The Making of an Ordinary Woman | Yichang Rice Mill — The Machine That Fed the Dowry Street

Halfway down Jingliao Old Street there is a shopfront with a hole in the middle of it two storeys deep. That is the rice mill, and it is one of the working buildings 俗女養成記 filmed inside when it needed the village to look like a village rather than a set.

The machine is the reason to come. A hinoki rice-hulling rig runs the full height of the building — belts, chutes, wooden hoppers, the whole gravity-fed sequence stacked vertically because that is how you separate husk from grain without electricity to spare. Jute sacks slump at its foot on steel trolleys. The room smells of rice husk and machine oil, and it is a dry, dusty, faintly sweet smell that gets into the back of your throat.

This was the engine of the dowry street. Jingliao's money came out of the paddies around it, and the rice came through here on its way to being sold. The mill was registered as a historic building in 2010, restored, and reopened in July 2020 — which means the drama shot in it before it was pretty.

Open daily, nine to five, no closing day. Guided tours at half past ten and half past two, minimum five people, and the tours are worth timing for because somebody will start the machine.

Stand at the base of the huller and look straight up. Six metres of oiled timber and belting, built by people who never had a motor to rely on. Chen Jia-ling's grandmother would have sent rice through this. The drama put a camera in here because the building was already telling the story.

Location data: Tainan City Government tourism and the cultural heritage registry. Registered historic building, 2010.