Gold Leaf | Dihua Street's Ten Shophouses — The Drink Before Japan

Shitou is leaving for Japan, and before he goes there is drinking. Gold Leaf sets the Beipu wine house in a row of shophouses on Dihua Street in Dadaocheng — ten of them in a line, which is what the name means, built from 1912 by six rice-milling and textile families whose business was moving grain to the Tamsui River wharf a block away.

Walk the arcade first. The whole terrace is covered at ground level, so you pass under the full length of it out of the sun, past dried-fruit sellers and craft shops and a gallery with coffee upstairs. Above you the facades are red brick with Baroque-influenced parapets, arches, rectangular lintels over the second-floor windows, and green glazed decorative tiles of the period.

Then look up properly, because this is the honest part. The 2010s redevelopment kept only the front wall. It stands on a steel frame with a ten-storey apartment block built directly behind it. From the arcade you are looking at 1912 brick with a modern residential tower rising immediately over its shoulder, and the join is visible if you stand back across the road.

That is not a criticism of the place. It is the actual condition of most of old Taipei, and a production shooting a 1950s wine house here was borrowing a facade in the most literal sense available.

The street is public and free at any hour; the shops run roughly eleven to nine. The interiors are private businesses, so ask before you photograph inside one.

Stand in the arcade at the north end and sight down the ten frontages. They were built by six different families and they still do not quite line up. That unevenness is how you know it is real.

Location data: Taipei City Dadaocheng heritage records. The row runs Dihua Street Section 1, numbers 348 to 366.