Taiwan News  
Date: 2018/07/01
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Li Teng-Fang Mansion

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–Daxi District, Taoyuan City is the only town in Taiwan where you can see a grand traditional Chinese courtyard house, an old street lined with houses with magnificent Baroque-style façades, a century-old park, traditional Japanese architecture, and the late President Chiang Kai-shek’s villa all in the old district of the town.

To visit this corner of Daxi is to feast your eyes on the indescribable beauty of the architecture that spans more than 150 years.

I came to Daxi on Friday (June 22) by driving southbound on National Highway No. 3, and it took only about 35 minutes to get to Daxi from Taipei.

My first stop at Daxi was the Li Teng-Fang Mansion (李騰芳古宅), which is designated as a national historic monument. The mansion is the house of the Li family, who came to Daxi to farm in the Yuemei (月眉) area during the Qing Dynasty and later prospered in rice trading by taking advantage of river navigation. Now it’s almost unimaginable that during the old time, people transported goods over rivers between Daxi, Taoyuan and Tamsui Port on the north coast.   [FULL  STORY]