Old Neighborhood Gets New Life

The neighborhood of Bopiliao butts up next to Laosong Elementary School, and is bounded by Guangzhou Street, Kunming Street, and Kangding Road. With Longshan Temple just a bit off to the north, and Huaxi Street to the west, it is the only neighborhood in Taipei that retains its Qing-Dynasty appearance, and features Minnan architecture that extends for several hundred meters. In contrast with the roar of the modern metropolis that has grown up around it, the old neighborhood presents an air of hushed mystery.

It was only last November that Hau Lung-bin (mayor of Taipei) and Li Yong-ping (deputy mayor of Taipei and concurrent head of the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs) came to Bopiliao to attend the opening of an exhibit on 300 years of history in the part of old Taipei formerly known as the Dajiala district, and later Mayor Hau came here again with several film directors from India to show them around and encourage them to film on location here for their Bollywood productions.

Going back a few months earlier, the Bopiliao historical district opened to the public with an art exhibit curated by Sean Hu. The exhibit featured works by 24 Taiwanese and foreign artists, all focusing on themes related to Bopiliao.

All the hustle and bustle seems to announce that Bopiliao has sprung back to life after 10 dormant years following the big demolition and remodeling project of 1999.

Tourists flock to the newly redone Bopiliao, which now buzzes with activity.

So what was Bopiliao like before it went dormant?

Records indicate that the history of Bopiliao dates to 1799. The architecture of the Qing-Dynasty period featured rows of shops that shared a common wall between them and were laid out on a long, narrow floor plan. Proprietors either kept shop in front and made their living quarters in the rear, or put the shop on first floor and made their home on second.

The Japanese colonial authorities carried out an urban redevelopment project in 1905 in which streets were broadened and straightened. The rear quarters of the long buildings were torn down to make way for a broad new street known today as Guangzhou Street. The narrow three-meter lane that was once the main street suddenly became a back alley. Clever shop owners wasted no time in putting up new facades along Guangzhou Street, but also kept doing business on the back alley as well. The result was a unique "double storefront" architectural style.

The Japanese architects of that time, under the influence of the scholasticism then in vogue, encouraged shop owners to front their stores with a Western-style red brick pedestrian arcade, and to put in larger windows for better ventilation and light. The result was a distinctly modern melding of Chinese and Western elements.

But Bopiliao (literally, "skin-the-hide shack" or perhaps "peel-the-bark shack") might seem an unusual name for a neighborhood. Where did the name come from? It depends on who you ask, for even local old timers give many different explanations. Some say that it relates to the delivery of spruce lumber to the river port back during the Qing Dynasty by merchant vessels from Fuzhou. The lumber was then hauled by beasts to Bopiliao, where it was further processed. The place name, in this version of the story, relates to the peeling of the tree bark and skinning of animals.

Others say the neighborhood was called Fupiliao during the Qing Dynasty, which was changed to Beipiliao during the Japanese colonial period, which gradually morphed into Bopiliao because bei and bo have very similar pronunciations in the Minnan tongue.

Tourists flock to the newly redone Bopiliao, which now buzzes with activity.

In the 1980s, as Taiwan transformed into an industrial society, land prices soared and construction firms greedily eyed potential bonanzas to be had by tearing down old neighborhoods and putting up modern buildings. Builders swooped in and razed large swaths of old, low buildings, replacing them with new-style apartment buildings and commercial towers. Bopiliao alone was somehow passed over. It remained behind, frozen in time.

Professor Mii Fu-kuo of the Tamkang University Department of Architecture, who conducted a historical survey of Bopiliao in 1998 on behalf of the Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs, explains that the neighborhood managed to hang on to its original appearance because it had been zoned as part of the grounds of Laosong Elementary School and was therefore reserved for educational use.

Intending to reclaim the land to expand Laosong Elementary School, the Taipei City Department of Education in 1988 filed for eminent domain, but a failure to communicate with local residents resulted in an impasse, and progress on the plan slowed to a snail's pace. The law requires that once an eminent domain procedure has been instituted, it must be carried to completion within 10 years, otherwise it will have to be canceled and restarted, which is why the battle over Bopiliao was so pitched. In the meantime, uncertainty over the future meant that neighborhood residents were unwilling to spend money on property upkeep. Everywhere one looked, stucco facing was crumbling away to reveal the old mud brick walls behind. Roofs were falling in, and weeds proliferated.

With the eminent domain deadline looming in 1998, residents formed a committee for designation of Bopiliao as a historical preservation district. The committee pressured the government to preserve the neighborhood and save it from the wrecking ball.

The following year, Laosong Elementary School launched a "Save the Schoolyard" petition drive calling on the city government to raze all buildings located on land originally designated as school property, including Bopiliao.

At the same time, Bopiliao residents were protesting outside City Hall to demand that newly inaugurated Mayor Ma Ying-jeou make good on his campaign promise to find good living quarters and pay special attention to the needs of any forced to relocate.

The uproar eventually died down when all three parties came to a grudging consensus on what to do. In the end, 64 households agreed to move out of the neighborhood and are scheduled to receive a total of NT$461 million in compensation for their property, in amounts proportionate to the floor space of the property being vacated.

Of the 4,699 square meters of land claimed under eminent domain, a small portion was to have its structures razed and used for expansion of the school, while over 90 percent of the neighborhood buildings were to be emptied out, restored to original condition, and designated for re-use under a historic neighborhood revitalization project.

In June 1999, just before demolition work was set to begin, Bopiliao residents held a candlelight vigil to bid farewells and express their sense of loss.

Zheng Yaling has lived in Bopiliao for 20 years and runs Long Life Old Folks Tea Shop, which recently moved to nearby Nanning Street. She recalls with a sigh the booming business she used to do in Bopiliao: "Residents want to stay where they are, of course. To say nothing of how my business has dropped off since moving, I can no longer go back to what was once my home."

Ms. Zheng married at age 23 into the Chen family, which had been living in Bopiliao since the time of the Daoguang Emperor (1821-1850), and she eventually took over the tea shop from her mother-in-law. The shop has now been in business for 50 years, but still ranks as something of an upstart in comparison with Sun Book Making, a century-old establishment that produces books using traditional printing and binding methods, or Weilingtan, a Daoist shrine now under fifth-generation leadership.

Weeds and dilapidation were everywhere in evidence before the demolition and remodeling of Bopiliao.

After the city government exercised eminent domain over Bopiliao, it set up a task force to study how to restore the old neighborhood and how to make use of it.

In 2003, the Heritage and Culture Education Center of Taipei was established in the eastern section of Bopiliao to educate students at Laosong Elementary about the historic sites on their own school grounds, and to run public exhibits. In the western section of Bopiliao, which was opened to the public in 2009, exhibits set out in glass display cases are for now the main attraction, but the area will eventually serve as a venue for cultural and creative arts demonstrations.

How do the locals regard Bopiliao in its new reincarnation? Shop owners are pleased at the uptick in business brought by the return of foot traffic, but residents give mixed reviews.

Ke Te-lung, a local antiquarian and second-generation proprietor of a snack shop on Huaxi Street, feels that the makeover has left nothing more than an insipid shell of the Bopiliao that once was, but others are more positive about it, and feel that bringing in cultural and artistic elements has breathed new life into the neighborhood.

Mii Fu-kuo, who in addition to Bopiliao has also studied old neighborhoods in Sanxia (in Taipei County) and on the island of Kinmen, explains that there are three main ways to approach the renovation of old neighborhoods-razing and rebuilding, partial remodeling, and preservation and maintenance. Bopiliao is an "old neighborhood reuse" project as provided for in the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, so the restoration methods are not the same as those employed with actual historic monuments. This allows for greater flexibility.

"It's like people going in for a face lift after they grow old," says Professor Mii. Since Bopiliao has been designated as an old neighborhood reuse project, there ought to be no harm in doing a bit of minor surgical remodeling for the sake of safety and convenience, on the condition that the basic appearance of the buildings is not changed.

He also notes that the government's attitude with respect to the revitalization of old neighborhoods is not to offer products or services that compete with those of local businesses. When Peitou Hot Springs Museum was opened up, for example, the public was not allowed to use the hot springs in the museum because the government did not want to hurt the business of nearby hot springs establishments. The area around Bopiliao has always been home to many hole-in-the-wall eateries and shops, so the government will not run similar types of businesses in the Bopiliao area, and has instead opted to focus on arts and culture, and adopted a special design theme to distinguish Bopiliao from the rest of the neighborhood, and so to spur development of the entire business district.

Professor Mii feels that a full-blown tourism district, anchored around Bopiliao and Longshan Temple, could grow up in this area if these two attractions were to link up with specialty shops and fine restaurants located in nearby Herb Alley and a nearby neighborhood where the shops all specialize in items used in Buddhist worship.

Says Professor Mii, "The government just needs to concentrate on developing local infrastructure, and do what it is that the government is capable of doing. As long as they do that, the economy in the area will pick up. The main thing is to get passersby to stop, come on in, and engage with the neighborhood. That's the only way anything meaningful will come of all our efforts."

Tourists flock to the newly redone Bopiliao, which now buzzes with activity.

Tourists flock to the newly redone Bopiliao, which now buzzes with activity.