The Police Station That Became a Memorial to the People It Suppressed
On the corner of Dadaocheng's Ningxia Road stands a khaki three-story building most visitors walk right past. Built in 1933 as Taipei's main colonial police station, it imprisoned activist and doctor Chiang Wei-shui more than twelve times. Today it's a free museum — and one of the more quietly unsettling places in the city.
Dadaocheng is one of Taipei's more rewarding neighborhoods for a slow afternoon. The old merchant district north of the city center has a stretch of century-old shophouses along Dihua Street — dried herbs, bolts of fabric, cafés that moved into renovated colonial buildings. Most visitors come for the street itself.
On the corner where Ningxia Road meets Minsheng West Road, there's a three-story building in a dull khaki color. Most people walk past without a second glance. That's not by accident — the color was chosen specifically so the building's outline would be hard to spot from the air.
This is the former Taipei North Police Station, built in 1933 as the colonial government's primary control point in Dadaocheng. In 2018, it reopened as the Taiwan New Cultural Movement Memorial Hall. The ground floor still has the original water dungeon, the flogging room, and the fan-shaped detention cells.
A Doctor Who Diagnosed Colonial Rule
Chiang Wei-shui grew up in Yilan, on Taiwan's rainy northeast coast, and trained as a doctor at the Taiwan Governor-General's Medical School in Taipei. He opened Da'an Clinic in Dadaocheng in 1916. A few years later, he wrote a mock "medical diagnosis" of Taiwan: the disease was colonial rule; the cure was education. He wasn't subtle about it.
On October 17, 1921, the founding meeting of the Taiwan Cultural Association was raided by Police Chief Kondo Mitsuo. Chiang and fifteen others were dragged to the police station that now bears his memory. It wasn't the first time, and it was far from the last. In 1923, during what became known as the "Peace Police Incident," Chiang hung a banner welcoming Crown Prince Hirohito — using the visit as a chance to lobby publicly for a Taiwanese parliament. He was arrested again and sentenced to four months.
By the end of his life, Chiang had been detained at this building more than twelve times. He died of typhoid in 1931, at forty years old. At his funeral, more than 5,000 people — workers, farmers, students — walked from Dadaocheng to Yuanshan. Nobody organized a procession. They just came.
Today, there's a major highway interchange in Taipei named after him. The police station that kept locking him up is a free museum dedicated to his legacy, open six days a week.
What the Building Shows You
The exterior tiles came from kilns in Beitou, Taipei's northern hot spring district. That flat, grayish khaki has a formal name: "defense color." It was standard for colonial government buildings in the 1930s, designed to make the structure harder to identify from the air during bombing raids. This is the only surviving 1930s police station building in Taipei.
Inside, on the ground floor, the fan-shaped detention cells follow a panopticon layout: guards stationed at the center can see into every cell at once, while no prisoner can know whether they're being watched. The logic is simple — constant uncertainty functions as constant surveillance. The cells are small. Looking at them through the bars now is a different experience from being inside them, but you get the idea.
The water dungeon is there too, though it's only accessible during specific events like Open House Taipei. The interior height is 120 centimeters. When flooded, an adult can't stand upright or sit — the only option is to crouch, arms braced, and hold your head above water. Prisoners were sometimes left in that position for hours.
Visiting the Memorial Hall
Getting there: About ten minutes on foot from MRT Zhongshan Station or Shuanglian Station (both on the Red Line). If you're already on Dihua Street near Yongle Market, it's a five-minute walk north along Ningxia Road.
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM. Closed Mondays.
Admission: Free.
What's inside: The permanent exhibition "Light and Shadow of the Golden Era" covers the Taiwan New Cultural Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. There's an AR telescope pointed at a large wall map of 1920s Dadaocheng — hold it up and you see then-and-now comparisons of specific buildings in the neighborhood. English signage is limited but the key exhibits have summary translations.
Plan around 1.5 hours. The ground floor with the preserved cells takes longer than you'd expect — not because there's a lot to see, but because the space makes you slow down.
Around the area: Dihua Street and Yongle Market are a five-minute walk south. Ningxia Night Market, one of Taipei's older night markets, is about fifteen minutes south on foot. The lunch spots along Minsheng West Road tend to be low-key local places that don't show up on most travel itineraries — worth exploring if you're already in the neighborhood.
