Dihua Street
A 150-year-old trading street of dried goods, herbalists and ornate shophouses
A fuller guide to this place, built from 6 sources, is written in Traditional Chinese.
Being there
Walk it slowly from the south end, taste samples in the dried-goods shops and smell the herbalists. Look up: the decoration is all above the first floor.
The story
When the port at Tamsui opened 150 years ago, Dadaocheng became the busiest trading district in Taiwan. Tea, camphor, cloth and dried goods all passed through this street, and the merchants who got rich built shopfronts each grander than the last. In the 1980s the city planned to widen the road and pull the old houses down; residents and scholars fought for years to keep them. Before Lunar New Year it becomes one long market. On ordinary days it's old men shelling dried shrimp in their doorways.
