二水公會堂

May 17th, 2017

Ershui Public Hall (二水公會堂) is located in Ershui, a small town at the very southern edge of Changhua, on the border with both Yunlin (to the south) and Nantou (to the east). It is one of approximately 70 assembly halls built all around Taiwan to accommodate large public gatherings during the Japanese colonial era. This particular example was built in 1930 and is one of three remaining in Changhua. The other two—in Changhua City and Lukang—are both fully restored heritage properties open to the public, but this smaller hall has been derelict for years, a consequence of a long-running legal dispute between the landlord and local government complicating preservation efforts.

A closer look at the façade. The circular outline of where the original sign would have been mounted is visible. You may also notice a moth in the frame; there were hundreds flying all around the building when I visited.

The characters emblazoned on the front of the building read Zhōngshān Hall (中山堂)¹ but this was not the original name. If you look closely at the photograph you can see a circular outline around the central character, almost certainly where something would have been mounted. I strongly suspect this would have been a plate inscribed with the Ershui city emblem (市徽), a convention outlined in a previous post about the nearby Fenyuan Village Office. I went looking for archival footage of the hall but found nothing online to confirm this hunch. One of the benefits of conferring heritage status on a building is that at least some amount of proper research will be done—but in this case all I’ve got to go on is the work of Taiwanese bloggers also interested in local history and culture.

Creeping around the side of the derelict public hall.

The public hall² was constructed between the older, unplanned Qing dynasty era settlement and the newer, more modern area around Ershui Station (二水車站), which opened in 1905. This reflects a common urban planning pattern in the Japanese colonial era: grafting an area of wider streets (often on a grid) and institutional buildings (e.g. post offices, police stations, government offices, etc.) onto an existing town³. As expected, the old public hall was constructed next to an assortment of other civic buildings, among them a police station and several wooden dormitories. Google Street View records indicate the police station was still present in 2012—so the unkempt meadowland immediately adjacent to the public hall has only been empty for a few years.

The side door is open for some reason, how could I not go take a look?

I didn’t expect to be able to take a peek inside the old hall, particularly not after jumping the fence around the side and arousing the attention of two Taiwanese men playing catch on a bare patch of ground next to the fire station, which is still in use. I put on a smile and asked if it was alright to go take a look and, after glancing at one another, the man closer to me assented with a curt nod. Stepping through the weeds, I went around back and had a look inside the public hall.

Inside the assembly hall. It doesn’t look so bad in here.

Evidently it is now used as storage by the fire department.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the public hall also served as an office of the hokō system (保甲制度), a grassroots form of civic self-governance and law enforcement adapted from the existing baojia system. This system provided an interface between community leaders and law enforcement—which also explains the hall’s proximity to the colonial era police station. Community leaders under the hokō system were charged with registering overnight visitors, reporting suspicious activity, and other such duties.

The hokō system was also used to reshape social customs in the early Japanese colonial period. Foot binding, a common practice in late 19th century Taiwan, was viewed by the Japanese as an uncivilized custom (and rightly so). Seeking to discourage and then outright ban the practice in the 1910s, the Japanese sent orders down through the network of hokō offices to identify households with bound women and eventually order their unbinding⁴.

An old dormitory behind the public hall in Ershui.

Inside the old dormitory, which was obviously repurposed since 1945.

Behind the hall is an old wooden dormitory, the residence of the head of the nearby police station. Visually there is nothing too unusual about this structure, nor was there much of anything left inside. Most interesting is the flagpole stand positioned out front. It is constructed in the same rugged stone-washed style (xǐshízǐ 洗石子) as the public hall, and seems to have been moved here when the neighboring police station was demolished.

The flagpole in front of the old wooden dormitory. This area was teeming with moths when I visited.

The derelict public hall in the heart of Ershui.

One last look at the front of the old Ershui Public Hall.

Since publishing this article in early 2017 the Changhua County government reached a deal with the landlord, and the Ershui Public Hall and Hokō Office were finally designated as historic properties subject to protection under the law. Metal fencing has already gone up in advance of restoration work, so the future is looking bright for these cultural relics. There are only so many old public halls left in Taiwan—the vast majority⁵ have already been destroyed—so this is very good news!

One of Taiwan’s only geometrid moth species resting on the exterior of the Ershui Assembly Hall.

Smartphone version of the same moth seen above.

While exploring the assembly hall in May 2017 something else caught my eye: an eclipse of brightly-colored, iridescent moths flitting around the overgrown ruins—and many more locked in an embrace on whatever flat surfaces could be found. Evidently this area is a breeding ground for Taiwan’s only geometrid moth species, Milionia basalis pryeri, a subspecies of Milionia basalis only found in Taiwan and southwestern Japan, particularly Okinawa. There appears to be no English common name but in Chinese it is generally known as the orange-banded moth (橙帶枝尺蛾)⁶. Nature reclaims abandoned spaces in startling ways!

After the Kuomintang arrived in Taiwan they enacted a policy of re-sinicization that involved—among other things—renaming major streets, buildings, parks, and sometimes entire settlements after various elements of party ideology. “Zhongshan” commemorates Sun Yat-sen, first president and founding father of the Republic of China, and pretty much every public hall in Taiwan was given this same, unimaginative name. ↩
I should probably mention that there appears to be no standard English translation of gōnghuìtáng (公會堂). I have used “public hall” but I have also seen “assembly hall”, “public assembly hall”, “public meeting hall”, “public auditorium”, “union hall”, and “guild hall” in use. ↩
This excellent post (in Chinese) contains more information about the urban development of Ershui. ↩
This paper argues for the importance of the sugar industry in decreasing the rate of foot binding in Taiwan. Economic opportunity and self-interest also played a role, in addition to official decrees. ↩
Only about a dozen assembly halls remain in Taiwan. If you’re interested in making a deep dive into this class of Japanese colonial relics I recommend a series of three posts documenting 22 assembly halls in northern Taiwan, 18 in central Taiwan, and 29 in southern Taiwan. Among these, the most famous and accessible remaining example is the Taipei Assembly Hall (臺北公會堂), now also known as Zhongshan Hall in Taipei. ↩
Naturally these strikingly beautiful moths have attracted the attention of Taiwanese bloggers; for more photos and info in Chinese try here, here, and here. More basic info can also be found here, here, and here (in Chinese) and here (Japanese). ↩

Warning: this location is abandoned, hazardous, or otherwise neglected and may be unsafe and even dangerous! Exercise appropriate precautions when visiting.

警告：此處已廢棄或長期無人管理，可能存在潛在危險。造訪時請務必提高警覺，並做好相關安全防護措施。

Map

Heritage Status

Historic Building (歷史建築)

Themes

Japanese Colonial Era Taiwan (台灣日治時代)
Police History in Taiwan (台灣警察歷史)

Series: Taiwan Summer Road Trip 2017

In the summer of 2017 I borrowed a scooter to ride to a music festival in Nantou and only returned it several months later. It wasn’t a continuous road trip—I’d leave the scooter parked at various HSR stations as I slowly made my way around central and southern Taiwan—but each leg of the trip usually involved 3 or 4 days of riding. In the end I gathered enough material for 60 or 70 posts, only some of which have been published.