Dingcai Garden Folk Museum Introduction
Dingcaiyuan Folk Museum is a folk cultural park that has received subsidies from the Council of Labor Affairs, created by Mr. Chen Ming-hui. Chen Ming-hui, a native of Chiayi, aimed to preserve early rural life memories by recreating the Taiwanese rural lifestyle of the 1950s. Through creative thinking, he transformed his lifelong home, Dingcaiyuan in Xinyang Township, into a paradise, brick by brick. To fully present the agricultural landscape, the park does not even have walls, and everywhere you can see clever uses of waste materials, retaining a strong local flavor. The park features many farming tools and household items from Taiwan's 1950s and 1960s, such as four-sided tables, stone mills, stone mortars, rain capes, ox carts, ancient jars, old telephones, mailboxes, red beds, long benches, and carts selling household goods, etc. There is even a unique Chiayi bus ticket booth, preserved by Chen Ming-hui after its retirement, which is the last remnant of early public transport in Chiayi, making it a "county treasure." All these artifacts are housed in a charming little wooden house made from wooden utility poles. The park also has a distinctive "Pigsty Inn." In the early days, raising pigs held a savings significance for Taiwanese people, where leftover food was fed to pigs, and once fattened, they would be sold for money. Chen Ming-hui transformed the traditional pigsty into an inn, hoping to spark visitors' curiosity about pigs and their role in early agricultural society. Additionally, the Folk Museum encompasses various early industries such as painted pottery, incense-making, organic fruits and vegetables, Xinyang candy, soy sauce, winemaking, and turkey farming. It has specially designed exhibition and sales areas for each industry and experience activities. Visitors can freely use ancient artifacts and enjoy nostalgic activities like barbecuing, controlling kilns, frog fishing, catching loaches, netting dragonflies, digging for worms, spinning tops, and playing marbles, making it a truly worthwhile recreational park to visit.
