“The railroad is embedded in the story of this city’s modernization,” says Egaruok Chang, founder of the Taichu Renaissance Association. Taiwan’s north–south railway opened to traffic in 1908, during the era of Japanese rule, and Taichung (known to the Japanese as Taichū) became an important transportation hub. During the 1920s the Taiwanese Cultural Association was active in Taichung, founding the Central Bookstore and making the city into a bastion of cultural and artistic thought for Taiwanese. Egaruok notes that Taichung lies further inland than other major cities in Taiwan, and without the railroad it would not have prospered so rapidly. Thus in exploring the stories of Taichung’s old town, you have to start with the railway.
 

Conserving a place name

In the memories of older Taichung residents, the old Taichung Train Station was an important part of their lives, whether they were commuting to work, heading to cram school, or going on a date. Completed in 1917, this impressive structure has a red-brick exterior with decorative white bands, as well as a copper-tiled roof with a clock tower in the center.

For Egaruok, who has lived in the vicinity of the station since he was small, the railroad was part of the scenery of his daily life. He was very familiar with the sight of trains crossing iron bridges to enter the station. He says with a laugh that local people had a fond nickname for the bridges, calling them the “Sky Railway” (hué-tshia-lōo-khang in Taiwanese). If you asked a local how to get to Taichung Rouyuan (a famous meatball restaurant), for example, you might get a response such as this: From the front of the station, go through under the Sky Railway and then turn onto Fuxing Road. For local people, the Sky Railway is not just an iron bridge, it is a landmark and a place name.

However, if the bridges were to disappear due to the elevation and rerouting of the city’s railway tracks, would not certain cultural memories also be lost? This question weighed on Egaruok’s mind. Back in 2014, still two years from the completion of the project to elevate the railway in downtown Taichung, Egaruok got the idea of creating a “sky garden” along the old tracks.

When pitching his idea to the public, Egaruok drew on two international examples of railroads being turned into parks. The High Line in New York and the Promenade Plantée in Paris are both cases of linear parks on old railroad routes that offer fresh ways to get to know these cities. Thanks to lobbying from Egaruok’s own Taichu Renaissance Association and other civic organizations, Taichung is able to enjoy a park named Taiwan Connection 1908 (a.k.a. the Taichung Overpass) that combines cultural content with soothing greenery.

The view from the tracks

Taiwan Connection 1908 links the former Martial Arts Hall (the future National Taiwan Museum of Comics) in Taichung’s West District to the Teikoku Sugar Factory in the city’s East District. Just walk out of the new Taichung Train Station and into the old station, and you can follow the old tracks to enter Taiwan Connection 1908. In the Japanese era, to overcome the problem of building a station on uneven, low-lying land, engineers realigned the Luchuan Canal and built elevated tracks so that trains could pass above people, vehicles, and buildings. Thus when you walk along Taiwan Connection 1908, you are always at a height of half a story to two stories above ground, and you can take a fresh look at the old downtown area of Taichung from the perspective of the trains of old.

Walking along Taiwan Connection 1908, you can admire the plants along the way as well as installation art works representing Taiwanese culture and inspired by the railway. Sometimes a train will pass overhead on the new elevated tracks, while below there is a constant stream of vehicles and pedestrians. It’s a unique experience.

Guided by Egaruok we come to the first bridge, which crosses Taichung Road and also marks a boundary between administrative districts. Which district is which? You can tell from the street scenes. The Central District is crowded with shops and has an air of bustling prosperity; the West District is a cultural and educational area that is home to government agencies and schools, and Japanese-era staff dormitories; while the East District, behind the train station, where the sugar factory and a distillery were located in earlier times, developed into an industrial area with a large working population.
 

Strolling along the tracks

While extolling the virtues of Taiwan Connection 1908, Egaruok also takes visitors on side trips to “stroll along the railroad tracks.”

Setting out from the rear side of the station, one can explore the old Zhongnan (Taichung–Nantou) line of the sugar railway system. The rear section of the old station was constructed in the Japanese era for use by the Zhongnan line. The tracks not only went right into the sugar factory, but also ran to the banana market. Given the large volume of banana exports in those days, private fruit trading companies also sprang up in the area. The former premises of a fruit dealer named Chen Wenming still stand on Fuxing Road. From the elegance of the structure you can get a glimpse of the prosperity of the fruit trade in days gone by.

Meanwhile, ensconced in a narrow back street is Fusion Space 1962, formerly a factory for Taiwan’s earliest cosmetics company, Shen Hsiang Tang. Although the building was left unused after production lines were relocated, today a design team has renovated it into a cultural co-creation space. The factory’s structure has been preserved, but inside there is a florist, restaurants, a vinyl record shop, and a vintage clothing store. Moreover, markets are held there occasionally. The abandoned factory has been reborn as a center for life aesthetics in the old part of Taichung, and has won a Red Dot Design Award from Germany, a Good Design Award from Japan, and a Golden Pin Design Award from Taiwan.

Countless ways to visit the old town

Most tourists who come to Taichung’s old town visit the Mayahara building (an eye clinic in the Japanese era) to try some ice cream or buy authentic Taichung souvenirs. This structure, built in 1927 by Japanese ophthalmologist Takekuma Miyahara, at one time was in an unsafe condition and was slated for demolition, but was later bought and restored by the Dawn Cake company. Preserving its historic ambience, the interior is decorated with wooden bookcases, while the sunlight passing through the high glass ceiling creates a nostalgic and elegant mood. This old building has become a well-known attraction in the old town.

In the eyes of Su Jui-pi, an assistant professor of architecture at Tunghai University, Taichung’s old downtown area is like a “girl with 1,000 faces.” You can plan your itinerary there around any number of themes, and each time you will find different wonders to behold.

Su moved into the old town in 2012 to pursue a research project, and on the long-disused second floor of a bank he set up the Downtown Recreative Foundation (now the Downtown Renaissance Association) and began to promote urban renewal in the old downtown. The area is packed with gems, and on each trip there one can choose a different theme to explore, such as youth start-ups, artisans and crafts­people, architecture, backstreet cuisine, bookstores, or coffee shops. Su says that the charm of the old town lies in its mix of old and new, with venerable old shops alongside small, attractive new select shops, giving the area a lively feel.

When Su studied architecture in Japan, he paid particular attention to the issue of unused buildings. He discovered that the unused buildings in Taichung’s old town each have their own stories.

For example, the building currently rented by Happen Social Design was once the law office of Bai Fushun, a member of the local gentry who had to flee Taichung after being involved in the February 28 Incident of 1947. Today, we can still see telltale signs of the building’s origins in the light brown ribbed tiles used on the walls and the signboard from days gone by.

The ChangeX Beer building, at the intersection of Minzu Road and Jiguang Street, has also been through multiple transformations. Back in the Japanese era, its earliest incarnation was a well-known Western-style restaurant called Seiyoken, which opened in 1915. It was frequented by the Taichung gentry, and is often mentioned in the diary of early political activist Lin Hsien-tang. In 1936 it became the Taichung branch office of the Taiwan Development Company. For a while after World War II it was a public cafeteria, until it became the ChangeX beer hall in 1962. In the 1960s and 1970s it flourished as one of Taichung’s four main drinking establishments. Coming to the present day, it was rented by a craft brewery in 2018, and after three years of renovations, including the removal of the sheet-metal roof and restoration of the covered walkways and patio, it became a modern space for dining, drinking, and live performances. The past glory of this century-old structure has finally been rediscovered.
 

Memories of the past

It is not only the private sector that is reviving the charm of Taichung’s old town—in fact, for many years now government agencies have been trying to restore the memories of days gone by through renovation and revitalization of historic buildings. One example is the Taichung Prefectural Hall, which was opened for prearranged visits by the public just recently, in September of 2023.

Construction began on the Taichung Prefectural Hall that we see today in 1912, and the first phase was completed the following year. It was expanded through five phases of construction until it reached its current size in 1934. Restoration of this majestic building started in 2019, and in 2022 it was finally revealed again to the eyes of the world.

The day we come to the prefectural hall the weather is beautiful. Under a warm autumn sun, the building, with its red brick and white stucco exterior and its mansard roof, looks even more ­resplendent set off against the blue sky and white clouds. We happen to run into a tour group from Japan arriving for a prearranged visit, and we tag along to learn more about the hall. For example, the guide states that the structure faces east, which differs from the north-facing alignment customarily used by the Chinese, and that the purpose of this orientation was to use sunlight to kill germs. The building also stands on a raised base to avoid humidity, thereby minimizing any discomfort arising from the different climates of Japan and Taiwan.

Entering a room on the second floor, the concrete floor we were walking on hitherto is suddenly surfaced with wood. It turns out that it is an imperial resting chamber prepared for Crown Prince Hirohito (later the Showa Emperor) when he was hosted by the prefectural government. It is said that in those times, on a clear day one could see all the way to Yushan (then known as Mt. Niitaka) from the second-floor corridor. Interestingly, when the Japanese tourists hear the guide say this, they hurry to the windows to gaze out and try to imagine the scene that the future emperor saw back then.

Besides the Taichung Prefectural Hall, the Japanese-era Taichū Shiyakusho (Taichung City Hall) and the prison officers’ quarters have all been restored to their former glory. Strolling through Taichung’s old town, if you observe carefully you will see signs of the past everywhere. As Egaruok says, if you strip away the exterior shell, you will discover many interesting things hidden inside.

For more pictures, please click 《An Urban Cultural Renaissance—Revitalizing Old Taichung》