Ximending Audio Guide

Ximending: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Ximending

   Ximending: This quiet patch lay right between them, like an empty room between three busy neighbors.

   Welcome to Ximending, a neighborhood and shopping district in Taipei's Wanhua District. Its local name is 西門町, which means roughly the town outside the west gate. This is a landmark that is really a whole district, so over the next few minutes I will tell you the story of the area as a whole rather than of one single building, and I will point out some of the places that carry that story. Here is why it deserves your attention. Ximending holds the title of the first pedestrian zone ever built in Taipei, and it is still the largest in Taiwan. Streets given over to people on foot were a novelty once, and this is where the idea took root in the city. It is also a place that has been called ageless. Generations of Taipei residents have their youthful memories tied to these lanes, even though the district's history stretches back more than a century. Keep that in mind as you walk: every crowd around you is the latest chapter of a very long story.

2. 02

   Ximending Before the Neon: A Low-Lying Gap

   Ximending: The walls on all four sides were also taken down, and in their place came wide boulevards known as the three-line roads.

   Picture this same ground in the Qing dynasty, and you would hardly recognize it. The land outside the west gate of the walled city of Taipei, a gate called Baocheng, was low-lying and damp, a place of swampy wasteland. Graves were scattered across it, and very few people chose to live here. The odd thing is where it sat. Early Taipei was known for its three bustling market streets: Mengjia, Dadaocheng, and the walled city itself. This quiet patch lay right between them, like an empty room between three busy neighbors. Everyone passed by, and almost nobody stayed. That emptiness is the key to understanding what came next. A blank space in the middle of a growing city is an invitation, and when the political winds changed, planners looked at this gap and saw opportunity. So when you stand in Ximending today, surrounded by shopfronts and crowds, remember that the first chapter of this place was silence and marsh.

3. 03

   Ximending Under Japanese Rule: A Gate Vanishes

   Ximending: Notice who is gathering around you, and what music, clothes and food they have brought with them.

   During the Japanese colonial period, that blank space between the old market streets was actively developed. The name Ximending itself comes from this era: it comes from an administrative division called Seimon-cho, written with the same characters, meaning the area outside the west gate of the city. Here is a twist worth savoring. To fit the Japanese urban plan for Taipei, the west gate was torn down, and it became the only gate of the Taipei city wall to disappear completely. The walls on all four sides were also taken down, and in their place came wide boulevards known as the three-line roads. So the district's name remembers a gate that no longer exists. Out of this transformation grew the district's first great boom, as a center of entertainment and commerce. The building most associated with that age is the Red House, known in Chinese as Ximen Honglou. Historians point to it as the emblem of this first golden era, and it still stands as a reminder of how a swamp became the place to be.

4. 04

   Ximending's Many Lives: Subcultures and Streets

   Ximending has risen and fallen three times, passing through great booms and real slumps. Through the Qing, the Japanese period and the postwar change of government, the district kept reinventing itself, and each reinvention left layers behind. Names from that past include Zhonghua Road, the Red House, the Lion Forest building, and the Zhonghua Market, which has since been demolished, and today the district is often described through its 18 characteristic streets. The layers are not only buildings. Over the decades the district nurtured one subculture after another: mainlander-style cuisine, red envelope shows, Japanese records, American second-hand clothes, tattoos and graffiti, and gay communities. Some of these have faded, and others are still arriving. That last thread is still alive. The area around the Red House is considered a center of Taipei's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture, and Ximending has often featured prominently in Taiwan Pride marches. History also lingers in the form of the Ximending Mazu Temple, one of the district's important and prominent historic temples, a quiet counterpoint to the neon around it.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you wander on, try treating Ximending like a layered map. Somewhere beneath your feet lies the line of a vanished city gate, and beyond it the old low ground that once separated Taipei's three market streets. Everything you see, from the pedestrian streets to the Red House, is a later answer to that empty gap. Look for the places where different eras sit side by side: a historic temple a short walk from loud, youthful storefronts, or a century-old theater building surrounded by the newest trends. Notice who is gathering around you, and what music, clothes and food they have brought with them. The district has been called forever young, and the more closely you look, the more that seems true. There are always new corners to turn here, so let curiosity choose your next street.