埔心二重湳黃義故居

Huang San-yuan Residence

January 10th, 2015

Huang San-yuan Residence (黃三元故居) is a beautiful Western-style house located along a country road in Puxin, a rural township in the heart of Changhua, Taiwan. It was built in 1940 by Huang Yi 黃義, a wealthy employee (and presumably an executive) of the Japanese colonial era Taiwan Sugar Company (台糖公司). If this government source is to be believed Huang Yi had five wives who bore him five sons—and some unknown number of daughters. No wonder he needed such a large house!

A closer look at a beautiful house in rural Puxin Township

Nowadays the house is generally known as the former residence of Huang San-yuan (黃三元), one of Huang Yi’s sons, whose given name literally means “three dollars”. He was a famous Taiwanese singer and actor who rose to fame in the late 1950s and enjoyed widespread popularity throughout the 1960s. His career (but not his life) was cut short after suffering a grave motorbike accident in 1969. From what I can tell it sounds like he retired to this house to live out the rest of his days (he passed away in 1999). In case you’re curious YouTube has several of his recordings online, for example here and here.

A closer look at the top of an old mansion in Puxin Township

I learned of this place while planning a route from Yuanlin to the sugar factory in Xihu. These days Google Maps has an “explore” feature that opens a bar at the bottom of the screen populated with user-submitted photographs and a random assortment of pictures from Street View. This is actually a pretty good way to discover obscure yet interesting locations out in the Taiwanese countryside.

The former residence of Huang Sanyuan in Puxin Township

Anyhow, today I learned that this is still a private residence, not a public attraction. There were two old men sitting out front, whiling away the hours, who kindly invited me to step forward and take a few photographs. I believe one of them can be seen in the video segment on this thorough post about the history of the house (in Chinese, of course).

The entrance to an old house in Puxin Township

I didn’t know any of this at the time, mind you. Most of the time I do my research after the fact, piecing things together from what I can puzzle out of tragicomically bad machine translations. Two more Chinese languages posts I referenced while writing this can be found here and here.

Star plaque above the entrance to an old mansion in Puxin Township

Had I known anything at all about Huang San-yuan I would have immediately understood the meaning of the star-lined horizontal plaque (匾額) over the entrance. As it was I recall being mystified—what’s the deal with the stars? Never seen that anywhere else. I assumed it had something to do with the vaguely Western style of the house. Now it all makes sense!