The rural township of Mailiao is well off the average traveler’s radar. It’s a fairly quiet place, best known for housing an oil refinery and a power plant. But a hundred years ago, this was a flourishing port town, and a group of cultural preservationists are doing their best to keep memories of this glorious past alive.
Mailiao Township in Yunlin County is home to a barbershop that probably won’t be getting great online reviews anytime soon. Inside, you’ll find rusted scissors, antique hairdryers, and old-fashioned barber chairs with a decidedly faded look.
But around 100 years ago, this one of the few barbershops in Taiwan where customers could keep up with the latest styles from abroad.
The local theater is in even worse shape, filled largely with debris from long-crumbled wooden seats. The stage is bare, the walls are stripped of furnishing, and the ceiling is punctured with holes.
But again, a century ago, its fortunes were much different. Local cultural expert Wu Ming-yi says that this was the home base for one of the era’s top Taiwanese opera troupes.
During the Roaring Twenties, Mailiao was a very different place, with a port that drew in international commerce. Traditional herbal pharmacies that still stand today did a brisk trade. Merchants congregated in the local opium den- now just a single wall- to talk business.
Foreign trade brought with it new fashions and ideas, and foreign influence even affected the ways locals decorated one of their temples. Temple wall carvings from the period show figures dressed not in traditional clothing but in fashionable western suits.
The port no longer bustles, and trade has moved on elsewhere, but Wu Ming-yi is part of a local association determined not to let Mailiao fade. These preservationists hope to bring visitors to the township’s historic sites, bringing outsiders into town once again.