This old wooden building once served as government housing during the period of Japanese rule. Today, it forms part of a museum dedicated to a town of…
Multilingual AI audio guide exhibit on WOUDiO (PWA). WOUDiO pioneered the world’s first audio guide platform with built-in donation: listeners can support the cultural venue without leaving the listening experience. The text below is the localized description, details, and narration script for this audio guide stop.
This old wooden building once served as government housing during the period of Japanese rule. Today, it forms part of a museum dedicated to a town of craftsmen.
Daxi is known as a town of woodworking. In the days when it flourished as a river port, timber was gathered here from the mountains, and artisans who worked the wood settled in the town.
What the craftsmen of Daxi excelled in above all was the shenzhuo — a household altar for honoring gods and ancestors, traditionally placed at the very heart of a Taiwanese home. A single shenzhuo brings together many skills at once: carving, joinery, and lacquering, layered one upon another.
Throughout the town, workshops carrying on generations of craftsmanship can still be found today.
The Daxi Wood Art Ecomuseum was conceived not as a single building gathering artifacts together, but as a museum encompassing the entire town. The old government housing, the workshops, the historic old street — all of it forms part of the exhibition.
Passing by a workshop, one catches the scent of freshly planed wood.
Even now, the hands of craftsmen continue to create altars for the homes of this land.
