DADAOCHENG - One Cold Day, Many Warm Hearts (Part I)
Dadaocheng has been written about by many and shared to more. But our day trip is a little special. It was the last 2019 quarterly gathering of 'Taiwan Old Family' group I was invited to join little more than one year ago.
Our Host
Chen 陳信濤 Chen 陳玠甫
It was a cold, wet winter day, upon arrival at Chen Dexing Ancestral Hall 陳德星堂
we were greeted by joint host 島內散步 WALK IN TAIWAN founder Chiu Yi 邱翊 and staff.
島內散步 WALK IN TAIWAN has rapidly gained reputation among locals offering tailored walk tours run by knowledgeable and self-driven professionals. They say -
Taiwan is just like a museum.
There is a group of people tells the story of this huge museum, inviting travelers strolling along, exploring every single corner, and discovering the landscape and history.
Walk in Taiwan, may you see the genuine Taiwan in Chinese, English, and Japanese. Professional tour guide, In-depth cultural experience, On regular spot and time.
Taiwan Guides are passionate with Taiwan. We read through the historical data to understand the development of every corner, and visit various neighborhoods to feature the beauty of architecture.
Chiu Yi began by a well-prepared and hugely informative presentation covering Dadaocheng history and developments with a focus on introducing two of the other hosts - fourth generation of Formosa tea trade merchant Li and Chen.
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| John Dodd and Li Chunsheng 李春生 |
John Dodd's role in 'Formosa tea' relates me very well - see in this blogpost where I and Professor Niki Alsford (currently at University of Central Lancashire) contributed.
https://danshuihistory.blogspot.com/2014/09/john-dodd.html
More on John Dodd here - sourced from 'A Culinary History of Taipei'
Tea was one of Taiwan’s most important exports during the final third of the nineteenth century, and one of the people often credited with developing the local tea industry was British merchant John Dodd. He first visited Taiwan in 1860, and settled in Tamsui in 1864. By 1869, he was shipping tea to New York. In 1895—by which time Dodd had left the island, his fortune well and truly made—nearly ten thousand tons of Formosan oolong was being exported each year, and sixty-four thousand acres was devoted to tea cultivation.
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Li Holian 李福然 - fourth generation of Li Chunsheng and the house he was born (now Guide Street)   Rediscovery of Three Dragon Motif Columns  The Chens clan temple was originally located at the very heart of the 1870s newly built Taipei walled city which is also the last laid Chinese city chartered by the Manchu Chin Royal Court. Once Taiwan was taken by Japan as a new territory in 1895, the fortification based on a western modeled city from the Japanese Meji Reform at Taipei started to emerge within the city walls. A plan of a new Presidential Palace was thrown to the site where the Chens Temple had been standing for long. The whole temple was dismantled around 1911 when the new edifice of Palace began to draw interest of a national architectural plan competition held in Japan. The family took some of the remains of the temple architecture home until they had asked for a new site north of Taipei walled city closer to majority of the Han Chinese neighborhoods. Due to the scale of the site being reduced significantly, the new relocated Chens clan temple was built not to accommodate whole original building pieces, three front row dragon pillars were then buried at the rear courtyard.
This piece of the temple relocation history has already
been passed down to the Chens for generations that the rear courtyard might
have something from the original one. However, It was until 2015 that a space
extension construction having a dig to the ground at the rear courtyard, this
set of the stone pillars were miraculously unearthed.
The dragon motif columns were believed the most important
piece of the Han Chinese architecture for thousand of years in which they
support the courthouse from the ground to the roof and they are the first to be
lit from the rise of sun. The dragon itself, also an emblem of the ancient
China that everyone born as Chinese is the direct offspring of dragon. This
tells how much the Han-Chinese migrated family of Chens treasured them when
they were forced a move and brought to the new site. The clan of Chens group
are from the South of Hohkien province which is the the direct and earliest Han
group of Chinese that flew to the south of China after thousands years of
turbulence at the north central where Han Chinese culture started.
 
There were also remarkable new discoveries identified
during the heritage repairing construction project between 2009 and 2012 in
which it attempted to replace the rotten timber materials at the roof level.
Some of the wooden corbel boxes in the main and front hall have revealed hand
writings that were considered belonging to the first generation of the temple
located at site of the Taipei Presidential Place. More than 10 boxes were
marked with location of the piece where it came from.
Text contributor Willie Chen,Taiwan architecture historian.
(https://chenwillie.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwAR0nhSnf8LhfpycWtvZQ_t_HN4D-4jeFFBM3tFLEkkXV8Qt4kmX7bUUpias) Chen told me Dexing is not the only kindergarten built in affiliation with a clan temple in Taipei, but he believes is the only private one. These temples were built as clan academy. To set up a school in the premise is preserving clan heritage. School fees help pay for maintenance, and teach children to appreciate historic values in a safe environment.        Dadaocheng Presbyterian Church （台灣基督長老教會大稻埕教會） 1875 - Established by Priest George Leslie Mackay. Named Dalongdong Church 大龍峒禮拜堂 , (now Yanping North Road 延平北路). During the Sino-French War (1884 – 1885), local citizens attacked the churches and Dalongdong Church was so badly damaged that it was reduced to rubble. 1885 - Rebuilt on Niumoche Street 牛磨車街 (now Dihua Street 迪化街) after the first governor of Taiwan, Liu Mingchuan approved funding. The rebuilt church, named Fansi Chapel 枋隙禮拜堂, was one of the largest churches in Taiwan at the time. 1915 - Li Chunsheng, proposed donating a piece of land for the rebuilding of the church. The new building, renamed Dadaocheng Presbyterian Church, Taipei, still stands today on Ganzhou Sreet 甘州街. 
1916 Inauguration of Dadaocheng Presbyterian Church
2007 - a new church building was constructed behind the original; only the chapel’s left and right façades were left intact.   Bolero 1934 A restaurant reported and reviewed by many. I am putting here what not commonly talked about.    Source 'A Culinary History of Taipei' The owner of Bolero, founded in 1934, hung blank canvases on the walls, “for artist-customers to create paintings when moved to do so.”The financial and moral support he and other café owners offered artists is regarded by art historians as a key stage in the development of Taiwanese art. After World War II, coffeehouses continued to be gathering places for the literati. Bolero was (and still is) located in Dadaocheng, an old and thoroughly Taiwanese part of the city long associated with the tea trade. The appearance of coffee-serving establishments outside Taipei’s Japanese-dominated neighborhoods shows how educated Taiwanese shared some of Japan’s enthusiasm for Western influenced lifestyles. Both the colonizers and the colonized viewed coffeehouses as symbols of modernity. At a time when few buildings had electricity, Taipei’s coffeehouses used colorful lights to attract customers and electric fans to cool them. Rather than sit Japanese-style at very low tables, coffee drinkers reposed on Thonet-type chairs. We were brought to Bolero for lunch. I failed to see how this restaurant either in deco, food style or servicing attract to modern, trendy young generations. But this is not why we were there, we were there for its fantastic nostalgia and appreciating the meal as part of learn and share.
The VINTAGE SILVERWARE is something to mention . One of classic Bolero dishes '法國鴨子飯 Canard a'la Francaise aux Rig' is another to remind you of what Bolero is. Some may find Bolero food 'strange' and I don't know if French find that in this Bolero duck dish. It is duck stew in herbs,mushroom, onion and fried rice vermicelli pool of sauce. The hosts ordered it for each table to share - simply for its 'authentic Bolero taste'!
My order is beef. To give verdict - the first and last were best course of five.   |
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