Dadaocheng: Three Centuries in 800 Meters, from Formosa Tea to the First Shot of the February 28 Incident

30-second overview: Dadaocheng runs from Nanjing West Road to Minquan West Road. Dihua Street is about 800 meters long from south to north, and less than 500 meters wide from east to west. Shops began to appear on this piece of land in 1851, the first year of the Xianfeng reign. After the Dingxiajiao Conflict in Bangka in 1853, people from Tong'an fled here and expanded the street. The opening of Tamsui port in 1860 made it northern Taiwan's busiest foreign-trade port. In 1869, the first 120,000 catties of Taiwanese oolong tea were exported from Tamsui to New York under the name “Formosa Tea,” and Li Chun-sheng became known as the “Father of Taiwanese Tea.” In 1885, Liu Ming-chuan established the Western Learning Academy in Dadaocheng, Taiwan's first modern-style school; Dadaocheng Railway Station opened in 1891; in 1920, the three Qing-era market streets under Japanese rule were merged into Taipei City; in 1921, Chiang Wei-shui opened Taian Hospital at No. 199, Taiping-cho, creating the political starting point of the Taiwanese Cultural Association; and on the evening of February 27, 1947, a packet of untaxed cigarettes in front of Tianma Tea House ignited the February 28 Incident. This article's point is this: a street that traded tea, hosted a Western-style school, and became the site of postwar Taiwan's deepest wound compresses three centuries of Taiwan into 800 meters.

Dihua Street at 5:30 in the Morning

If you ask someone from Taipei when Dadaocheng is at its most captivating, they will not tell you it is the week before Lunar New Year, when the festival goods market is packed shoulder to shoulder. That is for tourists. They may say it is Dihua Street at 5:30 in the morning, before the sky is fully bright, before the dry-goods shops have opened, when the incense from morning prayers in front of Xia-Hai City God Temple is just rising, and the Western-style building of Chen Tian-lai's Jinji Tea Company, opened in 1891, still stands at its original address, No. 73 Guide Street¹.

That Western-style building was constructed between 1920 and 1923. It has a faux-Baroque facade, with the characters “Jinji” at the center. Chen Tian-lai's grandson, Chen Shou-shan, later served as commander-in-chief of the Taiwan Garrison Command, but that has little to do with the building itself. The building has stood there longer than the grandson's official title ever did². Walk 50 meters north from the building and you reach the intersection of Guide Street and Minsheng West Road, where Li Chun-sheng's former mansion once stood; today it has been redeveloped. Walk east from Guide Street, past Gangu Street to No. 21, Section 1, Dihua Street, and you arrive at the starting point of “Middle Street,” where the first shops opened in 1851. Xia-Hai City God Temple was relocated and built here in 1859, and has not moved since³.

When there are no tourists on that street in the early morning, three axes emerge on their own:

Walk five minutes south to No. 189 Nanjing West Road. Today the site is a commercial building, with a small stone marker at the entrance inscribed with three names: Lin Jiang-mai, Fu Hsueh-tung, and Chen Wen-xi. On the evening of February 27, 1947, that packet of untaxed cigarettes was confiscated here⁴.

Walk ten minutes north to Section 2, Yanping North Road. The gate of Dadaocheng Public School, founded in 1898 and now Taiping Elementary School, still stands in its original location. Chiang Wei-shui studied nearby in 1916. In 1921, he opened Taian Hospital in Taiping-cho 3-chome, today Section 2, Yanping North Road, and the Taiwanese Cultural Association was founded in that clinic⁵.

Walk east across Huanhe North Road and you reach the Tamsui River. In the 1860s, 160 years ago, this riverbank was the wharf from which Formosa Tea was exported to New York. The oolong tea loaded onto ships at this wharf sustained northern Taiwan's foreign trade for half a century.

Eight hundred meters holds three centuries. That is Dadaocheng's density.

Tappari, the Big Rice-Drying Yard, and the Dingxiajiao Conflict

The name “Dadaocheng” is plainspoken. It means “the big courtyard for drying rice.” When Han Chinese settlers arrived, this was indeed an open space where rice could be dried. But “Dadaocheng” is a Han Chinese name. The original owners of this land were the Tappari settlement of the Ketagalan people. Only after the Chen Lai-chang cultivation association obtained the “Dajiala” cultivation permit in 1709 did Han Chinese settlers begin entering and cultivating the area⁶.

After the Han Chinese arrived, the three characters for “Tappari” almost disappeared. Today they appear mainly in academic papers and Indigenous cultural promotion. Walk around Dihua Street now and you will not see a single sign saying, “This was the site of the Tappari settlement.” The covering of one place name by another is Taipei's earliest and deepest historical layer.

Han Chinese formally opened shops on this land in 1851, the first year of the Xianfeng reign. Lin Lan-tian moved from Keelung to Dadaocheng and opened a general store called “Lin Yi-shun” near today's Section 1, Dihua Street⁷. This was 24 years before Shen Baozhen petitioned in 1875 to establish Taipei Prefecture, and 34 years before Liu Ming-chuan arrived in 1885 as governor. Dadaocheng is older than official “Taipei.”

But what truly made Dadaocheng bustling was the armed conflict that broke out two years later in Bangka.

In August 1853, the third year of the Xianfeng reign, the “Dingxiajiao Conflict” broke out in Bangka. The “Dingjiao” was a merchant guild made up of people from the Quanzhou counties of Jinjiang, Nan'an, and Hui'an, the same group that had jointly funded Bangka Longshan Temple in 1738. The “Xiajiao” was a merchant guild made up of people from Tong'an, also in Quanzhou. The two sides fought over control of wharf trade, and the armed conflict continued into September. The Tong'an people were defeated. Their faith center, the statue of the Xia-Hai City God, was carried by the believer Chen Jin-rong as they fled from Bajiazhuang in Bangka all the way to Dadaocheng⁸.

The name “Xia-Hai” comes from the Tong'an people's ancestral home, the seaside of Xiacheng in Zhangzhou, Fujian. In 1859, the ninth year of the Xianfeng reign, the Tong'an people who had fled to Dadaocheng built Xia-Hai City God Temple beside Middle Street, at today's No. 61, Section 1, Dihua Street³. From that day to 2026, the temple has stood in its original place for 167 years without moving.

📝 Curator's note: Conventional tourism narratives describe Xia-Hai City God Temple as “the most efficacious temple for the Old Man Under the Moon,” the deity of matchmaking, and stop there. But the physical reason this temple is here is that an armed conflict forced a group of people onto this land. The Tong'an people who fled Bangka in the summer of 1853 carried the City God statue along a roughly three-kilometer route to settle in Dadaocheng. Today, people who go to the temple to pray for romance are standing on a refugee route from 173 years ago. Almost every “old street” in Taipei has an armed conflict at its foundation: behind Bangka Longshan Temple was the 1738 joint investment of the three Quanzhou counties; behind Dadaocheng Xia-Hai City God Temple was the 1853 defeat and flight of the Tong'an people. The incense of one piece of land is often the wound of another.

The Tong'an people brought more than the City God statue to Dadaocheng. They moved their Bangka merchant houses here, building shops around Xia-Hai City God Temple. This was the earliest formation of “Middle Street.” In the seven years after 1853, Dadaocheng changed from a rice-drying yard into a commercial street with more than 100 shops⁹.

But the event that truly transformed Dadaocheng would not arrive until 1860.

Dadaocheng Xia-Hai City God Temple, No. 61, Section 1, Dihua Street. Photo: Solomon203, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The 1860 Port Opening, John Dodd, Li Chun-sheng, and Those 120,000 Catties of Tea

In 1858, the Qing dynasty was defeated in the Second Opium War and signed the Treaty of Tianjin with Britain, listing Tamsui as a treaty port. In 1860, the tenth year of the Xianfeng reign, Tamsui officially opened as a port. In 1863, the negotiated port area was extended to Dadaocheng¹⁰. From that year onward, this inland street converted from a rice-drying yard was directly connected to ports across the Pacific.

The key figures who turned Dadaocheng into a “tea node” were two foreigners and one man from Xiamen.

The Scottish merchant John Dodd arrived in Taiwan in 1865 to investigate the market. He found that the hills and climate of northern Taiwan were suitable for growing tea. In 1866, he brought tea seedlings from Anxi, Fujian, to the hilly areas south of Tamsui, around today's Muzha and Pinglin, for trial cultivation¹¹. But Dodd himself did not speak Hokkien. He needed someone who could communicate with tea farmers and keep the accounts, so he hired Li Chun-sheng, then living in Xiamen, who knew business, spoke English, and spoke Hokkien, to serve as comprador.

Li Chun-sheng was born in Xiamen, Fujian, in 1838. As a young man he worked for the British firm Elles & Co. In 1869, he formally came to Dadaocheng with John Dodd¹². He brought commercial experience and also his Protestant faith. He was one of Taiwan's earliest Presbyterian Christians and later funded George Leslie Mackay's missionary work in Dadaocheng; Dadaocheng Church was established on Guide Street in 1885.

In 1869, something happened that changed Dadaocheng's fate.

In 1869, the first 120,000 catties of Taiwanese oolong tea were exported directly from Tamsui to New York under the name “Formosa Tea”¹¹. “Formosa” is Portuguese for “beautiful,” and was how Westerners referred to Taiwan at the time. This shipment did not pass through Xiamen for re-export, nor was it labeled as Chinese tea. It was exported directly to New York under the brand “Formosa Oolong,” selling for about 30 percent more than Chinese tea.

From that year onward, the warehouses along Dadaocheng's harbor began filling with crates of tea awaiting shipment. Tea merchants built Western-style buildings along this street to do business. Li Chun-sheng built his mansion on Guide Street. Chen Tian-lai opened Jinji Tea Company in 1891, the seventeenth year of the Guangxu reign, exporting pouchong tea to Southeast Asia and China¹. Pouchong tea differs from oolong tea: it is less oxidized and has a lighter fragrance, and was mainly exported to overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and to Chinese tea merchants.

By the 1880s, 39 British and American trading firms had offices in Dadaocheng, and more than 15 million pounds of oolong tea were exported each year. Dadaocheng became the Qing empire's second-largest foreign-trade port, behind only Shanghai¹¹.

💡 Did you know: After that 1869 shipment of Formosa Tea to New York, the spelling “Oolong” began entering English vocabulary from this year onward. The English spelling “oolong tea” sold today by Starbucks and Whole Foods in the United States traces back to those 120,000 catties of tea loaded at the Dadaocheng wharf in 1869. Behind one English noun lies the consequence of a street and a group of people choosing “Formosa” as a brand 160 years ago.

Li Chun-sheng died in 1924 at the age of 87. After his death, he was called the “Father of Taiwanese Tea”¹². He lived in Dadaocheng for 55 years, watching the street grow from Middle Street, settled by Tong'an refugees, into the Qing dynasty's second-largest foreign-trade port, and then into the political starting point for Taiwanese people under Japanese rule.

Chen Tian-lai was born in Dadaocheng in 1872, though some accounts say Xiamen, and died in 1939. The Western-style building of his Jinji Tea Company was completed between 1920 and 1923, and the two characters “Jinji” remain at its center today². In 1985, the Chen Tian-lai Residence was designated a Taipei municipal historic site, and in 2018 its restoration was completed and it reopened¹³.

The 1885 Western Learning Academy, the 1891 Railway Station, and Taiwan's First Railway

In October 1885, the eleventh year of the Guangxu reign, the Qing court issued an edict establishing Taiwan as a province and appointed Liu Ming-chuan as its first governor. Liu's first act after taking office was to choose the provincial capital near Dadaocheng, rather than inside the walls of Taipei Prefecture, completed only in 1884, or in Bangka's old temple district. This decision fixed the three-market-street pattern: Dadaocheng did business, the walled city handled government, and Bangka tended the old gods. The Japanese later continued this arrangement for 25 years¹⁴.

In his six years in Taiwan, from 1885 to 1891, Liu Ming-chuan did so much that he hardly seemed like a nineteenth-century Qing official:

1885: The Western Learning Academy was established in Dadaocheng. It was Taiwan's first modern-style school, located between today's Liuguan Street and Jianchang Street in Taipei's Datong District, around today's Nanjing West Road and Xining North Road. Its curriculum included English, French, geography, mathematics, and arithmetic, taught by hired foreign teachers. It admitted 64 students in its first year¹⁵. This was 13 years earlier than Dadaocheng Public School, established under Japanese rule in 1898. Taiwan's earliest modern education began next door to Dadaocheng's tea merchants.

1888: Taiwan's first post office was opened. Its office was also in Dadaocheng.

1889: The railway from Dadaocheng to Keelung opened. It was Taiwan's first railway, used mainly to transport coal from Keelung port to the Dadaocheng wharf for export by ship.

1891: Dadaocheng Railway Station opened. It was Taipei's first railway station, located between today's Yanping North Road and Section 1, Chengde Road in Taipei's Datong District¹⁵. Dadaocheng Railway Station operated until 1908, when it was replaced by the new Taipei Station built by the Japanese beside New Park, today's 228 Peace Memorial Park, and Dadaocheng Railway Station formally closed.

Liu Ming-chuan left office in 1891. His successor, Shao Youlian, was fiscally conservative, and many modernization projects stalled. Four years after Liu's departure, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 following the Qing defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War. But the foundations he laid in Dadaocheng did not disappear. After the Japanese took over, they continued to treat Dadaocheng as Taipei's core for foreign trade and education.

✦ “In prosperous Dadaocheng, many new experiments and activities first appeared here, then spread across the island.” (StoryStudio, “Where Is Taipei? The Origins of the Heavenly Dragon Kingdom”¹⁴)

No. 199 Taiping-cho: Chiang Wei-shui, the Cultural Association, and Taiwan's Ginza

After the Japanese took over Taiwan in 1895, they began replanning Taipei as a modern city in 1900. From the 1910s onward, Dadaocheng was divided into four cho: Taiping-cho, Eiraku-cho, Nisshin-cho, and Kensei-cho. Of these, Taiping-cho on today's Yanping North Road and Eiraku-cho on today's Dihua Street became, from the 1920s onward, the “Ginza of Taiwanese people”: Japanese residents lived inside the old walled city, while Taiwanese people lived their public lives in Taiping-cho¹⁶.

In 1916, the 25-year-old physician Chiang Wei-shui graduated from the Taiwan Governor-General's Medical School and interned at Yilan Hospital. In May 1916, he opened Taian Hospital at No. 199, Taiping-cho 3-chome in Dadaocheng, today's No. 31, Section 2, Yanping North Road⁵. Chiang was 25, and had only recently received his medical license, but what he opened was not merely a clinic: Taian Hospital later became the secret meeting place of the Taiwanese Cultural Association.

On October 17, 1921, the Taiwanese Cultural Association was founded at Seishu Girls' School in Dadaocheng, today's Blessed Imelda's School, then No. 1 Horai-cho. Lin Hsien-tang served as director-general and Chiang Wei-shui as executive director. The association's charter stated that its purpose was “to promote Taiwanese culture.” In a colonial context, the two characters for “culture” were politics that could pass censorship⁵.

In the early morning of December 16, 1923, Taipei Prefecture police conducted large-scale searches of Cultural Association leaders' residences. Chiang Wei-shui was taken to Taipei Prison. This was the Public Order Police Incident, the first collective political persecution of Taiwanese people under Japanese rule. Chiang was released after four months in prison, changed into a white suit, and returned to the streets⁵.

Taian Hospital stood at No. 199 Taiping-cho, operating from 1916 until Chiang Wei-shui's death in 1931. After the war, from the late 1940s onward, that plot became the main store of I-Mei Foods. I-Mei opened “I-Mei Store” there in 1934, selling bread and groceries. After Chiang's death, his student Kao Fan-wang and father-in-law Kao Tsai-te continued operating the business¹⁷. Go today to No. 31, Section 2, Yanping North Road, and the sign at the entrance reads “I-Mei Yanping Store.” Older residents will tell you: “This used to be Chiang Wei-shui's hospital.”

Taiping-cho was not only political. It was also musical.

In 1932, “Longing for the Spring Breeze” was produced by the Taiwan branch of Columbia Records, composed by Teng Yu-hsien, written by Li Lin-chiu, and sung by Sun-sun, whose given name was Liu Ching-hsiang. The recording location was the office of Columbia Records in Dadaocheng, in today's southern Dihua Street. After its release, “Longing for the Spring Breeze” became massively popular in Taiwan in the 1930s, and was Taiwan's first pop song in the true sense¹⁸. Teng Yu-hsien's later works, including “Rainy Night Flower” in 1934 and “Sorrow on a Moonlit Night” in 1933, also came out of this Dadaocheng office and are still covered today. In the 1930s, Dadaocheng was not only a commercial center but also the birthplace of Taiwanese-language popular music.

_The Chen Tian-lai Residence, No. 73 Guide Street, reopened after restoration in 2018. Photo: Nisa yeh from Taipei, Taiwan, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons._

That Packet of Cigarettes: The Small Stone Marker at No. 189 Nanjing West Road

On October 25, 1945, the Nationalist government accepted Japan's surrender at Taipei Public Hall, today's Zhongshan Hall. One year and four months later, on the evening of February 27, 1947, a packet of untaxed cigarettes in Dadaocheng ignited the deepest wound in postwar Taiwan.

The location was Tianma Tea House, at today's No. 189 Nanjing West Road, Taipei⁴, a cafe in Dadaocheng owned by the cultural figure Chan Tian-ma. Tianma Tea House opened in 1934. It featured gramophone music and coffee, and was a popular gathering place for Dadaocheng intellectuals in the 1930s.

At 7:30 p.m. on February 27, 1947, six agents from the Taipei branch of the Taiwan Provincial Monopoly Bureau went to the area around Tianma Tea House to crack down on untaxed cigarettes¹⁹. They stopped Lin Jiang-mai, a 40-year-old widow who supported one son and one daughter by selling both untaxed and licensed cigarettes at the entrance. In addition to confiscating the untaxed cigarettes, the agents also took her licensed cigarettes and money. Lin knelt and pleaded for leniency. The agent Fu Hsueh-tung struck her on the head with the butt of his gun, leaving her bleeding and unconscious on the spot¹⁹.

The watching crowd gathered around. Fu Hsueh-tung fired his gun in an attempt to scare them off, and the bullet struck bystander Chen Wen-xi. Chen died of his injuries the next day¹⁹. The following day, February 28, 1947, Dadaocheng residents marched in groups from Tianma Tea House to the square in front of the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office, today's Executive Yuan. They were “swept with machine-gun fire by guards, causing many deaths and injuries”⁴. Protesters occupied nearby New Park, today's 228 Peace Memorial Park, and took over the Taiwan Radio Station inside the park, on the site of today's 228 Memorial Museum, broadcasting news of the incident across the island. Broadcasting was the key to the event spinning out of control. What happened in Taipei spread across Taiwan by radio waves, and protests broke out from Keelung to Pingtung. Beginning in early March, suppression spread islandwide. Various studies estimate the death toll at between 18,000 and 28,000 people²⁰.

The original site of Tianma Tea House is now a commercial building. At its entrance is a small stone marker inscribed with the names Lin Jiang-mai, Fu Hsueh-tung, and Chen Wen-xi. Most passersby do not stop to look. This marker is not a national monument, is not on maps, and has no guided signage. It is simply a low metal plaque embedded in the side of the building. But for those who know, this address is one of Taipei's heaviest coordinates⁴.

📝 Curator's note: Conventional memorial narratives of the February 28 Incident focus on “how many people died,” “who gave the orders,” and “the central government's responsibility.” But the way the physical location of that packet of untaxed cigarettes on the evening of February 27, 1947, at No. 189 Nanjing West Road in Dadaocheng, is buried in Taipei's streets runs deeper than any monument. Lin Jiang-mai did not randomly choose Dadaocheng. She sold cigarettes on this street because Dadaocheng was Taipei's busiest Taiwanese commercial district. Fu Hsueh-tung and the six agents did not randomly choose Dadaocheng. They came here because Dadaocheng had the most cigarettes. Dadaocheng became the stage of the incident that evening in 1947 because, since the 1860s, it had always been “Taiwanese people's Taipei”: a commercial center, a political starting point, and the birthplace of Taiwanese-language popular music. The event's physical geography is as structural as the event itself. After 1949, under 38 years of martial law, people in Taipei could not say those three characters, “February 28,” in public. Dadaocheng went from Taipei's liveliest street to “an address no one dared mention”. Three generations of Taipei residents pieced together their understanding of the February 28 Incident step by step: from silence, to whispers, to a memorial museum.

The 1996 Widening Plan, the Leshan Foundation, URS, and Dihua 207

From the postwar period to the mid-1980s, Dadaocheng experienced nearly 40 years of slow silence. During martial law after 1947, this street retreated from Taipei's most important commercial center into the safer role of a “dry-goods wholesale center.” In 1965, planning for the Zhongshan Freeway through Taipei was approved, and in 1973 the second elevated bridge opened, cutting across Dadaocheng's northern side and obstructing the old street's external routes²¹. During the same period, Taipei's emerging commercial districts, including the East District along Zhongxiao East Road and the Xinyi Planning District, appeared one after another. Dadaocheng's tea shops, cloth shops, and traditional Chinese medicine shops closed or moved away one by one. By the late 1980s, many Taipei residents classified Dihua Street as an “old district.”

In 1996, the Taipei City Government proposed the Dihua Street Widening Plan, which would widen the street from its original 7.8 meters to 20 meters and demolish multiple old shop-houses on both sides of the street, on the grounds of “improving transportation and commercial development.” Had this plan been carried out as originally proposed, today's Dihua Street would look like any other commercial boulevard in Taipei, with all its old Western-style buildings demolished²².

But the plan met resistance.

The Leshan Cultural and Educational Foundation had been promoting surveys and preservation of old buildings on Dihua Street since the 1980s. After the widening plan was proposed in 1996, the Leshan Foundation, scholars, local residents, and cultural heritage preservation groups jointly launched an anti-widening movement. After nearly four years of negotiation, in 2000 the Taipei City Government formally withdrew the widening plan and instead adopted a transfer of development rights mechanism: the development rights of old shop-houses could be “transferred” to other areas, while the old houses themselves were preserved²². This was the first large-scale use in Taiwan of transfer of development rights as a tool to preserve a historic district, and it later became a model for preservation movements across the island.

Beginning in 2010, Taipei City's Department of Cultural Affairs launched the URS Urban Regeneration Station program, establishing URS 27, URS 44, URS 127, and other sites on Dihua Street, turning old shop-houses into galleries, cultural and creative spaces, and performance venues. In 2017, Dihua 207 Museum was founded by Lin Wen-lan, converting a 1962 old shop-house that had originally been a traditional Chinese medicine shop at No. 207, Section 1, Dihua Street, into a museum exhibiting Dadaocheng's history of everyday life²³.

💡 Did you know: In the 1996 anti-widening movement, the petition included signatures from many owners of old dry-goods shops still doing business on Dihua Street today. Their reason for standing up against the city government's widening plan was practical: “After the widening, our shops would have to move five meters back. Trucks couldn't get in, customers couldn't get in, and the dry-goods trade would be broken.” In Taiwan, many of the key drivers of historic preservation movements are not cultural youth or scholars, but old local residents.

Today on Dihua Street, within 800 meters from south to north, you can see three eras coexist: beside the site of Middle Street from 1851 is Xia-Hai City God Temple from 1859; across from the temple is the Watsons Pharmacy building from 1917, with its Baroque shop-house facade; another 200 meters north is the Chen Tian-lai Residence from 1923; farther north are the Dihua 207 Museum from 2017 and cultural and creative brands that moved in after the 2010s, such as inBlooom, Hoshing 1947, and ASW Tea House. These 800 meters contain all the results of Taiwan's preservation movement over the past 30 years.

The Watsons Pharmacy building on Dihua Street, founded in 1917. Photo: 寺人孟子, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Dihua Street during the Lunar New Year goods market. Photo: 玄史生, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Three Places Locals Will Take You

I will not list the photo spots tourists already know: the line in front of Xia-Hai City God Temple to pray to the Old Man Under the Moon, the week of Lunar New Year goods market crowds so dense you cannot walk, the dry-goods stalls on the first floor of Yongle Market, or the fried rice at Rice & Shine. These all appear if you Google “must-visit Dihua Street.”

Here are three places locals will take you, places that do not appear on Instagram as often but carry warmth:

1. The food stalls in the square in front of Cisheng Temple, Bao'an Street Lane 49

Walk north from Dihua Street past Minsheng West Road, turn left into Bao'an Street, and continue to Lane 49. You will see Cisheng Temple, the Mazu temple at the northern end of Dadaocheng, built in 1864. The square in front of the temple has more than ten food stalls, opening at 5:30 in the morning and closing at 2:00 in the afternoon. “Xu's Pig Trotters,” “Ye Family Meat Congee,” and “Mai Mien Yen Tsai Chin Chuan Eatery” are all places where people line up. But locals come between 10:00 a.m. and noon, avoiding the tourist breakfast peak and the Lunar New Year market lunch rush. The distinctive feature here is eating at tables set up in the temple courtyard. The temple provides tables and chairs for the vendors free of charge. When you look up while eating, you see the eaves of a temple built by Tong'an people 162 years ago²⁴.

2. The riverbank outside Water Gate No. 5 at Dadaocheng Wharf, at the end of Lane 32, Huanhe North Road

Walk west from Guide Street across Huanhe North Road, and pass through Water Gate No. 5 to reach the Tamsui riverbank. This was the harborfront from which Taiwanese oolong tea was loaded and exported between the 1860s and 1900s. Today the land is a riverside park and bicycle path. Locals come here between 5:30 and 7:00 in the evening to watch the sunset. From this angle looking across the Tamsui River, the outline of Guanyin Mountain rises on the opposite bank in Sanchong, and around 5:30 the sun sets right behind it. John Dodd and Li Chun-sheng stood here 160 years ago looking at the same Guanyin Mountain and the same river. Standing here today, the ground under your feet may be the remains of the wharf where Formosa Tea was loaded for export to New York in 1869.

3. The small stone marker across from Fazhugong Temple, No. 189 Nanjing West Road

Walk south from the southern end of Dihua Street across Nanjing West Road and you arrive. Most people passing along this street do not look up at that small stone marker. It is embedded in the side of a commercial building, roughly knee-high. It is inscribed: “Lin Jiang-mai, Fu Hsueh-tung, Chen Wen-xi, 1947.2.27, place of origin of the February 28 Incident.” This is not a national monument. There are no flowers, no guided interpretation, no national holiday rituals. But for those who know what happened that evening in 1947, the marker's location is more direct than any central-level memorial. Looking out from here, Fazhugong Temple stands directly across the street. It was established during the Xianfeng reign of the Qing dynasty, around the 1850s, nearly a century before 1947. On that evening in 1947, the agents, Lin Jiang-mai, Fu Hsueh-tung, and Chen Wen-xi all passed under this temple's gaze.

Three Centuries in 800 Meters

From the first shop opened by Lin Lan-tian in 1851 to the tourists walking into Dihua 207 Museum in 2026, this street contains 175 years of time. Dihua Street is quiet at 5:30 in the morning: the Western-style building of Chen Tian-lai's Jinji Tea Company, opened in 1891, still stands at its original address, No. 73 Guide Street; the incense burner in front of Xia-Hai City God Temple has burned for 167 years; the Baroque facade of the Watsons Pharmacy building from 1917 still stands on Section 1, Dihua Street.

Walk five minutes south to No. 189 Nanjing West Road, and the small stone marker is embedded in the side of a commercial building. The names Lin Jiang-mai, Fu Hsueh-tung, and Chen Wen-xi have been inscribed there for more than 30 years, and most passersby do not stop to look.

From the 1709 Dajiala cultivation association to the Tong'an refugees arriving in 1853; from Formosa Tea exported to New York in 1869 to Liu Ming-chuan's Western Learning Academy in 1885; from Chiang Wei-shui's Taian Hospital in 1921 to Sun-sun's “Longing for the Spring Breeze” in 1932; from that packet of cigarettes in 1947 to the 1996 anti-widening movement; from URS in 2010 to Dihua 207 Museum in 2017, an 800-meter street contains three centuries of Taiwan.

The next time you walk down Dihua Street, look up at the carved flowers and birds on those Western-style buildings from the 1910s, and remember that what lies beneath your feet is not only brick and tile.

Further reading:

• Taipei City: Three Times Inside One City, the 1738 Longshan Temple Looking at the 2004 Taipei 101 — a panorama of Taipei's 12 districts and Dadaocheng's position among the three market streets
• Taiwan's Old Street Culture and Commercial Districts — the master catalog for old streets, comparing Dihua Street with Lukang, Bangka, and Sanxia
• Taiwanese Tea Culture — the full context of Formosa Tea and northern Taiwan's tea industry
• The February 28 Incident — the incident ignited by that packet of cigarettes in 1947, the subsequent suppression, and transitional justice
• Taiwanese Social Movements Under Japanese Rule — Chiang Wei-shui and the Cultural Association at No. 199 Taiping-cho
• Taiwanese Folk Songs and Popular Songs — “Longing for the Spring Breeze” in 1932 and Columbia Records in Taiping-cho
• Bangka — the Tong'an people defeated in the 1853 Dingxiajiao Conflict fled from Bajiazhuang in Bangka to Dadaocheng; the two streets are divergent results of the same armed conflict
• Ximending — a sibling historic district in the same batch 1: a Japanese-rule entertainment district from 1896 versus Dadaocheng as a Qing-era commercial street, contrasting two moments of street formation
• Zhongshan North Road Tiaotong — a sibling historic district in the same batch 1: Onari-cho, west of Chokushi Kaido, connects precisely to Dadaocheng's southeastern edge; the Japanese-rule elite residential district and Dadaocheng commercial street represent two contemporaneous spatial classes

Image Sources

This article uses five CC / Attribution-licensed images, including the hero image and four inline images, all cached in public/article-images/geography/ to avoid hotlinking source servers:

• Aerial photographs of Dihua Street — Photo: Yu tptw, Attribution
• Taipei Xia-Hai City God Temple 20180729 — Photo: Solomon203, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Chen Tian-lai Residence 12303134604 — Photo: Nisa yeh, CC BY-SA 2.0
• 屈臣氏大藥房 — Photo: 寺人孟子, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Dihua Street Lunar New Year 20110203a — Photo: 玄史生, CC BY-SA 3.0

References