Shengping Theater Audio Guide

Shengping Theater: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Shengping Theater

   Welcome to Shengping Theater, known in Chinese as 昇平戲院. You are standing where Jiufen's narrow lanes meet, at the crossing of Qingbian Road and Shuqi Road, in Ruifang District, New Taipei. The theater's address is number 137 Qingbian Road. Most visitors come to Jiufen for tea houses, snacks and lantern-lit stairways. But this building tells a different story, one about the people who lived and worked here when gold mining shaped the hills. Before streaming, before television, this was the place where an entire mountain community came to be entertained. It was built for plays and film screenings, and it became the most important everyday entertainment center in the Jinjiushi area. Over the next few minutes we will look at how the theater was financed and opened, what clever features its builders packed inside, what happened when the gold ran out, and how a ruined hall was brought back to life. Take a moment to look at the facade, because it has quite a past.

2. 02

   Shengping Theater: A Hall Built by Ten Shareholders

   Let's go back to 1931, during the Japanese colonial period. Jiufen already had a theater of sorts, a wooden stage on Jishan Street, but it had become unusable. So a group of 10 shareholders stepped in. They were led by a mine manager named Weng Shanying and a wealthy merchant named Gao Jiudeng. Together they raised 11,000 Japanese yen and applied, under the name Shengping Theater Company, to the Governor of Taipei Prefecture for permission to build a theater. The site chosen was the crossing of today's Shuqi Road and Qingbian Road. The new house was called Shohei-za. In that era the word za was the Japanese term for a theater. The Chinese name Shengping carries the sense of peace and prosperity, with song and dance. It could hold about 600 people, and it officially opened on the twenty-seventh of June, 1932. It quickly became the most popular entertainment venue across the Shuijinjiu area, the cluster of mining communities around Jiufen. After the war the theater was renamed Shengping Theater, and its operators were Wu Shusang and Zhou Tian.

3. 03

   Shengping Theater: Rotating Stages and Air Conditioning Underfoot

   This was a thoroughly modern building for its time. It has two floors: the ground floor is built of stone, the upper floor is timber, and the roof is covered in tiles. Inside, the stage was fitted with advanced rotating tracks, the kind of equipment that let scenery and performers change quickly during a show. The designers also thought about the audience, and about the cleaning crew. The seats were made so they could be flipped up, which made sweeping much easier. And here is my favorite detail: under each of the two aisles on the ground floor, four holes were dug, and electric fans were set in them to blow air upward. That created a simple, homemade form of air conditioning, long before the real thing reached a mountain town like this. As you look at the building, imagine a packed hall with warm bodies and flickering light, and cool air rising from the floor. It is a small piece of engineering, but it says a lot about how seriously Jiufen took its entertainment.

4. 04

   Shengping Theater: Boom, Silence and Rebirth

   After the war, the theater helped drive the local economy along Jishan Street, Shuqi Road and Qingbian Road. Around it clustered noodle stalls, eateries, wine houses, billiard halls, inns and nightlife venues. A night at the theater was part of a whole evening out. But the fortunes of the theater were tied to the mountain. As gold output fell sharply, people kept leaving, and the theater closed in 1986. Then, in 1994, a typhoon tore the roof off the building. For years it sat empty, and ownership changed hands several times. The turning point came in 2009, when the last owner, Lin Junxiong, donated the theater to the New Taipei City government. Renovation began in October 2010 and cost nearly 50 million New Taiwan dollars. The aim was to bring back the look of the 1960s and restore the theater's role as a multi-purpose performance space. It reopened in August 2011, and today the New Taipei City Gold Museum runs it, with film screenings, performances and exhibitions.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Now that you know the story, notice how this theater sits right at a crossing of lanes, exactly where the community's daily life once flowed. Look up at the mix of stone below and timber above, and think about the tiles overhead that a typhoon once stripped away. The theater is not only a monument. It was brought back as a working venue, with screenings, performances and exhibitions. The New Taipei City Gold Museum publishes a monthly program on its website, so it is worth looking at before you plan a visit. And there is more to wonder about. The theater's early history has been told in different ways, with different years given for its earliest wooden stage and for its later rebuilding. Why do you think a town of miners wanted such a grand hall? As you wander the nearby lanes, keep an eye out for the places where that old nightlife might once have spilled into the street.