With the volume turned up loud enough to be heard over the din of afternoon traffic on Zhongshan North Road in Taipei, two generations of Lin men sat on the floor of their cramped shop on Thursday, watching Japanese variety shows while a trickle of customers, mostly just passersby, would pause at the store's open front to consider the wooden tubs and basins stacked to the ceiling.
Passing pedestrians rarely make impulse purchases of NT$25,000 for a 20kg, hinoki wood bath tub, so the Lins are skilled at sizing up potential customers at a glance and are a bit loathe to indulge random people's curiosity. After 76 years in the business of making the tubs, basins and kitchen utensils at their shop, Lin Tian Tong Dian (
PHOTO: MAX WOODWORTH, TAIPEI TIMES
"It's either old people who grew up during the Japanese occupation and adopted the Japanese bathing tradition, or young people who see it as a quaint relic from long ago and something fun to have around the house," said Lin Huang-yi (
The Lin Tian store, named after its founder, was fomerly one among many hawking similar wares on the block between what is now Civil Boulevard and Changan West Road. The area formerly was an almost exclusively Japanese neighborhood, housing bureaucrats of the colonial administration and their families whose fastidious hygiene habits provided the Lins and others making wooden tubs with a stable business.
Hinoki cedar wood was a major product in the Japanese administration's lumber trade and was extracted almost to the point of extinction, so that now the trees grow only in scattered groves deep in the mountains. The scarcity of the trees, which are protected under the law, accounts for the dear prices customers now pay for the tubs.
"Most people show some form of shock when I tell them the prices. People are used to plastic tubs that cost a fraction of these, so they're definitely not for every-one," Lin Huang-yi said, stressing the word "plastic" with an audible tone of derision.
Every product is made by hand by the father-and-son duo using only wood boards, bamboo pegs and metal wire. The pegs fix the boards in the proper shape, while the braided wire is tightened around the tub to keep it water-tight and to prevent it from
warping.
"Hinoki wood is the best because of its high resistance to water and heat. If you use cheaper woods, it will expand from the heat of the water and then contract, and very quickly the wire will slide down and that will ruin the shape of the whole tub," Lin Huang-yi said. Cheaper woods are also quick to mold in Taiwan's humid climate, he said.
A full-size tub takes about four days to finish -- two days longer than in years past because of the elder Lin Hsiang Lin's (
Though they won't provide details, people's changing habits and rising material costs have made a noticeable impact on the Lins' business. By the time the Japanese left Taiwan in 1945, the workshop was crowded with 15 craftsmen under the direction of Lin Tian, making primarily tubs. Currently, it's just the two Lins and their sales are mostly of the less expensive shallow wash basins and flower pots, which run up to NT$5,000, as well as steamers and rice bowls made of Chinese fir that are sold to local Japanese restaurants.
The steamers are popular because foods prepared in them will have a slight, but noticeable aroma from the wood.
"There used to be three stores lined up here next to each other, but we're the only one left," Lin Huang-yi said. He then quickly declined a chance at self-flattery when he said their products weren't necessarily better than those at other stores. "Maybe we've survived this long because we own this real estate so we don't have to pay rent. If we had to pay rent, I don't think we'd still be around either."
But the tubs and steamers are clearly crafted by experienced hands, and the store's inclusion on Taipei sight-seeing tours, as well as numerous appearances in Japanese media, attest to its status high on the list of the city's remaining traditional craftsmen.
Fame has so far sustained the business, but when asked if the store would continue into the fourth generation, Lin Huang-yi was unsure. "I don't know. It's not out yet," he said.
Lin Tian Tong Store is located at 108 Zhongshan N Rd, Sec 1, Taipei (
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s