Daxi Old Street

Japanese-era Baroque shophouse facades along a riverside market street

Daxi Old Street (大溪老街) is the best-preserved example of Japanese colonial Baroque architecture in the Taoyuan area. The two main streets, Heping Road and Zhongshan Road, are lined with elaborately decorated shophouse facades — arched colonnades, floral relief work, and Chinese decorative motifs mixed into the Western Baroque vocabulary. The buildings date mostly from the 1910s and 1920s.

The street is busy with local life as well as tourism: traditional sweets shops, tofu vendors, and tea houses occupy the ground floors, and the area produces the famous Daxi dried tofu (豆干) that appears in supermarkets across Taiwan. The riverside promenade near the old suspension bridge offers views over the Dahan River and its forested banks. Daxi is about 30 minutes from central Taoyuan by bus.

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A story
The ornate Baroque facades of Daxi's old street were added during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), when property owners were encouraged — sometimes required — to add Western-style decorative fronts to their buildings. Behind these European-looking facades are entirely traditional Taiwanese courtyard homes. The result is an architectural illusion unique to Taiwan's colonial history.