Dihua Street (Dadaocheng)

Dihua Street (迪化街) is one of the oldest commercial streets in Taipei, winding through the historic Dadaocheng (大稻埕) quarter in Datong District. Originally known as Centre Street (中街), it was established in the 1850s when merchants from Quanzhou migrated northward from Bangka (modern Wanhua) after a devastating inter-clan conflict in 1853. The street quickly became Taiwan's premier wholesale and retail market, anchored by the Dadaocheng Pier on the Tamsui River, which facilitated the booming tea trade that came to dominate northern Taiwan's exports in the late nineteenth century.

When Japan assumed control of Taiwan in 1895, Dadaocheng was already the island's most prosperous commercial district. The colonial government designated the area as Eiraku-chō (永楽町) in 1922, and the main thoroughfare became known as Eiraku-chō Dōri (永楽町通り). Beginning around 1900, Japanese authorities implemented urban improvement regulations (市區改正) that required prior approval for all new construction. While the Fifth Urban Planning Project (1905–1910) reshaped much of Taipei, Dadaocheng's existing street layout was largely preserved due to the area's already orderly and hygienic conditions.

The urban improvement plans profoundly transformed the street's architectural character. Building facades were redesigned in the pseudo-Baroque (仿巴洛克) style that was fashionable in Meiji-era Japan, featuring elaborate three-dimensional sculptured parapets, ornamental columns, floral decorations, and mixed Chinese-Western motifs executed in red brick, stone, and cement wash. The most celebrated example is the "Ten Consecutive Buildings" (十連棟, Dihua Street Section 1, Nos. 348–366), a row of ten red-brick Baroque-style shophouses completed in 1912 by six merchant houses — five rice mills and a sewing-thread factory. Arcade regulations standardized the width and height of covered walkways (亭仔腳), creating the continuous pedestrian arcades that remain a defining feature of the streetscape.

Throughout the colonial period, Dihua Street continued to thrive as the commercial heart of the Taiwanese business community, even as Japanese authorities sought to centralize economic control and suppress some local merchant guilds. Trade in Chinese medicinal herbs, traditional fabrics, dried goods, rice, cloth, and groceries flourished. The street also became a center of cultural and political activity among Taiwanese intellectuals and reformists who used the economic independence of Dadaocheng's merchants as a base for anti-colonial movements, including the Taiwan Cultural Association (台灣文化協會) founded in 1921.

During World War II, Dihua Street itself largely escaped Allied air raids, which preserved its historic architecture, although the Taipei air raid of 31 May 1945 destroyed the Catholic church in nearby Hōrai-chō (蓬萊町). After Japan's surrender in 1945, the Republic of China government renamed the street Dihua Street (迪化街) in 1947, after the former name of Ürümqi. Today, the street retains one of the most complete collections of Japanese colonial-era commercial architecture in Taiwan, with buildings spanning Qing Dynasty Southern Fujian (閩南) style, Japanese Baroque, Modernist, and Art Deco periods. The street remains an active wholesale market for traditional Chinese medicine, dried goods, and fabric, and has become a major heritage tourism destination, particularly during Chinese New Year when hundreds of thousands of visitors — over a million by some estimates — browse the annual festival market.