Hsinchu Lakeside Ryotei

This was originally a municipal rest house built in 1931 beside the pond in Hsinchu Park (新竹公園) and enlarged into a ryōtei (料亭), a traditional Japanese restaurant, for the Taiwan Exposition of 1935. In the post-war era its ten buildings housed air force pilots and their families as part of Airforce No. 11 Village (空軍十一村), one of many military dependents’ villages in Hsinchu. Fires and neglect had reduced them to four by the late 1990s, when a civic campaign saved the remainder, and they have since been restored and rented out to restaurants and a bookshop.