also had breakdowns from census data on given names - I found a lot of my friends' names, but neither mine (白蓮) nor Brendan's (百川) were there - probably because nobody actually names their kid White Lotus, and Brendan's name, though much more common, is a bit old and stodgy - it's like the "Harold" of Chinese names.

What was interesting was that throughout each list of Top 50 names, male and female, girls with the most common names were consistently about twice as plentiful as boys. The top name for a girl (淑芬) - Shufen or "refined and pure with a sweet smell" - clocked in at about 33,500 girls in 2010, whereas the top boy's name (志明) - Zhiming or "bright aspiration" only came in at 14,200 or so.

First, I'm not such a fan of the boys getting names reminsicent of willpower, strength, learning and brightness whereas women get a lot of grace, purity, sweetness, quietude, demureness etc., but hey, I guess that's how traditional cultures go. If we ever have a kid (not saying we will!) she's getting a Chinese name that means "Fierce Warrior Dragon Princess Who Kicks Ass" or something!

Second, clearly there is a greater variety of boys' names out there, with a longer statistical tail: either that or twice as many girls were born as boys in 2010 (yeah...no). So we can conclude that families who have sons have about twice the number of common given names to choose from than families who have daughters - of course with the stroke order, elements, fortune teller etc. issues to deal with, nobody really has that much choice if they follow traditional mores.

A cool old advertisement on a wall in Bopiliao - I like the "Scientific Headcooler" ad.

The verdict? Bopiliao is worth a visit if you are in the area, and great if you have kids who can speak Chinese or are interested in 19th and turn-of-the-century architecture.

Otherwise, the tourism department needs to do a few things to generate more interest in the area. My suggestions:

1.) English signage please - it'll get foreigners interested in Taipei history to linger and help us learn more; and

2.) The exhibits are nice, but stick a coffeeshop, teahouse, restaurant, even a few snack or souvenir shops in there so we can linger and enjoy the atmosphere.

Day Trip To Xizhi II

End of a rally for Tsai Ying-wen ("English Tsai"!) in Xizhi on Sunday

Building on this post about "climbing" Da Jian Mountain in Xizhi (汐止), this is about our return to Xizhi this past Sunday.

I know, Xizhi. I told my students that I went there on Sunday and they returned with..."Why?"

"I don't know," I replied honestly, with a smile.

There are things, however, to do in Xizhi. I know. I know. But there are. When we arrived, we grabbed a taxi to a waterfall right by the road up Dajian Mountain. We'd been to the other well-known falls down a path near the temple up there (the one with gorgeous rocks with water flowing over them like a sculpture in a fancy office building) - but this one was to the left of the main road, down another road that no bus goes down, and is quite literally right by the road, up a few easy stairs.

One of the waterfalls on the slopes of Da Jian Mountain in Xizhi

We took a taxi because I have a problem with my right foot (inflamed tendon) and can't walk for long distance, and it is about a 1km walk down the road off the main road, which is fronted by a gate with a pubescent security guard. I forget the name of the waterfall but will try to find out and come back and post it, or the friend who came with us could comment here!

The falls are quite pretty and worth a quick visit - one pool looks swimmable though we didn't try, and there are several tables for lovely picnics, and it's easy to get to. There are several layers of falls, meaning there's a lot to see, and there is theoretically a path up to the very top but thanks to the recent rains it was all mud and unwalkable (I didn't even try with my foot in the condition it's in, but our friend and my husband did).

We then took the taxi down to 慈航紀念堂 (not sure about those characters - it's "Ci Hang Ji Nian Tang"), a temple and monastery on the lower slopes of the mountain. We started at a small temple with a huge Buddha and a very peaceful altar room, which had these little statues outside that I seem to see whenever there is a preserved monk body around.

This complex has the gold-covered body of a preserved monk (金身 - literally "gold body") - the actual corpse of a monk who died in meditation as a result of a fast and who is then worshipped as a deity and idol. This is the second preserved monk we've seen, the first being at Peaceful Country Temple (安國寺 or "An Guo Si") on the slopes of, I think, Datun Mountain near Xinbeitou.

I have no good photos of that because, honestly, it felt weird to take photos of the body itself. I did snap one from a distance but it just didn't feel proper or right so I won't post it.

"Oh, Buddha, teach me more!"

The lower level temple, which is white and looks old from the outside, has an exhibition room on the preserved monk's life and material possessions, including this lovely display of his washing apparatus - I love that they kept his ancient tube of toothpaste. Total class. They had lots of fascinating old pictures from the a Buddhist society that the monk (called "大師" which is not very helpful, it just means "great teacher") was involved in, his old identification papers, and lots of personal items. The big Buddha upstairs is also worth a look.

Then we left that and climbed to the huge formidable monastery above it - easy to find because it's really huge - which had fine views down over Xizhi and even over to Taipei City. That's where the actual monk body is located, in the pagoda at the very top. You have to enter, go up the flight of stairs to a large building at the right, then keep going up until you come to the uppermost structure.

"Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to fast and meditate until death I go!"

Around the pagoda, the monastery landscape architects clearly thought that some pearlized plaster gnomes were just the thing that it needed for a solemn, meditative atmosphere. From the top you can see Taipei...

...as well as a fine view down the monastery rooftops to Xizhi and surrounding hills.

The monastery itself is a new complex, but it's very well done. Someone put a lot of thought into designing something that had a timeless, antique-but-modern look that mimics traditional buildings quite well. From here it could almost pass for a real historic site.

A snail crawled across the grass near the pagoda.

"Look what I plucked!"

"Look what I plucked!"

After coming back down from the preserved monk, we ate a late lunch in the dark little lanes of downtown Xizhi, passing this lovely scene along the way.

Then we checked out "Xizhi Old Street" which honestly, was kind of not worth it. Apparently there used to be some great buildings there, but they've all been recently torn down and now only a few shophouses and one genuine old residence remain. I love the painting of the boy and his tiny pet elephant on the patio side wall of the one old residence:

That street does turn into an interesting looking market which is worth a look-see if it's going on, and if you follow the lanes behind it you'll get to a lovely bike path with a wall on one side, blocking the river view, and skeletons of old brick buildings fronted by in-use urban gardens on the other, growing all sorts of vegetables and herbs. We also found this awesome old shop selling records, cassettes, CDs and vintage phonographs. Dude. So cool. Not sure what the demand for antique phonographs is in Xizhi, but still. Cooooool.

We stopped to rest for awhile, thanks to my foot, by a temple behind the old street somewhere which was a bit boring from the front but very interesting from behind:

While resting there a man with two buckets of brown goo on either end of a shoulder-stick walked by, and from the stench we could tell it was poopy fertilizer for the urban gardens out back along the bike trail.

"I'm comin' ter git you!"

Oh, and we saw another snail.

All in all it was a pleasant afternoon - not something tourists would want to rush out and see but definitely fun for an overcast Sunday, seeing stuff most people wouldn't think to go find. I do recommend a trip just for Dajian Mountain and the preserved monk, however. Totally worth it.

Next (and probably final) Xizhi trip will be Hsinshan (新山 －New Mountain) and Dream Lake, outlined in Taipei Day Trips.