Bopiliao Historic Block

You are on one of the few streets in Taipei that keep their Qing-era layout. The brick houses with their arcades stand shoulder to shoulder, like a small town in Fujian. And the name, Bopiliao, sounds sinister: something like «the shed where skin is stripped».

1One name, three explanations

The street already appears in land deeds from 1763 as Beipiliao. There are three theories about the name, and none has been proven. The first says that fir logs arriving by ship from Fuzhou were stripped of their bark here. The second, that tanners skinned animals on the spot. The third, that today's name is simply a sound-alike distortion of the street's earlier names, such as Fupiliao.

2Saved by a school

In 1941 the Japanese government reserved this land for an extension of Laosong school, and from then on nothing could be built or altered. That freeze saved the houses. When demolition was ordered in 1998, residents fought back.

On the eve of the 1999 demolition, residents walked the street in procession carrying their ancestral tablets, lit lamps and kept vigil all night to say goodbye.

The protests saved most of the block. One of the houses was the altar of a «red-head» Taoist priest, who performed rituals to «call back the soul» of anyone who had suffered a fright. Today the street doubles as a film set: the movie «Monga» (2010) was shot here.

3What to look for

• The arcades, typical of Taiwanese shopping streets.
• The red-brick facades, some Chinese in style, others Western.
• The old signs for shops, public baths and teahouses.