Taiwan Story Land

Among all the tall buildings in the city of Taipei, across the street from the Taipei Train Station, a fairytale looking entrance would take you back to the old time of Taiwan…

This is an absolutely unique place; named “Taiwan Story Land”. It contains many exhibitions; each exhibit shows you a story of a traditional Taiwanese culture. This place would fulfill your childhood memories or give a close look at how local living was like in the Taiwan history. Ready to ride a time machine, and take you back to the old good time?

In the past, Ka-Ma-Tiam store could be seen on streets almost everywhere. It sold food, household items, toys, snack, and can food. Now it has been replaced by a 24 hours Seven-Eleven and a supermarket.

I loved to go in there when I was a kid, because it looked like a Disney store to me! Although I don’t eat sweet that much since my parents trained me well enough not to eat sweet in my childhood time, I still love the “Milk Candy”. Until now, I can still buy this historical brand in the Asian market here.

The “Cigarette Candy” was a mint candy with a long roll shape, just like a cigarette. I don’t know why they made candy in cigarette shape for the kids, but it indeed was one of the most popular candies. In the old time, cigarettes were in fashion perhaps that was the reason?

Remember the paper round cards and paper dolls? Very interesting, boys played and collected paper round cards and girls paper dolls in the old time. Paper doll set that came with all kinds of colorful clothes were very expensive at that time, so handmade paper dolls kept me busy after school. Ha!

In the past, shoppers brought their own grocery bags to the grocery store. We really should go back to this tradition.

Whenever we went to the park or night market, I always wanted to play “Ring Toss” game although only in one out of 100 times I could take home a small prize.

The classroom desk reminded me lots of silly childhood memories. Almost all the desks in the classroom had a deep pencil scraped line in the middle of the desk to divide the desk in half since each desk was shared by two kids. “Don’t cross the line” was the way to maintain its territory on the desk.

To organize the “Book Pack” the night before the school always gave me headache and pressure, since that meant all my homework had to be completed by that time, and I did not like that logic at all.

Wandering on the street in the Story Land here, you can also see the inside of a family room, a barber shop, a theater, a police station, a hot spring hotel, a drug store, a dentist place….etc. In order to reduce the kids’ anxiety to see doctors in the old time, a coin electric rocking animal was placed outside of the doctor’s place and drug store. Even with the rocking animal, I would not even have gone in just by looking at the dental equipment in the exhibition.

Before wash machines, all clothes were washed on this “washing board” that left so many mothers handprints and memories.

Guess, what is inside of this cart? All the yummy “Lu-Wei” (soy sauce and spicy flavored snacks) were in the cart. It was a mobile street vendor. It came to the neighborhood with a tempting smell; however, I don't quite recall this..

After the last exhibit, we returned to the reality in just a few steps up on the stairs. It was a traffic time; I did not want to return to the current time, but…

It is definitely an awesome place to discover and recall Taiwan’s history. Read More