The Story of Huashan, Taipei (華山, 台北)

Few sites in Taipei have gone through as much change as the Huashan area. For most of its built history the area has been entirely industrial but in recent years it's become a place for the arts. As one of the first designated “cultural and creative spaces” in Taiwan the area is frequently an ideological battleground between creative society and more conservative forces. In this small area illegal raves have taken place meters from sanitized commercialism. But more on that later.

History

First let's go back as far in the area's human history as possible, because that's how I like to organize these posts. It was most likely indigenous lands before being settled for farms by early Han Chinese migrants. This map is the earliest visual record of the area I can find. It dates from the early Japanese era and shows there wasn't a great deal of anything here for the first decade or so of the 20th century. Only visible are a few rows of small houses and an older farming estate.

Winery and Goods Station

In 1914 the site was chosen for a winery; one of a number of factories that were built along the new railway line to Keelung. Although the first buildings were constructed around that time most of the current structures are from the early 1930's. A large freight yard was built to the north serving both the winery and smaller businesses in central Taipei.

Initially the site brewed sake wine and then rice wine. Cassava wine and liquors were brewed during its later history. The goods station was known as Huashan Station and the small white terminal building remains today. It's the only original Japanese era station building left in the central city. After some facilities for steam trains were demolished in 2009 an outcry led to a movement to protect it . There are a couple of old pictures of the station here. Production at the winery lasted until 1987. As pollution and rising land values became issues the decision was made to move the factory to Linkou.

Approx late 1950’s and now. The white freight station can just about be seen through the trees in the second picture. Second pic source . Photos from this time are very rare as owning cameras was prohibited for most people under Martial Law.

The Red Brick Warehouses

The railway company and winery built groups of warehouses around the tracks and a neat housing area beyond. The warehouses that were built in 1919 were beautiful red brick structures with elaborate detailing. These were also used as a camphor refinery. Heavily damaged in World War 2 they were repaired, but by the mid-2000's were in ruins again.

Although it doesn’t look like much the concrete building with the Japanese style roof to the west is also historic. It was first an art school founded by the Patriotic Woman’s Society (a Japanese era charitable foundation) and later a grain warehouse. Although the exterior and windows are modern the old wooden truss roof still exists.

The Tunnel

In the late 1980's the mainline railway in central Taipei was moved underground and the new Taipei Main Station was built. The railway ran down what is now Civic Boulevard and at this time only a small stretch between Huashan and Wanhua was moved into tunnels under Beiping Road. At Huashan a connecting tunnel was built to join the underground and above ground sections. The goods station stayed in use but most tracks were taken up and just a few small spur lines remained.

This tunnel still remains and was one of the reasons I started this little project of hidden places. It hides behind a row of trees and when I first looked through while taking pics for the Taipei map it piqued my curiosity. At that time a few small train engines were down there along with the cut off tracks. I began to collect odd places hidden away in the city, eventually using this blog and the Hidden Taiwan Map to record them. The mouth of the tunnel was ominous and surrounded by CCTV so I didn't head inside. I now realize at that time the cameras were mostly for show. There used to be a blog post by someone who had explored the tunnel right up to where it joins the mainline but sadly it seems to have been scrubbed from the internet.

Early Arts Space

By the late 90's the goods station was being used as a storage yard. The winery had become derelict as various plans, such as one to build a new legislature here, each fell through. An underground art and performance scene had grown in and around the ruins. Perhaps this was one of the earliest expressive spaces in the city after the martial law era ended? In 1997 a theater group staged a large production among the ruins and were charged with forcible entry. Artists and performers protested this and advocated for the winery to be permanently used as an arts space. They were instrumental in saving it after two years of demonstrations and petitions. In the late 90's it was designated an arts and cultural space though it wasn't until 2005 that all the buildings were repaired. In an foreshadowing of what has happened here in the past two years this article from 2004 suggests that the artist community in Huashan were the butt of sensational reporting and moralizing at the time.

A newspaper feature from 2000 showing some of the activism and future plans for the site.

By 2008 the goods station grounds had all been turned into parkland. Only some platforms, the bricked up Huashan Station building, and the tunnel remained as evidence of its railway past. The red brick warehouses were repaired around the same time and became high end shops and extra exhibition space. By 2010 the transformation had finished and Huashan looked pretty much how it does in the present day.

This may seem like a happy ending but not everyone was pleased. The creative groups and artists who had been the driving force behind saving the site were disappointed to see the same commercial interests that dominate cultural space in the rest of the city gain a foothold here too. The article here has a little fact or fiction section at the end. It states as fiction that ‘Huashan would become a commercial theme park for tourists with a lot of retail’. I would say that didn't quite end up as a fiction. This site became much more managed and the experimental community was largely pushed out until the late 2010's. By 2016/17 it seems those in charge had started to realize that a creative zone without many creative folks within was a little absurd and began to take measures against the commercialization of the space

I noticed more events with young artists and free exhibits began to be held. Many exhibits previously were entirely commercial or limited to very established artists. Brands still use Huashan for exhibits, which are really just glorified merchandise shops, but there is some less corporate stuff going on too.

Later Developments and Incidents

In 2018 a festival called 120 Grassroots Artists' Village took place on parkland they leased from the Government around the goods station. The station building itself was also opened up and restored. This event was a lot more experimental and unregulated (it was held by a group calling themselves Unregulated Masses) and seems to have echoed the spirit of late 90's Huashan.

An old bomb shelter near the goods station

A stall at the festival. Source: New Bloom Magazine

For a while the festival existed without much trouble and provided a good space for artistic expression. Elsewhere at this time Taiwanese society was gripped by a spate of misogynistic murders and dismemberments which in June 2018 touched Huashan too. An archery instructor who was renting space at the festival murdered a woman, cut her up, and hid her body on Yangmingshan. He confessed that he'd murdered her after she had rejected his sexual advances. He was later sentenced to death.

Instead of treating this tragedy as a result of misogyny and entitlement the media and conservative forces tried to link the wider festival community to it. Their line of thinking was that the festival was full of degeneracy and so somehow extreme acts were bound to occur. This was their way of sidestepping the real reasons for the murder and also an attempt to exorcise a community that some people outside feared. Prior to the murder Unregulated Masses held a rave inside the tunnel and a few events that involved nudity took place in cabins. The trashier elements of Taiwan's press and the PTT discussion board seized on these as more evidence of low morals. While the rave on railway property wasn't a great idea it had gone unnoticed previously, and the other events weren't affecting anyone outside the festival. A couple of excellent analytical articles here and here go into quite some depth on the aftermath of the murder and the festival.

Now and in the Future

In the present day there is no longer much experimental art at Huashan again. Other spaces that had burgeoning scenes such as the Nangang Bottle Cap Factory or the Kuo Kuang Workshop have either been destroyed or “made safe”. It seems to me that conservative society is still engaged in either pushing non-mainstream artists out to fringe areas of the city or taking over spaces in an attempt to control such expression. Any attempt to collectivize is quickly attacked by a sensational moralizing narrative that's just waiting for some event to spark it. Huashan in its present state is undeniably attractive and draws huge crowds. Many of the businesses operating there have created some beautiful spaces. I do think it's important to record the history and the struggles that have taken place over the site though, rather than just stick it in a fluffy travel blog listicle. As an independent artist myself I've often felt a bit priced out of Huashan, even to rent a small stall is quite expensive. But I also don't have the details of every event there so I may have missed some of the more accessible ones. I'm curious to see what happens next at the site and if a balance can be struck between the groups who are involved with it.

A slightly neglected sculpture near the old goods station platforms

All locations are as ever on the Hidden Taiwan Map. The adventures that make up these entries are often posted as Instagram stories at tomrookart first. So give that a follow too if you like as it can sometimes be a year or more before stuff turns up here! I keep this project free of intrusive ads but it does take up a fair bit of time. If you would like to support it please either buy some of my work here (use code hiddentaiwan for a discount). Or book through this link at My Taiwan Tour, who cover a huge range of places and experiences in Taiwan.