Taiwan Today

Anyone who happens to be walking along Linyi Street, a few steps south of Taipei’s Chunghsiao East Road, can­not miss the elegant, traditional Chinese building squeezed onto a small corner lot. Although a large signboard carved with the characters fu yuan (fragrant garden) hangs over the front door, it is difficult to tell what the building is used for. With its elaborately carved wooden panels and lattice-covered windows, its graceful octagonal tower, and the traditional upturned eaves, it could be the home of a wealthy movie star or business tycoon. But why is the front door open? More likely, it is a temple, similar to those tucked into alleyways throughout the city. Then why are there neither Buddha figures nor incense?

The mystery is solved during midday and evening dining hours, when a stream of cars pull in and out of the hidden under­ground parking lot via an electric side door. Fu Yuan is an upscale restaurant in which the building, the interior decor, and the cuisine all create an authentic, old China setting, providing patrons with a place to celebrate Chinese culture.

Owner Mary Yang (楊淑貞) began planning Fu Yuan soon after opening her first restaurant in Taipei in the 1970s. “After experiencing the economic miracle in Taiwan, what we need is cultural nutri­tion,” she says. She had been collecting works of calligraphy and Chinese paint­ings for years as a hobby. After many dis­cussions with architect Chen Min-fong (陳明芳) and several research trips to Mainland China and the Astor Court, a permanent exhibition on Chinese archi­tecture at the New York Metropolitan Museum, Yang decided to re-create a guest house typical of Ming dynasty (1368-1644) literati from the central coastal town of Suzhou, near Shanghai. Such houses were built in the garden in front of the family dwelling and were used mainly for enter­taining. Yang chose this era and style for its purity and simplicity.

In 1988, she commissioned a nine-story building—including four underground levels—providing nearly 4,700 square meters of floor space. It was finished in 1992, at a cost, Yang says, of US$11.5 million for the building, furnish­ings, and decor.

The result is a re-creation that many architects consider successful even though it is not 100 percent authentic in its design or interior decor. While Fu Yuan’s deviations from authenticity caused disa­greements between its more conservative architect and its more liberal owner, these seem to have had minimal impact on overall public and professional assess­ments of the building as a rare and out­standing example of Chinese architecture in Taipei.

Lee Chien-lang (李乾朗), a professor of architecture at Tamkang University in Tamsui, points out that Fu Yuan includes each of the five elements considered nec­essary in a traditional Chinese garden: a covered promenade, a garden house with white walls, an octagonal tower, a pavil­ion (represented by the building en­trance), and a kiosk (represented by its elevator). Lee compares this kind of Chinese garden to “a poem composed of five lines.” Overall, he believes the building succeeds in creating an atmosphere of tra­ditional grace, beauty, and hospitality of a Suzhou guest house. “It makes customers feel that they’ve been invited to a dinner party in an actual Suzhou guest house,” Lee says.

But Lee and another professor of ar­chitecture, John Liu, (劉可強), executive director of the Building and Planning Research Foundation at Taipei’s National Taiwan University, both point out several deviations from an actual Suzhou-style, Ming dynasty home. The rooms in such a home would have been much higher; each floor would have stood about 4.5 meters, while each but the fifth story of Fu Yuan stands under 3.5 meters.

In addition, some modern construc­tion techniques were used to reduce build­ing costs. The building is supported by reinforced concrete, meaning that the wooden pillars used are mainly decora­tive. Owner Mary Yang says that using the traditional system would have re­quired hiring experts from Mainland China because few are qualified for this work in Taiwan, and this would have added greatly to expenses. Also, while the art of joinery was used to connect some of the ceiling beams, all were reinforced by nails, screws, and glue.

More problematic, Fu Yuan is modeled after a guest house set in a gar­den, but there is virtually no space for one on the restaurant lot. There is only room for several potted plants in the 100­-square-meter space between the outer wall and the building. According to tradi­tional belief, greenery and ponds should surround such a structure to enhance the appearance of the building and to provide a buffer between the building and public areas outside the property.

Both John Liu and Lee Chien-lang believe Fu Yuan should have been located in a park, or at least on a larger plot of land. “It’s hard to find a place in Taipei to construct a garden, but the restaurant should have been built along a major street to allow people to view the whole building,” Lee says. As it is, Fu Yuan sits on the corner of a narrow, crowded lane, flanked by unaesthetic cement apartment buildings. The neighborhood is actually zoned as a residential area, meaning that, like many restaurants in Taipei, Fu Yuan operates illegally and must occasionally pay business fines. In addition, the setting diminishes the overall effect of the building, making it stand out as a grand but unlikely intruder.

Architect Chen Min-fong says her most difficult challenge in designing Fu Yuan lay in fitting the building into its cramped quarters. Yang had asked for five stories, but Chen felt that a five­-story building would have looked dispro­portionately tall given the limited space. So she decided to make it appear on the outside as a three-story building. She created an outer wall that shows only three stories of windows and eaves. From the inside, the double wall is hid­den, since the windows do not open. Pa­trons see “sunlight” through their windows via fluorescent lights situated between the walls.

Although John Liu praises the dou­ble wall both for its appearance and func­tion, Lee Chien-lang considers it a flaw. “The inner and outer walls have no rela­tionship to each other,” he says. He also points out that the double wall has ren­dered the Fu Yuan’s beautifully carved windows useless because none of them actually open, thus diminishing an important aspect of a traditional Chinese home.

In designing the interior, the archi­tect and owner also disagreed on some aspects, forcing both to com­promise on the final product. The main source of conflict lay in their differing concepts of beauty; Chen prefers to stress refinement and simplicity, while Yang tends toward a more elaborate ap­proach. For example, while Chen was al­lowed to keep the elegant and simple Suzhou-style window designs of the outer walls, Yang opted for more extravagant Taiwan-style designs on the inner win­dows. On the first four floors, Chen maintained plain white ceilings accented by wooden beams, but on the ceiling of the top floor, the owner insisted on adding a series of carv­ings depicting scenes of the Chinese clas­sic The Dream of the Red Chamber. The architect also hoped to keep Fu Yuan in a pure Suzhou, Ming style, but Yang favored mixing in furnishings and artworks from various regions of China, some of which date from the Ching dy­nasty (1644-1911).

Such mixing and matching has met with uneven reviews from architects. John Liu prefers a more uniform style, warning that combining different styles “may cause bad coordination between interior areas.” But Lee Chien­-lang promotes mixing styles and time periods. He believes Fu Yuan’s decor would be im­proved with an 80 per­cent Suzhou-style and 20 percent Taiwan­-style decor. “In discuss­ing an architectural work, we should con­sider not only its roots but also the time and place in which it is be­ing constructed,” Lee explains. Because Fu Yuan borrows from Suzhou landscaping techniques but is located in metropolitan Taipei, he believes it should reflect both a traditional and a contemporary spirit.

Overall, both professors agree that, despite the constraints of the setting and the deviations from traditional construc­tion methods, Fu Yuan succeeds in creating a place to celebrate Chinese ar­chitecture and traditional Chinese arts. They believe the building can serve as an inspiration for other architects. Chen Min­-fong says designing Fu Yuan taught her the value of learning from the past. “Our ancestors already solved many of the problems we encounter today,” she says.