Dadaocheng Audio Guide

Dadaocheng: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Twatutia

   Welcome to Twatutia, written 大稻埕 in Chinese and known in Mandarin as Dadaocheng. Before we begin, one note on what this guide covers. Twatutia is a traditional district name in the southwest of Taipei's Datong District, not a single building. So this guide tells the story of the whole neighborhood, and I will not attach that story to one specific doorway. The name is a clue in itself. It comes from a Taiwanese Hokkien phrase, Tuā-tiū-tiânn, meaning a big open ground where rice is spread out to dry in the sun. Picture a wide, bright, practical space where farmers laid out their harvest and where, between harvests, farm goods changed hands. A rice-drying yard became the name of one of Taipei's great merchant quarters. In the next few minutes we will follow that story: how a farming settlement turned into a river port, how a tea business took Taiwan's name to New York, and how the neighborhood fell quiet and then found new life. Today the heart of the district is Dihua Street, and the area stretches from Yanping North Road in the east to the riverside wharf and park in the west. Keep that map in your head as we go.

2. 02

   Twatutia: From Rice Yard to River Port

   Long before shopfronts lined the streets, this land belonged to the Pingpu indigenous people. In 1709 a land-clearing group led by Chen Laizhang obtained an official permit to open up the Taipei basin, and Han Chinese settlers gradually followed. When Monga, today's Wanhua, was crowded and busy, Twatutia was still a small farming village. Its residents grew rice and traded cloth and liquor to the Pingpu for deer skins. The turning point came in the 1850s. In 1851 a man named Lin Lantian left Keelung to escape pirate raids and built a shop on the middle street, which is today the first section of Dihua Street. Called Lin Yishun, it is remembered as the first shop in Twatutia. Two years later, in 1853, Monga erupted in a fierce dispute between the Sanyi group and the people from Tongan over the right to use the wharves. The Tongan people were fewer and had arrived later, and they had been squeezed away from the best riverbank. Their leader Lin Youzao saw that Twatutia, right on the Tamsui River, could become a port. He and his fellow townsmen built a street market and traded across the strait, with Xiamen as the main partner. Over time, the rice yard became the commercial heart of Taipei.

3. 03

   Twatutia and the Tea That Crossed an Ocean

   If one story explains the wealth of Twatutia, it is tea. In 1865 a British merchant named John Dodd came to Taiwan to look into camphor. Instead he noticed how tea was grown and processed. He brought oolong tea seedlings from Anxi in Fujian, encouraged farmers in northern Taiwan to plant them, and set up his firm, Dodd and Company, known in Chinese as Baoshun. Dodd first opened a tea works in Monga, but local residents were unwelcoming, so in 1869 he moved the firm to Twatutia. That same year he shipped 2000 piculs of oolong, roughly 210 thousand catties, to New York under the name Formosa Tea. It sold very well. The business worked on credit. Dodd lent money to tea farmers through compradors, who were local agents, and tea merchants then bought the roughly processed leaf. The tea was refined and roasted in Xiamen before it was sold abroad. This chain of loans, leaf and shipping tied a riverside district in Taipei to world markets, and it helped Twatutia pull ahead of Monga as the island's trading center.

4. 04

   Twatutia: Railways, Decline and Revival

   As the river silted up and the main harbor activity drifted downstream, a different kind of transport took over. The first railway station in Taipei was completed in Twatutia in October 1891, when the line to Keelung opened. Later, under Japanese rule, the Tamsui line opened in 1901. Over the following years a Twatutia station was set up, and it became the starting station for that line. Rail helped the district become the biggest commercial center in Taipei. Then the tide turned. The Taipei city government left its old site on Chang'an West Road for the Xinyi planning district. The railway here was removed, and many wealthy families who had lived in the neighborhood moved away. Twatutia faded from the headlines, though it remained an essential chapter in the story of how Taipei grew. In recent years the story has shifted again. The Mass Rapid Transit system arrived, the Twatutia wharf was rebuilt, and the district's historic buildings and community character have drawn people back. Many of those who visit today are looking for exactly the atmosphere that earlier generations left behind.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Twatutia rewards slow walking. The easiest way in is to ride the Mass Rapid Transit to Daqiaotou station. Take Exit 1 and follow the signs toward the underpass for Yanping North Road, Section 3. Come out the other side and you will find trees, bike paths and a small Buddhist temple at Yanping Riverside Park, right on the river that made this district. From there you can head south along Dihua Street, past shops and architecture of many styles, all the way to Nanjing West Road. Along Dihua Street you will find the Taipei Xia-Hai City God Temple. Its festival celebrating the City God's birthday falls on the 13th day of the fifth lunar month each year. As you walk, try a game. Imagine the open ground where rice once dried, the first shop on the middle street, tea chests heading for the wharf, and a station where trains once began their journey to Tamsui. How many layers of Twatutia can you find in a single block?