MangoVine - Vintage Displays at The Red Theatre in Ximen

12 July, 2009
Sunday

The Red Theatre is a striking red-bricked, octagonal building that we spotted the first time we left Ximen MRT station. It was originally built by the Japanese in 1908 to house Taiwan's first modern market but has more recently become an exhibition space and theatre for traditional Chinese artforms.

There are two floors with the upper floor containing the two hundred seat venue for performances that include puppetry, children's productions and folk singing. The ground floor is the only level we visited, walking in off the street to check out the Paperwindmill Cafe, exhibition space and gift shop.

Lots of vintage objects and decoration create the ambiance in The Red Theatre. The cafe offered comfortable seating and a gramophone player which sadly wasn't playing.

The centre of the space held a small exhibition of panels describing an aspect of history of Taiwan's film industry, whereas more interesting for me was a display of boxes housing some vintage film-related objects.

I found the gift shop to be quite good, stocking a number of items I'd seen in other shops such as Eslite, but in greater quantities and varieties.

Some products were related to the film industry, but there were also plenty of Taiwan originated stationary such as the series of postcards by Monkey Design featuring cut-out models of Taiwanese architecture or post-it notes sporting illustrations of Taipei's "ugly" rooftops created by advertising-based Ariel Chi.

More photos of the Red Theatre on Flickr

This entry posted in : History. Taiwan. Tourism.

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Vintage Displays at The Red Theatre in Ximen

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