Beitou Museum Introduction
The Beitou Museum was originally built in 1921 (the 10th year of the Taisho era) as the "Jashan Hotel." This Japanese wooden structure retains typical Japanese details such as spacious halls, intricate carvings on the column partitions, and traditional shoji doors and windows. With its excellent view from the mountainside, visitors can overlook the Beitou Valley and connect with the distant Datun Mountain, Guanyin Mountain, and Danfeng Mountain, creating a beautiful landscape painting. Surrounded by gardens that soak in the warm spring scenery of Beitou, it became one of the representative high-end hot spring hotels during the rapid development of the Beitou area in the 1920s-1930s. After the war, the government took over the building and allowed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to use it as a dormitory. It was not until 1965 that it was sold to private individuals as a villa and became a popular filming location in the 1960s and 1970s. At the end of 1983, Mr. Chang Chun-Ming, who had passed by Beitou while running and admired this Japanese old house, resolutely rented the building and began restoration work, officially establishing the "Taiwan Folk Art Museum" in 1984. In 1987, with an increasing number of collections, it was renamed "Beitou Museum," dedicated to preserving artifacts related to Taiwanese Han, indigenous peoples, and folk crafts. In 1998, it was registered as a city-designated historical site by the Taipei City Government. In order to preserve the building for a longer period, a five-year restoration project began in 2002 as a public-private partnership. In 2008, under a mixed operational model, it resumed cultural promotion, emerging like a "reborn" century-old house, and became an important example of cultural heritage preservation in Taiwan. Currently, the museum houses over 5,000 artifacts, ranging from historical materials related to Beitou's hot springs (such as Beitou pottery, hotel account books, and illustrated postcards) to life ritual objects of the Han people and textiles, wood carvings, and embroidery from indigenous peoples, showcasing the richness of cultural integration. The museum also retains the spatial aesthetics of the former hotel, such as the Prince's Floor, the Veranda, and tatami rooms, allowing visitors to experience the elegance of Japanese wooden architecture up close. Additionally, the museum treasures the painting "Journey to Jashan" by the Japanese colonial period artist Po Chou, symbolizing "good fortune arriving" with the Eight Gods of Fortune and depicting the splendid scenes of the Jashan Hotel hosting guests and celebrations in its heyday.
The Beitou Cultural Museum hosts the annual Jieshan Tea Party.
Taipei New Shikoku 88 Temples Stone Buddha
