The old and the new
Every time we visit my wife’s family village we always stop by a number of Aunt’s and Uncle’s to say hello. There are about 20 such households so we never visit them all each time. But there is one house I really enjoy visiting each trip we make. This couple live in a traditional Taiwanese house that was build nearly 60 years ago and though a more recent wing has been added, Uncle and Aunt still prefer to live in the old centre of the house. The main room contains the shrine, tea brewing set, family wedding portraits and the ubiquitous TV.
Though Taiwan has experienced sixty incredible years of progress since this house was built, the architecture of house building has done nothing but regress. Sometime during the 50’s the ceramic tiled, steel reinforced concrete, multi-story terrace house was introduced. The ceramic tile size and colour has changed since then. But precious little else!
It is difficult to love the modern Taiwan house. They are irregularly shaped concrete lumps with rooftops covered in water tanks, TV aerials and ramshackle steel extensions. Tiles often fall off or are stained by rust welts or concrete ooze. Wiring, air-conditioning and clothe drying fixtures are half-heartily tacked on the sides. And when these additions inevitably fail, an equally poor replacement is attached without bother to remove the old. What’s more, they all leak!
But the old style houses have character. The external walls are made of small red bricks often partly rendered. Internal walls are made of large bamboo vertical and horizontal beams. Between these beams a course woven bamboo mat is placed , covered with mud and rendered with plaster. The roof beams are bamboo and the roof tiles are a dense pack of the classic red Chinese half shells. The roof line extends past the wall line to ensure rain does not seep through the rather porous red bricks. The floors are large red terracotta tiles and the main entry has dual heavy wooden doors, wooden hinged top and bottom and wooden bolted.
Here a similar house nearby has the brickwork ready for future side extensions that were never built. This three sided shape house facing a concrete courtyard is a very traditional rural Taiwanese style.
Other than the new wing, Uncle and Aunt’s house has had electrics and mosquito screens added since it was built. But otherwise, it is still in its original functional form. As a living room wedding photo taken in front of the house in a different era proudly shows, this was the golden age of house building in Taiwan.
Seems that families will keep the old red-brick farmhouses even for decades after they’ve been pretty much abandoned, allowing them to partially collapse. A new steel and concrete house might be the new living place, but the old farmhouse compound still holds the spirit of the home, the place for the ancestors at the household shrine at its center.
The ugliest aspect of housing these days is, in my opinion, the tin and fiberglass used for awnings, enclosures, additions, and repairs to houses and apartments. Aside from that, although I love the marble floors, I worry about the brain damage they might be causing young kids learning to walk and run.
I haven’t seen a bamboo-beamed house before. Thanks for the look inward.
Joel
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Joel,
That is so true. There are so many of the old houses around here that are simply left to ruin. I wonder if it is nostelgia, spiritual or just plain pragmatic reasons they are left standing. I particularly like the ones that had a pigsty attached.
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Nice post. I heard somewhere that the reason all the ugly concrete box type homes started being built in the 50s was because Chiang Kai-shek believed that his stay in Taiwan would be short until he could retake the mainland, and so lots of supposedly temporary housing needed to be built. It was faster and cheaper to build a concrete box than a traditional brick home.
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That is interesting. There used to be a large army housing area close by us. The whole area was very squalid and certainly had a not-so-permanent feel. It has recently been demolished, though many years after Chiang Kai-shek would have intended.
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