Taiwan Today

This poem is inscribed on stone tablets at Ching Hsun Lou, one of the main sections of the Lins' residence. Situated in Wufeng village, Taichung County, central Taiwan, the residence has long enjoyed its reputation as one of three major establishments of early Taiwan, and the only one architected for high ranking officials.

As we were inquiring of a local young man concerning the estate's locale, an elderly citizen, who must have spent most of his lifetime in the still primitive village of Wufeng, edged in: "You should look through the place—three courtyards and 120 doors and, of course, innumerable doorsills."

The Lins first came to Taiwan in 1747 during the reign of Emperor Chien Lung of the Ching Dynasty. The family pioneer, Lin Shih, settled in Changhua County. It was his son, Lin Chia-yin, who led the Lins to the estate's current site. The residence was later divided, and family members were quartered in an Upper House and a Lower House, according to their different achievements.

At that time, Taiwan rang to the clash of arms, both civil rebellions and aborigine uprisings. Chia-yin's grandson, Lin Wen-cha, who had emerged victorious in a campaign to suppress bandits in the mainland's Fukien Province, was made the island's commander-in-chief, on land and at sea.

Before the Japanese invasion of Taiwan in 1895, which forced the Lins' evacuation to the China mainland, they held title to half the real estate of Taiwan.

Wen-cha's grandson, Lin Tzu-mi, joined the revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, National Founding Father of the Republic of China, in 1915. His son served in the forces commanded by General Ho Yin-chin, who campaigned to root out the Northern Warlords. The Lower House at Wufeng, which harbored them in earlier days, is thus noted for military achievements.

For Wen-cha's brother, Lin Wen-chin, the pen was mightier than the sword. Upon his emergence as the top scholar in the Imperial Examinations of 1893, the Emperor awarded him a tablet carrying the title Wen Kuei, "Eminent Scholar." Wen-chin's son, Lin Hsien-tang, enlightened by Liang Chi-chao, dedicated himself to culture and education. He established the First Taichung High School in association with his brother, benefiting the intelligentsia in Taiwan tremendously. The two houses of the Lins joined hands to contribute greatly to Taiwan—to military administration, business, culture, and education.

The early settlers in Taiwan moved from south to north and from coastal areas to craggier terrain in the highlands. Since major personages never planned to stay long on the island, only a very few large scale residential edifices were constructed. Careful observation of older architecture reveals a division into three basic categories— buildings for officials and the gentry, shops, and large and small village residences. The extended Lin mansion at Wufeng, consisting of Kung Pao Ti, Ching Hsun Lou, and the Lai Yuan Garden, is a rare and precious official residence.

The Lins' residence and gardens were built about a hundred years ago at the foot of a hill in Wufeng. At its prime, the multi-acre site was divided into three sections: Ching Hsun Lou, a complex of mansions where families of the Upper House lived; another five residences, including the Kung Pao Ti, where the Lower House families lived; and Lai Yuan, a traditional Chinese pleasure garden behind the mansion complex. The magnificent family tombs look down upon the estate from the mountainside.

When we arrived at the residence, a van peddling vegetables and fruits was parked in the courtyard beside a grotesque banyan tree, naked and cut off at the waist by some unknown force. Two stone lions joined two mythical beasts, all worn with age and decaying from neglect, in guarding the stately old buildings. It was easy to imagine, without action to preserve them, that in the not very distant future, there will be nothing left to provoke a visitor's nostalgia.

Though the doorsills, door frames, dexterously carved window frames, beams, pillars, and eaves are so eroded that you hesitate to touch them for fear they will crumble altogether, looking at them, we can still imagine that a family of such wealth and power would have spared nothing to make their home the finest of its kind. Trees of the most desirable species were brought over from the mainland and used whole for pillars and beams, or cut into boards for walls and frames. Bricks were molded and fired in kilns built especially for the construction work, as were the red tiles for the roofs. Exquisitely painted porcelain tiles embellished concrete posts or were made into decorative panels.

Artisans brought from the mainland produced intricately carved panels, tables, chairs, window framing and other decorations designed to welcome visitors or to scare away evil spirits. Skilled painters glorified roof beams, walls, and doors, producing paintings of gods to protect the edifices and their inhabitants. Portraits of those illustrious ancestors who had brought fame and glory to the family, and painted scenes from history and fiction, were commissioned solely for esthetic enjoyment.

Kung Pao Ti was built by Lin Chao-tung around 1870, ostensibly as a memorial to the martyred Wen-cha, but was also, undeniably, a monument to the family's newly heightened social status. It was an immense undertaking requiring five years for completion. Over 400 meters of one-story residential wings enclose a rectangular area larger than two football fields. The building was built to conform to the strictly prescribed patterns for traditional Chinese residences fit for the gentry.

At the entrance, three main gates, each inscribed with a pair of painted door gods, are flanked by red brick walls. Tradition has it that only official residences and religious architecture—temples—are allowed to employ paintings of door gods. Nor are common folk allowed three main gates. In the dim past, for a grand occasion, all the gate segments in the center—seven in a row—were fully opened. Looking into the courtyard, people were awed by its unfathomable depths, its grand dimensions.

Many other features mark the mansion complex as the home of officials. The statues of the roaring lions flanking the front gate, herald the presence of an august titleholder. The upswept roof ridges, extending out and over the house, a style called "swallow-tail," were carefully reserved for temples or homes of officials.

The basic designs incorporated in the Kung Pao Ti were determined by a combination of family ritual requirements and the exigencies of official status. A line of four successive chin, or entrances, and the three courtyards in between, not only defined relationships within the Lin family but marked off carefully segregated phases of activity: the most public and menial in the front, the most private and exalted in the back.

Kung Pao Ti is basically constructed in a U-shape, around a courtyard. During the heyday of the Lins, the first courtyard bustled with activity. The servants, quartered adjacent to the first entrance, busily attended to chores. Tradesmen, messengers, soldiers, and occasional peasants regularly came and went. And the humdrum would be pierced by shouts of children attending classes in rooms to the side of the court.

At the rear of the first court, in the second chin, the master would greet official visitors in a cool, breezy reception room. Distinctly more "liveable" than the outer courts, the final courtyard was the most private sanctuary in the family compound. Over 500 square meters, much larger than the red tiled courtyards in front, the third courtyard is landscaped with grass, trees, and garden furniture.

The Lin women, who seldom wandered from this haven, would spend the quiet days there shielded from the harshness of the outside world. Running parallel to the third chin, a stone wall enforced the isolation of the final court, allowing the ladies to casually stroll about without being spied upon or themselves disturbing the important conferences taking place in the rooms of the third chin.

The central room at the bottom of the "U" was the main hall, where ancestral tablets were traditionally kept, important guests received, and major ceremonies and rituals held. On either side lived the heads of the family, or families, which occupied that part of the complex. A person's status in the extended family would, in the old days, determine how far he lived from the main hall, and on which side of it. The right side was considered senior.

The huge stone bench in the inner court of Kung Pao Ti is believed to have served as a stand for potted flowers. The Chinese generally place their potted plants on stands so that they won't have to bend down to view the blooms and sample their fragrance. Its location, in front of the main ancestral hall where there isn't even a tree to shade the ladies from the hot summer sun, makes the carved stone's use as a garden seat unlikely. The bench is made of the finest granite, imported from Chuanchow in Fukien Province.

The hexagon floor tiles, also made in Fukien, were widely used by the Taiwan settlers. The design is of a turtle's back, and thus carries with it the wish for long life. Rhombic shapes for floor tiles were also popular in Taiwan.

The use of blue paint on the walls, unique for Taiwan, is in line with the Minnan, or South Fukien tradition. Though Taiwan was rich in forest lands, the woods were occupied by headhunting aborigines, and it was much easier to bring lumber over from the mainland. In general, there were two sources—Fuchow and Minnan. Fuchow in North Fukien was famous for pine and fir. The houses there were largely left unpainted to display the grain of the wood. Minnan, however, produced poorer wood grades, and paint was used extensively—and exquisitely—to make up for what the lumber lacked in quality. The special shade of blue seen in many of the homes of the Taiwanese gentry was one of the most popular colors in South Fukien.

The wooden pillars have stone plinths, which are not cemented into place in the ground; the weight of the stone itself and of the roof and pillars keep everything firmly in place. The fretwork on the door panels and windows was all accomplished by master craftsmen. Most of the designs symbolize an auspicious "wish," such as a variation of the Chinese character for "long life."

As varied, also, are the roof decorations of the Kung Pao Ti. The wood frames are shaped somewhat after the fashion of a high ranking official's hat. Some of the buttresses feature several panes of porcelain paintings. For some reason, a bamboo pole wrapped with while cloth sticks from the mouth of a pottery urn. At an extreme end, a rattan chair, crippled by the ages, leans helplessly against a graceful arch door. Nearby a stone flower stand stands a pottery vase, incised with patterns of tigers, rabbits, and birds. A dust-covered wood chair and desk adjoin a wall painted in contrasting pink and navy blue. A duster hangs nearby a broken window pane, itself obscured by dust. A modern child's sports bike is parked casually on the portico. A strutting cat sneezes around a dove's cage on the patio outside.

While we were trying to take a picture of a child sucking milk from a nursing bottle, a grand old lady appeared. With drawn, stern face, she whisked us away, fuming: "I don't want my grandson to be photographed in this shape. You should know...I used to lead a noble life. The fall of the Lins is an infamous thing. Just look around. The glory of the house has long departed. I will not have the world remembering us as a dilapidated, outdated people. So, go, go away! This is not a tourist site!"

We left her in peace.

Just a stone's throw down the road from the Kung Pao Ti is Ching Hsun Lou, the Upper House. This complex of interconnected mansions was not designed, but was expanded in orderly fashion for an active official's growing requirements. The residences of the family extend in a flexibly developed series of U-shaped compounds. Wandering through the maze of paths and doorways connecting the various family quarters, one has none of the sense of grand symmetry impressed by the Kung Pao Ti. But a sense of opulence, of impulse toward color and decoration in the luxurious mainland style, remains. Rebuilt in the 1920s after an earthquake shattered large sections of the original Ching Hsun Lou, the residence's atmosphere—tranquility, tradition, and timelessness—has survived its Twentieth Century reconstruction.

Built by Lin Wen-chin after he gained the coveted chu jen degree in 1867, Ching Hsun Lou's design is deliberately different from that of the Kung Pao Ti. The front gate does not open towards the central axis of the residential quarters. Instead, tilting to the right, the door faces an extension of walls. In ancient times, only very few structures were allowed to have a front gate facing along the axis of the whole layout. The only exceptions were gentry-official houses and public and religious architecture. The layout, in this instance, is so spacious that service men and errand men were quartered in different areas.

Next to Ching Hsun Lou stands Jung Ching Chai, a study built for the Lins about a century ago. A semi-circular pool, flaunting lotus flowers, stands by. Two yang tao trees, on either side of the pool, are about to bear fruit. A car parked in the courtyard contrasts sharply with weather-beaten stone slabs and red brick walls. A door leading to Ching Hsun Lou, also painted blue and slowly disintegrating, is barred by a door latch. Obviously, the original tenants refused to communicate with each other.

Today, Ching Hsun Lou looks more like a temple site than a residential area. Not a single person can be seen in its spacious courtyard, paved wall-to-wall with red bricks. Also red, is the building's long stretch of wall, broken occasionally by delicately constructed window panes. The variations in window lattices offer a bounteous parade of art design. A huge stone jar, decorated with a pair of lion-head ears, contains water (probably from rain) turning green from algae. An ancient thurible, like an old-fashioned cooking pot with three long legs, stands lonely and empty in the courtyard.

The walls along the street have virtually become a gallery for neighborhood want ads. Inside, windows are formed in the shape of a train of old coins; door knobs pattern after the pa-kua (an octagonal diagram); lion's head, or simply oval, marble wall slabs are inscribed with Chinese poems or painted with classical maids, cranes, and plum blossoms—a journey to another world. A bamboo awning guards a shrine, barred behind an iron gate. It is said, in the past, that connoisseurs of antiques, or tourists, would simply steal the Lins' ancestral tablets. A fresh-flowered vine creeps in over the horse-back roof ridge, flaunting its color at a dog lying idly on the ground below. Red, blue, and just dark seem to be the dominating hues of the doors. Such pleasant words as "Orchid and Cassia Fragrance," and "Greeting Songs from Sparrows and Orioles" are ready to attend your visit.

To honor his mother, Lin Wen-chin built Lai Yuan, a garden on the hill behind the two family compounds, victimized by a school construction program. Little remains of the garden's original splendor. Grand stone tombs constructed on the mountain slope are guarded by stone beasts on both sides. Stone benches, carved in patterns and eulogies, smack of a European style.

A path leads down from the tombs to a time-worn portico, which overlooks the Five Cassias House, a two-story building a few steps away. Years ago, the Lin family would come here to engage in those refined activities so favored by the Chinese gentry—writing poetry, sipping wine, and gazing at the full moon. A Rainbow Bridge connects the site with a serene water pavilion. Words inscribed on a cracked tablet and its red columns read: "Flying wine vessels/drunk with the moon," "Bright moon, pool's reflection, a house of tranquility," and "Rustling wind, plum flowers, sending fragrance to the opposite bank." Several stone staircases lead up to another portico. Outside, trees and a stone tablet stand on green lawns. Still further, the once famous Cotton Bridge runs over the Clothes-Washing Torrent—only no one washes clothes there any more.

Although Lai Yuan could not compare in size and splendor with the best gardens of the mainland, it was unmatched on Taiwan. Records show that, in the past, in addition to the above mentioned features, the Lai Yuan Garden also contained a Hsiao Hsi Pool, a Lychee Island, a Mount of Ten Thousand Plums, a Moon Viewing Peak, a Stairway of a Thousand Steps, an Evening Splendor Pavilion, and a Cottage of Quiet Seclusion—surely, a playground luxuriously befitting the wealth and position of the family that created and enjoyed it.

In a sense, in their prime time, the Lins' mansions and gardens were in themselves a community. According to Lin Heng-tao, a local authority on ancient remains, Taiwan's early residential groups were both production and consumption units—in the modern interpretation, a self-sufficient community fully supplied with living rooms, activity centers, farmlands, tutorial schools, and gardens and other recreational facilities.

The Lins' mansions and gardens were an epitome of the Chinese philosophy of the universe, the circle-within-a-circle environmental ideology. As far back in time (and large) as the Great Wall constructed in the Chin Dynasty, or as near and small as a middle court of the Lins' residence, all such structures reflect this ideology.

As we prepared to leave, casting final appraisals at the buildings, the sparrow-tail and horse-back ridges, the flying eaves now overlapped and entangled with electric wires and TV antennas, seemed to recount a past of great glory now surviving in some awkwardness in our modern developing society.