Keelung Louyuan

Lòuyuán (陋園) was the estate of the Keelung Yán family (基隆顏家), one of Taiwan’s five great families of the Japanese colonial era, who built a fortune in gold and coal mining under the banner of Taiyang Mining (臺陽礦業株式會社). The property originated as the villa of a Japanese businessman named Kimura Kyūtarō (木村久太郎); after Kimura returned to Japan in 1918, Yán Guónián (顏國年) purchased and expanded it into a sprawling Japanese-Western hybrid garden that ranked alongside the Banqiao Lin Family Garden (板橋林家花園) and the Wufeng Lin Family Garden (霧峰林家宅園) as one of Taiwan’s three great gardens (三大名園).

The Yán family’s love of poetry made Louyuan a gathering place for poets across the island, and its proximity to power drew Japanese officials and Taiwanese elites alike. During World War 2 the Japanese military requisitioned part of the grounds, and the post-war ROC government seized the remainder as Japanese property, converting most of the site into Jianguo New Village (建國新村). The Yán family later donated or ceded remaining land piecemeal for roads, public facilities, and the campus of Guanglong Vocational School (光隆家商), itself descended from the Keelung Night School (基隆夜學會) founded by Ishizaka Sōsaku (石坂莊作) as Taiwan’s first private vocational school. Today only the ancestral hall and a pagoda survive on the hillside above.