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Community Supported Beitou Hot Springs Museum
[wabi-sabi] is historically an association or appreciation of beauty, focused on the humble, worn, untouched in nature coming forward in company with ideas of human virtue.
This sensibility combined with the modernist ideas of the colonial rulers are found in the architecture of the bathhouses in Beitou. The rustic simplicity of the Longnitang Bathhouse, built in 1907, offers the wabi-sabi, a simple building with stone-lined bathing pools. The eclectic architectural style of the Beitou Public Baths House included the men’s bathing area constructed in the style of a swimming pool with Roman arched walkways. The buildings manifest the different elements of Japanese sensibility that informed life and culture in Taiwan in the past. The relationship between man and nature overlaps in the same way the concepts of culture and environment overlap. Tuan Yi-fu (1974: 59) states: To understand why the environment was created and admired, the biological heritage, upbringing, education of the people ‘there’ must be reviewed. At the level of group attitudes, the cultural history and experience of the group within the physical setting shaped both man and land.
Before Chinese inhabitants settled in Taiwan, the indigenous plainsdwelling Kipatauw and Kirananna groups of the Ketagalan people had lived in the Beitou area for thousands of years. Between 1626 and 1662, they made contact with the Dutch, Spanish, and Chinese through the trade of sulfur mined from the nearby Datun Mountains (Traveling Through Beitou’s 400 Year History). The Beitou Creek, which flows through the area, is as hot as 98 degrees Celsius and sulfurous mist often covers the area. This phenomenon was thought to be harmful by the Ketagalan people, who therefore did not use the waters for bathing or irrigation. In coming to modern history, the Japanese colonial rulers of Taiwan sought not only to rule but to create a culture of subjects of the Japanese Empire through language, education and example. Japanese bath culture was introduced to Taiwan under these auspices. In 1896, Hirata Gengo opened the first hot springs hotel in Beitou. It catered to Japanese residents in Taiwan and the Japanese military. Slowly, the local population took to the bathing habits
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