Lane 60, Guling Street, Taipei
Posted: April 21st, 2010 | 1 Comment »
I am often coming across small lanes of old housing that dates back to the Japanese occupation era in Taipei. Sometimes they are preserved but often they just appear to be in a state of disrepair and you can’t be sure if they are about to come down or be saved. Indeed it’s hard to tell if they are lived in sometimes. Lane 60, Guling Street in Taipei, not far from Taipei Normal University and a lane of preserved Forestry Commission housing I’ve posted about before, is typical of such a street. You can’t tell much as there are locked gates and high walls along the lane and when I strolled along it nobody emerged from their houses for me to ask. Some houses appeared lived in and in a good state of repair, others appeared empty and neglected. So here’s some photos of basically roofs and not much else! If anyone lives in one of these houses please do invite me round for tea – I’ll bring cakes!!
By the mid-70’s most of the old Japanese housing stock in Taipei was gone, vanished within but a few years. I remember the single-story Japanese house we lived in 1974-77 still had storage cabinets with sliding doors beautifully edged in purple fabric in the main room until the landlord ripped them out, replaced with… no, you don’t want to know. Enough to say he and many others then had the aesthetic sensibility of a grass carp.