[TRAVEL] Back to the future in Ilan

VIEW THIS PAGE The National Center for Traditional Arts (國立傳統藝術中心), in Ilan County, bills itself as a “national window on our [Taiwanese] culture,” in its English-language brochure. It includes a major center for research on Taiwanese culture, for scholars who want to study the development of Taiwanese opera, wood block printing, and much else. For the rest of us, it offers an early-times Taiwan theme park that has proved remarkably effective in attracting domestic and foreign tourists.

The reason for the local interest became evident as I stood outside a ye olde grocery store — the tangerine shop (柑仔店) in Taiwanese — on the Center’s Folk Art Boulevard. Under the loggia, in front of the wood framed windows that looked into a shop displaying a bewildering array of colorful sweets and toys, was a wooden stake, its top end bundled in straw, with sticks of huge polystyrene candy apples sticking out from it. Next to it was an old-fashioned red pillar-box. An old couple walking by stopped by the pillar-box. “They used to have green ones too,” the old lady said, as the conversation moved off down memory lane. Amy Shih (石品玉), a staffer at a cable TV provider, emerged from the shop with a huge bag of lollies. “It’s all stuff we used to get as children,” she said, picking through her purchases with friends to the cries of “I remember that.” The collection included a cat-faced lollipop made from maltose, mints you can whistle through, and various candied fruits that she couldn’t name, but which brought back memories.

Inside, there was a huge display of sweets and toys, most of which once sold for only a few cents each. They are a little more expensive now, but are still a world away in cost and sophistication from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. While many nearby shops sold costly art objects with a Taiwanese flavor, such as bowls carved from bamboo roots or exotic organic tea, it was the toys and sweets that drew the greatest squeals of delight.

Folk Art Boulevard provides many opportunities to reminisce, but few things bring back the flavor of childhood as effectively as food. Amid the many stalls dealing with traditional handicrafts, there were plenty offering old-fashioned foods not readily available anymore. These included handmade ginger lollies (薑糖), made of maltose and old ginger, and sugar shallot wraps (糖蔥卷), crispy pulled sugar served with coriander, and peanut powder wrapped in a pancake. The cheap plastic toys and brightly colored sweets at the ye olde grocery store aside, a strong environmental theme linked many of the stores on Folk Art Boulevard — whether it was traditional foods, wooden clogs or handmade soap — sparking a nostalgia for the simplicity and purity of traditional Taiwanese rural life.

A performance stage outside the Wenchang Temple (文昌廟) hosts a wide variety of folk performances, ranging from displays of martial arts to folk dancing, designed to reignite an interest in traditional performance arts. Considerable space was also given to a shop specializing in Pili puppets (霹靂布袋戲), probably the most successful modernization of traditional Taiwanese performance art, and there was also a gezai opera (歌仔戲) for children on a stage that backs onto the soothing spectacle of the center’s Inland Waterway, a large lake that allows visitors to get away from the bustle and noise of the main shopping and eating areas.