Behind the scenes of the historical drama Gold Leaf: The history and drama of the Jiang A-Xin Western-style House, the strongest tea merchant in Taiwan, China
Gold Leaf - the English title of PTS's latest big drama "Gold Leaf" - throws out a suspense: what kind of leaf can be like gold?
This leaf is the dark tea. There was once an era when tea leaves were more expensive than gold. Europeans were crazy about drinking tea, but tea was only produced in a very few regions such as China, Taiwan, China, and Assam in India. Taiwan tea (Formosa Tea) was exported worldwide, from cultivation and production to international marketing.
"Gold Leaf" is based on the real-life first Hakka tea merchant Jiang A-Xin, and the filming location is in Beipu, Hsinchu, at Jiang A-Xin's former residence.
Taking three years and completed in 1949, the Jiang A-Xin Western-style House was the milestone of Jiang A-Xin's career at its peak, and is now listed as a historic site.
On the large second-floor terrace of the Jiang A-Xin Western-style House, one can look down on the Jiang family's first home, the national historic site "Tianshui Hall." =
But history and drama are different. After Jiang A-Xin's business collapsed, his only daughter did not become a strong woman who "stepped into the family business buried in debt," nor did she "lead a tottering tea factory toward the world in one tea business battle after another."
The real version's female protagonist was a traditional woman. After her family declined, she went from a young lady who played the piano to a woman who mended and embroidered school numbers. She is now over ninety years old. After her children grew up, they bought back and restored their grandfather's Western-style House.
The real Jiang family was a prominent clan that opened up Beipu. It was not about petty romance, but magnificent sweep. Another film that once won awards in Asia, "1895," also took their family as its axis.
What kind of family is this, exactly?
A pioneering family with armed forces
Beipu was originally an Indigenous habitat. Today 95% of its residents are Hakka. This change happened nearly 200 years ago. The Jiang family ancestor Jiang Xiuluan, with the support of the Qing dynasty, led people here to cultivate the land. They were a land-reclamation organization with armed force. At that time, similar reclamation organizations and buildings existed across the province, called "gongguan."
Gongguan on Roosevelt Road in Taipei City and Gongguan in Miaoli both come from the same meaning, but the "gongguan" buildings across Taiwan have all been demolished. Only this plainly styled Jin Guangfu Gongguan remains. At first glance it looks like an old residential house, but in fact it is a very important page in the pioneering history of the early settlers. Among the first batch of 15 national historic sites announced by the government, Jin Guangfu Gongguan was included.
A short Beipu Old Street, although inevitably filled with shops putting on makeup and powder, is in fact full of historic sites. Besides the Jiang A-Xin Western-style House and Jin Guangfu Gongguan, there is also Citian Temple. The whole of Beipu can be described as a village developed around Citian Temple.
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This temple is wonderful both inside and outside. The first time I stepped in I was startled. Besides enshrining deities here, how could people also be enshrined? Who could "sit" in a historic-site-level temple? Looking carefully, it was actually the Jiang family ancestor, that is, the ancestor of the "Tea Tiger" Jiang A-Xin.
The exquisite art of "Oriental mosaic"
It is said that the Guanyin Bodhisattva enshrined in Citian Temple was brought over from mainland China by Jiang Xiuluan. When this Guangdong Hakka and Fujian people jointly formed "Jin Guangfu" to reclaim the land, he brought the statue into Beipu. At the beginning of reclamation, whenever there was a battle, the settlers would go to pray for peace.
The "jiannian" on the roof of this temple (also called cut porcelain sculpture) is lifelike and among the finest in all Taiwan, China. Passing by casually, it is easy to mistake it for ordinary colorful decoration and miss a work of art.
Beipu Citian Temple, with more than a hundred years of history, has superb cut porcelain art on its roof. (Provided by Wang Wenjing)
Jiannian originated from the coastal areas of mainland China. This traditional architectural craft breaks brightly colored bowls, plates, and other porcelain into small pieces of material, then assembles and pastes them into figures, animals, flowers, or folk stories. It is often displayed on temples, and some call it an "Oriental mosaic."
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Beipu on holidays and non-holidays is like two different people. Walking through Beipu on a non-holiday is especially quiet, as if one has stumbled into an unnamed little poem. Even an earth-walled house or a stone slab underfoot is a story.
I especially like to stand on the large second-floor terrace of the Jiang A-Xin Western-style House and look down on the national historic site "Tianshui Hall." This is the Jiang family's first home, a massive architectural complex, and also the scene where the film "1895" takes place.
What a magnificent family! Courtyard after courtyard, I slowly counted the old roof tiles, waiting for the owner of the tiles to open the door and tell the story.
The name Jiang A-Xin looks quite "rustic." In fact, Jiang A-Xin was not "rustic" at all. He was born in 1901, and was born as the young master of the Jiang family in Hsinchu. Giving him such a "rustic" name was probably also for the sake of "easy to raise." Jiang A-Xin's courtesy name was Maoxi - cultured enough, right?
As a young man, Jiang A-Xin studied at Meiji University in Japan. At the age of 31, he founded a tea-making factory in his hometown and cooperated with Mitsui Norin of Japan and the British Jardine Matheson trading firm in Hong Kong, China to produce black tea for export. During the peak of his career, Jiang A-Xin's tea-making factory covered more than 4,000 ping and had a variety of modern tea-making equipment, making it a fairly large-scale tea-making factory at the time. In addition, his Westernized style and international vision once whipped up a "Jiang A-Xin whirlwind" in Taiwan, China's tea industry. Jiang A-Xin's tea business could succeed not only because he was decisive, bold, enterprising, and dared to innovate, but also because of the broader international environment at the time. During World War II and the early postwar period, the major black tea-producing countries in Southeast Asia suffered severe damage, giving Jiang A-Xin the opportunity to "ride the tide." Beginning in the 1950s, black tea-producing countries with strong competitiveness began to recover, which dealt a heavy blow to Jiang A-Xin's tea business. In addition, he expanded excessively and had difficulty with capital turnover. His tea kingdom completely collapsed in 1965.
1946 was probably the most glorious year of Jiang A-Xin's tea business. That year he not only established "Yongguang Company" on the foundation of the original tea factory, but also built a Western-style House for both residence and specially receiving distinguished clients. This Western-style House used fine materials, had a unique style, fine workmanship, and huge cost, and took three years to complete. From the outside, the entire Western-style House is pale yellow, faces south from the north, square and solemn, with two floors above and below. Outside the front gate there is a front porch, and a parking ramp circles around it, extraordinarily imposing. Entering the building, the first floor has paved flooring and a simple ancient style, while the second-floor windows are round arches in a European continental style. From the exterior to the interior, the Western-style House has both Western modernity and traditional dignity, brimming with a charm that blends East and West, ancient and modern.
When Jiang A-Xin's business suffered a setback that year, this Western-style House was also forced to be sold. Interestingly, decades later, when this Western-style House was about to be resold, those descendants of Jiang A-Xin scattered around the world actually pooled funds to buy the Western-style House back, spent huge sums to restore it to its original appearance, and then donated it without compensation, naming it the "Jiang A-Xin Western-style House," as a cultural historic site of Hsinchu, free for visitors to view.
This history of the "Jiang A-Xin Western-style House" being lost and regained is moving: the descendants letting this Western-style House "return" in this way is undoubtedly the best remembrance of their forebear.