Daxi Old Street

Daxi grew rich on camphor and tea shipped down the Dahan river, and when the Japanese administration widened the streets in the 1910s the merchants rebuilt their shopfronts with elaborate plaster facades: columns, scrollwork, family names and mixed Western and Chinese motifs, an idiom local to Taiwan of that decade. Heping and Zhongyang streets keep the best of them. The town's other trade is dried tofu, sold from dozens of shops.

What you actually see

• The baroque facades - 1910s plaster shopfronts with columns and family crests.
• The dried tofu - the town's speciality, sold hot from shops along the streets.
• The wood carving - furniture and religious carving workshops in the town.
• The riverside park - the bluff above the Dahan with the old ferry landing below.

When to go

Year round; weekends are crowded with day trippers from Taipei. Weekday mornings are quietest. Summer afternoons bring heavy rain.

Honest expectations

Weekend crowds fill the street to the point of shuffling. Much of what is sold is the same tofu and souvenirs from shop to shop. Parking in the town is difficult.

Nearby

Lalashan is southeast in the mountains, and Taoyuan city is northwest.