Xiluo's old town-head residence reboots—with radios and Footbath 2.0

Leave Xiluo bus station and walk west along Zhongshan Road. Google Maps puts the distance at about 728 metres. Allow eleven minutes: in Xiluo, that feels about right for shaking a little city impatience out of your legs.

At number 288, a Japanese-style timber house completed in 1937 now carries the name Xiluo Keding Cultural Center. Built as the town head's residence during Japanese rule, it later housed township employees. When the last families left in 2004, the house fell quiet. Following restoration, it reopened in August 2026, with the Louyoung Cultural and Educational Foundation taking on its operation.

Inside, the arrangement has a theatrical quality. Old radios sit near a telephone; white stools gather around a low wooden table, as though somebody was here a moment ago, pouring tea and negotiating something. Before leaning into the exhibition panels, give the house itself a look. Find the traditional ridge inscription tablet returned to the central beams, the weatherboarding outside and the bamboo-and-earth walls retained in the restoration. The old house has kept its bones.

The opening exhibition, 《日治時期至國民政府來臺之政治變遷史》, traces political change from Japanese rule to the Nationalist government's arrival in Taiwan. It runs through November 18, 2026. That sounds like heavy going until you put this local history inside the house where an official actually ate and slept. The scale suddenly feels right. All that upheaval has to squeeze into one shared address and become somebody's ordinary afternoon.

The centre is also a base for learning about Zhao'an Hakka culture. Its strangest, most endearing detail is out in the garden.

International youth volunteers covered a curving outdoor installation in bright mosaic pieces, giving the house's next life something made by many hands. The magnificent part is its name: “Footbath 2.0.” You can almost see someone studying a footbath, stroking their chin and deciding, in all seriousness, that it needs an upgrade.

Next time you're in Xiluo, leave a little time for this house. You needn't read every panel in one go. Look at the wooden window joints, investigate the old radio or head outside for the colourful magic of Footbath 2.0. History can sometimes be a few low stools and a garden that makes you smile.

Wednesday–Sunday 09:00–17:00; closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Photographs supplied by Yunlin County Government and published by Hakka News in August 2026.