Whenever Hakka architecture is mentioned, people tend to think of old houses, specifically historical architecture or ancient sites. The three-wing courtyard house (huo fang wu) in which the Hakka live has a high profile indeed, and throughout Taiwan’s social changes, many of the old houses of the Hakka villages have survived better than those of other ethnic groups.
For that reason, any mention of Hakka architecture today would very naturally prompt one to think of Fanjiang's Old Houses in Hsinwu, the Fan House and the Liu House in Hsinpu, the Six Clan Wen-li Hall, and Beipu's Tien-shui Hall and Chin Kuang Fu. In southern Taiwan, Meinong's Kuofangwu, Chiatung's Hsiao House and Wukoushui's Liu House come to mind. These outstanding and elegant old Hakka houses inevitably attract admiration: The shops are full of books on old Taiwan houses, with Hakka architecture regularly accounting for half of them.
Hakka Architectural Space as Cultural Heritage
The aforementioned buildings are indeed examples of extraordinary elegance in Hakka architecture, but if we only scratch the surface of traditional Hakka architecture, it is difficult to get the full picture of the values historically applied to architectural space by the Hakka people. In the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (Preservation Act) ratified in 2005, architectural space within the scope of “tangible cultural heritage” includes “monuments, historic buildings, commemorative buildings, or groups of buildings. The act signals that the overall vision and thinking in this area should be broadened using a cultural perspective, especially given the many architectural types to be found in Hakka villages.
A Diversity of Architecture
The Preservation Act can be boiled down to several key words and phrases: monuments, historic buildings, commemorative buildings, groups of buildings, construction methods, buildings and their ancillary facilities. From these, we can infer that the following falls within its scope: shops, courtyard-style houses (residences), ancestral shrines (public and private), ancestral temples (of the ruling house), shrines, religious buildings, warning stones, fengshui, barracks, police stations, jails, fire stations, official dormitories, colleges, schools, theaters, gymnasiums, meeting places, guild halls, general stores, foreign company buildings, banks, post office, tobacco barns, farmer's association halls, irrigation association halls, sugar refineries, breweries, markets, kilns, train stations, ports, ferry stations, lighthouses, bridges, ancient roads, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, memorial tablets, memorial arches, city walls, defensive gates, parks (and gardens), and ancient wells.
The above is by no means a complete list of Hakka architecture. To be complete, it would have to include the architecture that the Hakka people continue to add with their imagination.
Concrete Manifestations of a Way of Life
At every level of government, numerous projects focus on protecting the living spaces of Hakka villages, and there is no lack of old architecture under protection. There are also many newer constructions covered by the projects – architecture that has history but is not ancient. What makes these architectural spaces interesting is not only the aesthetic of their design but also their cultural significance and function. Some examples: Hsinwu's Yewumei office building (and the environs) in Taiyuan, Pingzhen's repurposed old buildings in Tungshih Zhuang, the renovated Shitouwu at Fengtien Village, the first dedicated "Hakka Cultural Preservation Area" in Hsinchu’s Hsinwawu (New Tile House), the renovation of the Lin Family Clan Temple, the old mountain dwellings in Shuili, and the reused tobacco barns of Fenglin, Hualien and Meinong, Kaohsiung. In these places, you can glimpse into the colorful diversity of the Hakka architectural landscape, rediscovering the richness of Hakka culture.