2017年5月30日 星期二

瑞士8日遊 (Carol Chiang);瑞士蘇黎世Zurich.Château de Chillon


Carol Chiang
......其中Zurich飛Geneva班機顯得有些突兀,原因是我們先預訂了冰河列車(Glacier Express)的座位,且Geneva與我們既定的路線不合,後來才加上的快閃行程。事後證明,在瑞士旅行最好以瑞士國鐵SBB作為主要交通工具,避免搭飛機;表面上看起來飛機交通時間比火車快 (1.5小時 v.s. 3.3小時),實際上加上check-in行李與過安檢的時間,可能還比搭火車慢,液態食物也不能隨身攜帶。手機下載SBB官方的app,輸入起、迄地點,它會幫你規劃好最合適的交通路線,包含火車、輕軌列車、纜車、巴士、駁船,連乘車月台都一清二楚。一張瑞士旅行通票(Swiss Travel Pass)大部分交通工具都能涵蓋,不同系統間整合的很好,讓外國旅客非常容易理解;與其到瑞士飯店管理,不如到瑞士學交通管理吧。(除了Zermatt的飯店超棒,其他就還好...)
個人感想:
1. 我原本預期這是一趟「見湖山」的旅行,但在旅途中遇見不少有趣的人,分享他們有趣的經歷,比方說:在少女峰,遇見直升機上的女性醫生,冬季值班,夏季度假去;在Interlarken,遇見滑翔傘的教練(paragliding pilot),同時也經營「一人」營造公司,因為冬季不能開工的時候就可以經營滑翔傘,像是職業避險;在Zermatt,遇見每天工作10個小時,一人分飾五角的飯店老闆,身兼櫃檯接待、領房、吧台、接送司機、網站維護,飯店裡每一件的設計都親自上陣;在火車上,遇見從英國來的中國數學系留學生,因為英國緊縮移民與留學生名額,打算畢業後回中國發展...。我想旅行的意義,就是聽聽別人的故事,然後編織自己的。
2. 別人的遊記/食記與自己的親身體驗不盡相同,盡量多嘗試,不要先入為主。比如說有人寫Geneva是個很無聊的城市,到處都是外國人;但我與先生非常喜歡Geneva的城市氛圍,值得多住幾天。
3. Zermatt的與日本京都結為姐妹市,過去有許多日本旅行團造訪 (接受JCB卡喔),但這次只遇到一團日本團;令我印象深刻的是:導遊發給每一個團員無綫電耳機,所以整團20個日本長者都安安靜靜。而我們一路上遇到不少台灣旅行團,真心覺得臺灣團也該採用這種設備,才不用在車廂裡、觀景台上扯著喉嚨講話,尊重其他人享受風景的空間。導遊活潑是好事,但是不是每一個人都想分享導遊血拼的心得。
4. 登雪線以上的山時最好穿防滑靴,很多人在雪地上摔倒,有的地方摔下去就是懸崖。
5. 瑞士人普遍重視隱私,在室內拍照或攝影時務必徵詢同意,即使是櫥窗裡的陳列物,很多人是不願意合照的。
6. 瑞士好山好水好空氣,大部分的泉水可以直接生飲,不能生飲的水會標示出來(例如火車上);但是路上抽菸的人不少,尤其是金融重鎮Zurich,而Zurich車站根本就是一根大煙囪...。到了法語區,我們發現車站月台上設立了「禁煙區」的小房間,竟然是讓不吸菸的人集中在一起,也是一種民主表現吧
Itinerary
Day 1 早上抵達Zurich機場
→前往Rheinfall
→前往Lucerne,纜車登Pilatus山(golden round trip)+市區觀光
Day 2 由Lucerne出發,搭Golden Pass前往Interlaken
→前往Bern市區觀光
Day 3 由Interlaken出發
→登少女峰
→Lauterbrunnen、Mürren觀光
Day 4 Interlaken滑翔傘
→Spiez小鎮漫遊
→由Interlaken出發,搭火車前往Zermatt+市區觀光
Day 5 從Zermatt出發,登Matterhorn山 →Matterhorn Glacier Paradise
→Gornergrat觀景台
Day 6 由Zermatt出發,搭乘Glacier Express前往Chur →Chur市區觀光
→由Chur出發,搭火車前往Zurich
Day 7 Zurich市區觀光
Day 8 早上由Zurich出發,搭機前往Geneva
→搭火車前往Château de Chillon觀光





→搭火車前往Lausanne市區觀光、訪IMD Business School
→Geneva市區觀光
晚上由Geneva機場離境


-----
瑞士蘇黎世是全球薪資最高的城市之一,但他們大多衣著樸素,不炫富、不豪奢。在這裡,我深刻體會到,心靈的充實,才能帶來真正的幸福與快樂。
「瑞士友人 H 任職於瑞銀集團,在美國五湖區擁有一棟渡假別墅,而他卻戴著一只價格僅 15 美元的手錶。蘇黎世人享有傲視全球的薪資水準,但他們並未熱切追求時尚的外表或昂貴的物質,而是抱持務實的態度低調行事。」
⋯⋯更多

2017年5月24日 星期三

2017年5月17日 星期三

國立臺灣博物館

【518國際博物館日】
今天是「國際博物館日」哦!相信上星期5/13、5/14不少朋友都來到博物館參觀了。但是,到底什麼是博物館日呢?
國際博物館協會(ICOM)成立於1946年,並自西元1977年起,將每年的5月18日訂為「國際博物館日」(International Museum Day, IMD),結合世界各地博物館的力量,喚起民眾積極投入參與博物館的活動。2017年的主題是「博物館與爭議性歷史:在博物館述說難以言說的故事」。

海幢寺榕樹

清沈復*《浮生六記·浪游記快》:“ 海幢寺規模極大,山門內植榕樹,大可十餘抱,蔭濃如蓋,秋冬不凋。”
(*沈復(西元1763年~西元1825(26)年,[1]),字三白,號梅逸,清乾隆二十八年生於江蘇省蘇州府長洲縣(今蘇州市)。年輕時曾為幕僚,後從商。)
HC似乎找不到"大可十餘抱的榕樹"了,於戲!


海幢寺- 维基百科,自由的百科全书

2017年5月14日 星期日

ON THE BOSPHORUS — JOHN BERGER [1979]

我介紹完 Le Corbusier 的 【東方之旅 】的"土耳其"部分之後,會介紹20世紀的兩位名家的伊斯坦堡.....


http://pastandfuturepresents.blogspot.tw/2015/12/on-bosphorus-john-berger-1979.html


Minarets 數 6---11 HEADLAND




此篇有繁簡字翻譯:
博斯普魯斯   觀看的視界,頁 95-105

ON THE BOSPHORUS — JOHN BERGER [1979]

"On the waterfront of the Golden Horn at Constantinople From the windows of the old Pashas palaces that fronted on this shore undesirable persons and harems that had become too large were reduced by being sewed in a sack and droped [sic] onto the Bosphorus." 1920.

For ten days I kept notes (after ten days we fast became ignorant habitués), with the idea of later being able to reconstruct my first impressions of Istanbul.
            The reconstruction was not so simple as it might have been. Political violence, including the massacre at Maras, had forced Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit to declare a state of siege in thirteen of the provinces.
            Why describe the tiles of the Rustan [sic] Pasa mosque—their deep red and green lost in an even deeper blue—in a city where martial law has just been declared?

In Turkish, the Bosphorus is called the straits of the throat, the place of the stranglehold. It has featured for millennia in every global strategy. In 1947 Truman claimed an essential strategic interest in Turkey, just as, after the First World War, Britain and France had done. But whereas the Turks fought and won their war of independence (1918-23) against the first claim, they were powerless against the second.

American intervention in Turkish politics has been constant ever since. Nobody in Turkey doubts that the destabilizing programme of the right is backed by the CIA. The United States probably fears two things: the repercussions in Turkey of the fall of the Shah in Iran, unless there is a ‘strong’ government in Ankara; and Ecevit’s reform programme which, though moderate, is not compliant with western interests, and revives some of the promise of Ataturk’s independence movement. Among many other consequences, if Ecevit is ousted, the American-trained torturers will return to thier prison posts.

When the ferry leaves Kadikoy on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, on your right you see the massive block of the Selemiye barracks, with its four towers, sentinels at each corner. In 1971—the last time there was martial law in Istanbul—many political prisoners (nearly all of the left) were interrogated there. If you look the other way, you see the railway station of Hayderpasa and the buffers, only a few yards from the water, stopping in the lines which come from Baghdad, Calcutta and Goa. Nazim Hikmet, who spent thirteen years in Turkish prisons, wrote many lines about this railway station:

A Smell of fish in the sea
bugs on every seat
            spring has come to the station
Baskets and bags
            descend the station steps
            go up the station steps
            stop on the steps
Beside a policeman a boy
—of five, perhaps less—
            goes down the steps.
He has never had any papers
but he is called Kemal.
A bag
A carpet bag climbs the steps.
Kemal descending the steps
            barefoot and shirtless
                        is quite alone
                                    in this beautiful world
He has no memories except of hunger
            and then vaguely   
                        of a women in a dark room

Across the water, in the early morning sunlight, the mosques are the colour of ripe honeydew melons. The Blue Mosque with is six piercing minarets. Santa Sophia, taking advantage of its hill, immense, dominating its minarets so that they look no more than guardians of a breast. The so-called New Mosque, finished in 1660. On overcast days the same buildings across the straits look dull and grey, like the skin of cooked carp. I glance back now at the bleak towers of the Selemiye barracks.

Thousands of jellyfish of all sizes, as large as dishes, as small as eggcups, contract and distend in the current. They are milky and half-transparent. The local pollution has killed off the mackerel who used to eat the jellyfish. Hence their profusion in hundreds of thousands. Popularly they are called water cunts.

Hundreds of people crowd the boat. Most of them commute every day. A few, who stand out because of their clothes and the amazement to be read on their faces, are crossing into Europe for the first time, and have come from distant parts of Anatolia. A woman of thirty-five, wearing a scarf over her hair and baggy cotton trousers, sits on the uppermost deck in the sunshine which dazzles off the surface of the water.

The plain of central Anatolia, surrounded by mountains, with deep snow in the winter and the dust of rocks in the summer, was one of the first sites of neolithic agriculture, and the communities were peace-loving and matriarchal. Today, eroded, it risks becoming a desert. The villages are dominated by the aghas, thieving officials who are also landowners. There has been no effective land reform, and the average annual income in 1977 was £10-£20.

Deliberately the woman holds her husband’s hand. He is all that remains of the familiar. Together they look across at the famous skyline which is the breathtaking, incandescent, perfumed half-truth of the city. The hand which she holds is like many of the hands resting on laps on the deck. The idiom of the popular male Turkish hand: broad, heavy, plumper than you would guess (even when the body is emaciated), calloused, strong. Hands which do not look as if they have grown out of the earth like vines—the hands of old Spanish peasants, for example—but nomad hands which travel across the earth.

Speaking of his narrative poems, Hikmet once said he wanted to make poetry like a material for shirts, very fine, half silk, half cotton: silks which are also democratic because they absorb the sweat.

A beggar woman stands by the door to the saloon on the lower deck. In contrast to the heaviness of the male hands, the woman’s hands are light. Hands which make cakes of dried cow dung for burning in central Anatolia, hand which plait the daughter’s hair into strands. On her arm, the beggar woman carries a basket of sick cats: an emblem of pity, off which she scrapes a living. Most of those who pass place a coin in her outstretched hand.

Sometimes first impressions gather up some of the residue of the centuries. The nomadic hand is not just an image; it has a history. Meanwhile, the tourturers are capable, within a few days, of breaking entire nervous systems. The hell of politics—which is why politics compulsively seeks utopias—is that it has to straddle both times: millennia and a few days. I picture the face of friend perhaps to be imprisoned again, his wife, his children. Since the foundation of the republic, this is the ninth time that martial law has been declared to deal with internal dissent. I see his clothes sill hanging neatly in the wardrobe.

When the ferry passes the headland, eleven minarets become visible, and you can see clearly the camel chimneys of the kitchens of the Sultan’s palace. This palace of Topkapi housed luxury and indulgence on such a scale that they percolated into the very dreams of the West; but in reality, as you can see today, it was no more than a labyrinthine monument to dynastic paranoia.

Turning now against the current, black diesel smoke belches from the ship’s funnel, obliterating Topkapi. Forty per cent of the population of Istanbul live in shanty towns which are invisible from the centre of the city. These shanty towns—each one with a population of at least 25,000—are insanitary overcrowded and desperate. They are also sites of super-exploitation (a shack may be sold for as much as £5,000).

Yet the decision to migrate to the city is not a stupid one. About a quarter of the men who live in the shanty towns are unemployed. The other three quarters work for a further which be by illusory, but which was totally inconceivable in the village. The average wage in the city is between £20 and £30 a week.

The massacre at Maras was planned by fascists backed by the CIA. Yet to know this is to know little. Eric Hobsbawm wrote recently that it has taken left-win intellectuals a long time to condemn terrorism. Today left-wing terrorism in Turkey plays into the hands of those who want to re-establish a right-wing police state such as existed between 1950 and 1960—to the enormous benefit of the aghas.

Yet however much one condemns terrorism, one must recognize that its popular (minority) appeal derives from experience which is bound to remain totally untouched by such tactical, or ethical, considerations. Popular violence is as arbitrary as the labour market, not more so. The violent outbreak, whether encouraged by the right or the left, is fed by the suppressed violence of countless initiatives not taken. Such outbreaks are the ferment of stagnation, kept at the right temperature by broken promises. For more than fifty years, since Ataturk’s republic succeed the sultanate, the peasants of central Anatolia, who fought for their independence, have been promised land and the means to cultivate it. Bush such changes as there have been have led to more suffering.

In the lower-deck saloon a salesman, who has bribed the stewards to let him sell, is holding up, high for all to see, a paper folder of needles. His patter is leisurely and soft-voiced. Those who sit or stand around him are mostly men. On the folder, which holds fifteen needles of different sizes, is printed in English HAPPY HOME NEEDLE BOOK, and round this title an illustration of three young white women wearing hats and ribbons in their hair. Both needles and folder were made in Japan.

The salesman is asking 20p. Slowly, one after another, the men buy. It is a bargain, a present and an injunction. Carefully they slip the folder into one of the pockets of their thin jackets. Tonight they will give them to their wives, as if the needles were seeds for a garden.

In Istanbul the domestic interior, in both the shanty towns and elsewhere, is a place of repose, in profound opposition to what lies outside the door. Cramped, badly roofed, crooked, cherished, these interiors are spaces like prayers, both because they oppose the traffic of the world as it is, and because they are a metaphor for the Garden of Eden or Paradise.

Interiors symbolically offer the same thing as Paradise: repose, flowers, fruit, quiet, soft materials, sweetmeats, cleanliness, femininity. The offer can be as imposing (and vulgar) as one of the Sultan’s rooms in the harem, or it can be as modest as the printed patterns on a square of cheap cotton, draped over a cushion on the floor of a shack.

It is clear that Ecevit will try to maintain control over the initiatives of the generals who are now responsible for the rule of each province. They politico-military tradition of imprisonment, assassination and execution is still a strong one in Turkey. When considering the power and decadence of the Ottoman empire, the West conveniently overlooks the fact that this empire is what protected Turkey from the the first inroads of capitalism, western colonization and the supremacy of money over every other form of power. Capital assumes within itself all earlier forms of ruthlessness, and makes the old forms obsolete. This obsolescence permit the West a basis for its global hypocrisies, of which the latest is the ‘human rights’ issue.

An man stands by the ship’s rail, staring down at the flashing water and the ghostly water cunts. The ship, seventeen years old, was built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Govan, Glasgow. Until five years ago, he was a shoemaker in a village not far from Bolu. It took him two days to make a pair of shows. Then factory-made shoes began to arrive in the village, and were sold cheaper than his. The cheaper, factory-made shoes meant that some children in some villages no longer went barefoot. No longer able to sell his shoes, he went to the state factory to ask for work. They told him he could hire a stamping machine for cutting out pieces of leather.

A pair of shoes consists of twenty-eight pieces. If he wanter to hire the machine, he must cut the necessary pieces of leather for 50,000 pairs a year. The machine was delivered to his shop. There was only room for him to sit on his stool by the machine.

The next year he was told that, if he wanted ot keep the machine, he must now cut enough pieces for 100,000 pairs of shoes. It was impossible, he said. Yet it proved possible. He worked twelve hours during the day, and his brother-in-law worked twelve hours during the night. In the room above, which was a metaphor for Paradise, the sound of the stamping machine never stopped day or night. In a year, the two men cut nearly three million pieces.

One evening he smashed his left hand, and the noise of the machine stopped. There was quiet beneath the carpet of the room above. The machine was loaded on to a lorry, and taken back to the factory. It was after that that he came to Istanbul for work. The expression in his eyes, as he tells his story, is familiar. You see it in the eyes of countless men in Istanbul. These men are no longer young; yet their look is not one of resignation, it is too intense for that. Each one is looking at his own life with the same knowingness, protectiveness and indulgence as he would look on a son. A calm Islamic irony.

The subjective opposites of Istanbul are not reason and unreason, nor virtue and sin, nor believer and infidel, nor wealth and poverty—colossal as the objective contrasts are. They are, or so it seemed to me, purity and foulness.

This polarity covers that of interior/exterior, but it is nor confined to it. For example, as well as separating carpet from earth, it separates milk and cow, perfume and stench, pleasure and ache. The popular luxuries—honey-sweet to the tooth, shiny to they eye, silken to the touch, fresh to the nose—offer amends for the natural foulness of the world. Many Turkish popular expressions and insults play across the polarity. ‘He thinks,’ they say about someone who is conceited, ‘they he’s the parsley in everyone’s shit.’

Applied to class distinction, this same polarity of purity/foulness becomes vicious. The faces of the rich bourgeois women of Istanbul, sick with idleness, fat with sweetmeats, are among the most pitiless I have seen.

When friends of mine were prisoners in the Selemiye barracks, their wives took them attar of roses and essence of lemons.

They ferry also carries lorries. On the tailboard of a lorry from Konya is written: ’The money I make I earn with my own hands, so may Allah bless me.’ The driver, with grey hair, is leaning against the bonnet, drinking tea out of a small, gilt-rimmed glass. On every deck there are vendors of tea with such glasses and bowls of sugar on brilliant copper trays. The tea drinkers sip, relax, and look at the shining water of the Bosphorus. Despite the thousands of passengers carried daily, the ferry boats are almost as clean as interiors. There are not streets to compare with their decks.

On each side of the lorry from Konya, the driver has had a small landscape painted. Both show a lake surrounded by hills. Above the all-seeing eye, almond-shaped with long lashes, like a bridegroom’s. The painted water of the lakes suggests peace and stillness. As he sips his tea, the driver talk to three small, dark-skinned men with passionate eyes. The passion may be personal, but it also the passion you can see all over the world in the eyes of proud and oppressed minorities. The three men are Kurds.

Both in the main streets of Istanbul, and in the back streets where there are chickens and sheep, you see porters carrying bales of cloth, sheets of metal, carpets, machine parts, sacks of grain, furniture, packing cases. Most of these porters are Kurds from eastern Anatolia, on the borders of Iraq and Iran. They carry everything where the lorries cannot. And because the industrial part of the city is full of small workshops in streets too narrow for lorries, there is a great deal to carry from workplace to workplace.

Fixed to their backs is a kind of saddle, on which the load is piled and corded high above their heads. This way of carrying, and the weight of the loads, obliges them to stoop. They walk, when loaded, like jack knives half-shut. The three now listening to the lorry driver are sitting on their own saddles, sipping tea, gazing at the water and the approach to the Golden Horn. The cords with which they fasten their loads lie loos between their feet and the deck. 

Altogether, the crossing takes twenty minutes (about the time needed to read this article). Beside the landing stage rowing boats rock in the choppy water. In some of them fires burn, the flames dancing to the rhythm of the slapping water. Over the fires, men are frying fish to sell to those on their way to work.

Beyond those pans—almost as wide as the boat—of frying fish lie all the energies and torpor of the city: the workshops, the markets, the mafia, the Galata Bridge on which the crowd walking across is invariably twenty abreast (the bridge is a floating one and incessantly, almost imperceptibly, quivers like a horse’s flank), the schools, the newspaper offices, the shanty towns, the abattoir, the headquarters of the political parties, the gunsmiths, the merchants, soldiers, beggars.

These are the last moments of peace before the driver starts up the engine of his lorry, and the porters hurry to the stern of the ship to be among the first to jump ashore. The tea vendors are collecting the empty glasses. It is as if, during the crossing, the Bosphorus induces the same mood as the painted lakes: as if the ferry boat, built in Glasgow in 1961, becomes an immense floating carpet, suspended in time above the shining water, between home and work, between effort and effort, between two continents. And this suspension, which I remember so vividly, corresponds now to the destiny of the country.

John Berger, “On the Bosphorus,” in Geoff Dyer, ed. Selected Essays (New York: Vintage, 2003). Originally published in 1979 in the journal New Society.  

2017年5月12日 星期五

莊永明:《台北老街》(1991;新版2012/2017);《赤峯街5號的那些事》;永樂市場

 
我在片中希望有機會作東方白的回憶錄:(第二部童年篇第四章永樂市場)

東方白說:「雨果的『人生學校』是他父親服役的拿破崙軍旅,杜思妥也夫斯基的『人生學校』是西伯利亞的苦牢,狄更斯的『人生學校』是倫敦市的法院,而我的『人生學校』則是臺北市的永樂市場。」
    東方白的父親在永樂市場開設了一家「萬居鐘錶鋪」。修錶的客人很多,但父親面對來領錶的的客人時,從不曾拿錯過任何一隻。父親解釋說:人的面容有許多特點,比如有嘴裡三顆金牙的、有鼻頭長著一顆痣的、有痣頂長兩根毛的,或是下巴有刀痕的、眼睛大小不一的、眉毛連成一線的、笑起來嘴巴歪同一邊的。而父親總是記下人們長相的特點,所以不曾弄錯過。
    東方白發現:「父親是一位多麼深暗『人物描寫』的『作家』呀!」

------
2017.5.20 請李日章先生談其赤峯街5號的那些事》(玉山社 ,2015)。

********

台北老街(新版)

.台灣人文民俗專家,莊永明老師2012年代表著作。
  .台北老街擁有暢銷書與長銷書的雙重美譽,全新增修版本,換置多張史蹟照片、珍藏史料,以及莊永明精心收藏有關台北老街的明信片與愛國獎券。
  .台北老街珍貴史料,經由莊老師重新整理,以及其近年來感受物換星移、世事變遷的深刻體悟,將藉著本書帶領讀者重遊舊台北,走出新生命。
  艋舺、大稻埕、台北城──是所謂的台北「三市街」,是台北市的「原型」,這三個「聚落」的發展,先後有序,而且各有其成長背景,也因此街道的布局、房屋的造形,也各有其獨特的個性。艋舺和大稻埕都有過商船雲集、帆影林密的年代,是同屬於「商業社區」,只是艋舺是閉塞的,而大稻埕則是開放的。艋舺在 1820 年代,已儼然是台灣北部經濟、政治與軍事的中心,和台南、鹿港鼎足而立,這個由漢人移墾、建造的市街,經歷了漳泉械鬥、異姓爭鬥,產生了強烈排他性,形成了保守性格。淡水河床的淤塞,使這個由「番漢交易」之地所形成郊商殷盛的市街、逐漸地走向了衰敗,將其貿易市場拱手讓給了「下游」的大稻埕。分類械鬥,被三邑人追、趕、跑的同安人,退入大稻埕,和以往在新莊方面戰敗遁入大稻埕的漳州人,本著「同是天涯淪落人」的心,攜手合作,在奇武卒社故祉,建立了新的家園。歷史的軟跡,能留痕之處並不多見,而「台北老街」保住了一老建築,雖然這些當代的建築已經都是在風燭殘年中,畢竟幢幢都是歷史見證物,它能夠矗立便是我們的幸運,這種「歷史教材」是獨一無二,不能再求,誰忍心讓其消毀呢?
  本書重新編排,同時也突出了莊永明老師在本書中對於「台北」的定義為,以艋舺、大稻埕與城內為主的範疇;從三市街開始,便是台北身世的起源,也是莊永明老師在本書中特別彰顯的所在。
  請看莊永明老師娓娓道來,這座城市最美的故事、最動人的歷史。
本書特色
  認識老台北,愛上新台北!
  台灣著名文史工作者,莊永明老師畢生致力於台灣各地「老」事物的收集與整理,從文人佚事到泛黃的照片、器具,在在都是莊永明老師為後世子孫留下的美好事蹟。
  本書為2012年全新增訂版,將1991年初版以來,莊永明老師陸續收集的相關史料、種種心得一併收入本書當中,是對台北老街的全新詮釋與愛戀。
  從莊永明老師的文字與照片中,可以看見身為台灣的「下町」--大稻埕出身的獨特性格,深深眷戀著古老的一切,而這一切恰恰好也是快速翻新的台北城最需要被保護的珍貴記憶。
  在本書中,除了可以一窺台北街道的歷史脈絡,更可以看見台北人是如何在更迭的朝代中適應著、茁壯著、驕傲著;這是一本不論是青青子衿或者是社會人士都應該擁有且深讀的好書。
作者簡介
莊永明老師
  台北市大稻埕人。1942年出生;1980年,應詹宏志先生之邀,在中國時報開闢一個「台灣第一」的專欄,每週一次、有系統地撰寫出台灣的人文、歷史等文化性的文章,前後長達一整年。在這個專欄中,陸續介紹過「台灣第一個醫學博士--杜聰明」、「台灣第一個畫家--黃土水」等。這個專欄推出後,讀者反應非常熱烈。很多人甚至主動提供更多的相關資料。
  莊永明首開先例地整理出「台灣第一」的文稿,著名的文學家柏楊就說過:「莊永明是台灣第一個寫出『台灣第一』的人。」著作有《台灣第一》、《台灣記事》上下冊、《台灣諺語淺釋》10冊、《台灣風情》、《台北老街》、《台灣歌謠追想曲》、《台灣名人小札》、《台灣先聖先賢傳──韓石泉》、《傳唱台灣》、《島國顯影》、《呂泉生的音樂世界》、主講《台灣歌謠尋根》CD等。《台北老街》獲中國時報開卷版十大好書;《台灣歌謠追想曲》獲1994年本土十大好書;《台灣歌謠尋根》獲1994年金鼎獎推薦優良唱片。
  現任台北市文獻會副主任委員,同時於莊協發商店進行古蹟活化作業,導覽台北老街的歷史街道之旅,個人部落格:莊永明書坊jaungyoungming-club.blogspot.tw/
 

目錄

城市的身世,創意的原點—劉維公推薦序
先踏話頭--全新增修版序
一起走向台北老街:三市街歷史巡禮—1991年舊版序
認識台北—河、街、印象第一章 艋舺到萬華的興衰
第二章 台灣第一名剎龍山寺
第三章 文風丕盛的大龍峒
第四章 大稻埕的茶香歲月
走入城內第五章 台北城的故事
第六章 殖民建築,歐風設計
第七章 西門町采風錄
第八章 劍潭敘舊,傳說軼聞
第九章 中山北路前段風情錄
第十章 林園之勝,穀倉古亭
第十一章 松山寺廟,青色山脈
跋  後語------台北紀事
 

推薦序
城市的身世,創意的原點
  每一個偉大的城市,都有著可以訴說不盡的身世與歷史。
  二十年前,莊永明老師開風氣之先,以他個人的研究與蒐藏,將台北的身世寫入《台北老街》之中,從而讓讀者與市民開始對台北的前世今生,有了全新的認識。也因為《台北老街》的推動之功,當年的市政府,幾乎按照莊老師的考據與介紹,在市區各處立下古蹟遺址的紀念碑,台北城因為歷史的縱深而發展出它的厚度。
  長年以來莊老師由文獻會的顧問,一直到現任文獻會副主任委員,在每一次的文化資產保存以及台北歷史考據的各種大大小小的會議中,不斷地以歷史研究專業、無人能及的記憶力和豐富的生活文化典故,協助文化局、市政府做出合宜的判斷,同時推動台北市的文化行政作為。舉凡剝皮寮街區改造、撫台街洋樓保存與活化、芝山岩學務官僚紀念碑的保存、二○○四年台北建城120週年紀念活動等等,都有賴莊老師提供史料記載與專業建議,不但使古蹟、老街活化重新成為新一代市民遊憩休閒的新景點,更在具有歷史意義的慶典活動中,以最直接的方式喚起市民的歷史感,讓「生於斯,長於斯」的台北人,更明白這個城市的發展與演變。
  追尋歷史與身世,無非是希望奠定台北城市文化發展的根基。在歷史豐厚的沃土之中,綻放出具有國際文化競爭力的花朵。個人接任台北市文化局長,希望藉由爭取「世界設計之都」的過程,展現台北豐富多元的創造力,同步進行台北城市的改造運動,從而打造台北城市的優勢競爭力,並增進市民福祉。而整個設計之都的創意基礎,正在於台北積累深厚的歷史印記中。《台北老街》新版的面市,將帶動新一代市民對台北的認識與瞭解,更將成為創意都市的活水源頭。
  台北盆地從300年前(1709年)的「陳賴章墾照」伊始,官方核准漢人展開拓墾。歷經三市街(艋舺、大稻埕、城內)而發展至今,淡水河見證著台北市成長發展的軌跡。誠如莊老師在跋中所言:「期盼台北老街依舊,畢竟其歷史意義,歷久彌新,烙印老街上的跡痕,就是文化的厚度!」。如今《台北老街》新版問世,老街,不會再深藏都市角落,老街永遠會是「歷史大道」。
  站在歷史的大道上,新生的台北,創意源源不絕。
2012年新版序
先踏話頭 
  老街是「歷史的線」;社會生活史的最佳見證。
  「歷史的線」,是由許許多多的「歷史的點」所連接、延伸而成的。「歷史的點」原是「移民」落足生根的「散戶」,而後,大家群聚,相輔相成才打造成老街。
  一條一條的老街成了城市發展後的「歷史的面」,地方開拓史是如此一步一腳印書寫出來的!而今,「歷史的體」──市容的面貌和面向,就是城市的特色。
  點、線、面、體,穿點引線,成面形體,「老街」是承先啟後的里程碑。
  台北初闢,一直到一九二○年代,「台北市」的代名詞是台北三市街,與淡水河流域息息相關。
  艋舺、城內、大稻埕的「老街」,值得我們品讀,乃是了解今日有世界大都會區態式台北市的最佳溯源談本。
  品讀之後,走訪老街,更是探訪歷史的重大功課,身歷其境,歷史感必油然而生。
  老街,會因歲月斑剝,會因歷史蒙塵,一九九一年付梓的《台北老街》,因為今非昔比,讀起來和今日市況有嚴重落差,「一路走來,始終並一」的台北市,成長了、蛻變了、茁壯了,但是歷史的原點永久烙印在心中,難以變換,改變的《台北老街》以「懷舊」做為訴求,各個年齡層的人,因生活在不同世代,解讀或有不同,但是老街的記憶會讓人在不同中求同,老老少少的「歷史感」,會因老街引導,必對土地的認同、感情更交融。
  《台北老街》出版至今已有二十年了,原先想讓其「走入歷史」,但不少人希望能重現江湖,可能是想手頭有書的人大有人在,逼得我不得不低頭答應改版,改置老照片,重溫台北老街,重點不僅可再度品讀,更重要的是希望以後深入走訪,畢竟老街沉澱著不少城市的感情與記憶。老街之「道」,有我跡痕,來來去去,與歷史作伴。
  吾「道」不孤,同行有您。
  大家一起上「道」,活絡歷史街道,讓其不衰、不弱、不老;「道」上跡痕,烙印歷史,歷歷在目的老街,歷久彌新!
莊永明於二○一二年七月十五日
舊版序
一起走向台北老街─三市街歷史巡禮
  我是土生土長的台北市人,換一句較文雅的說詞是:「台北市是我生於斯、長於斯之地。」
  「台北人寫台北事。」是我撰述這本書的動機。
  「身在台北市,心知台北事。」是我出版這本書的期望。
  台北市,今天是一個「世界性」的大都會,生活在這個全球矚目,但是幾被國際社會所「遺棄」的「首都」,我們應該從什麼角度、什麼立場、什麼眼光來探討它呢?
  這是我平常會思考的大問題,台北市今日的地位、今日的處境,確是一團「謎霧」,思索如何「走向未來」,對於「走過從前」,不可不知。
  歷史上的台北市,是台灣政治、經濟、文化的中心,應該研究的問題,自是多角度、多層面、多元性;然而,我覺得人人去親近它、關懷它是最迫切,也是最實際的問題,真的,台北市不僅是「住」的地方,而是「想」的地方,不是「消費」的都市,而是共存共榮的都市。
  於是,我建議我們以嚴肅的心情,一起走向「台北老街」!
  做為一位「台北老街」的「導遊」,我並不具資格,只因我是大稻埕人,應該要有這種勇氣。
  「大稻埕」,一個多麼親切的鄉土地名,可惜被歷史淹沒了,被人們遺忘了,現在青少年,已經少有人知道台北市曾經有這麼一個名為「稻埕」的地名。
  如今,有人問我是哪裡人,我總是以「維桑與梓,必恭敬之」的語氣,答稱:「大稻埕人」。
  我出生的大稻埕是建街清末的建昌街,當時已被日本人改稱為:「港町」。童年歲月,我未得嗅及稻香,卻聞得茶香;曾在「亭仔腳」踩著鋪成如地毯薰茶用的茉莉花上跑,也曾攀著疊成像一座城堡的茶箱爬,當然也涉過淡水河的河水、玩過河岸的沙堆……對於一個都市兒童來說,這一切宛如鄉下孩子的捉泥鰍、焢番薯、灌肚猴(蟋蟀),一樣地富於樂趣。
  鄉下孩子可以穿梭於田埂,奔跑於草叢,而我卻是在「老街」踱來踱去,貴德街我走過千萬遍,迪化街至少也在小學時代來回走過六年;童年歲月,我並不知道這條歷史街道的歷史故事,但是,我熟悉每一棟建築的造型,山牆、女兒牆、匾額的多采多姿裝飾,也是我繪畫的素材,小時候,我的圖畫是很受到誇讚的。
  我了解的雖然只是台北的一隅,卻帶領大家同覽大台北,應該說是有所備而來,不是「不識(音八)路,夯頭旗」。這本書的付梓,懇切地希望大家由了解台北—目前台灣的首善之區開始,進而去認知台灣的一市一鄉、一鎮一村,能夠心懷鄉土,放眼世界,雲遊天下時,才不致於「迷失」,或是連「歸人」或「過客」的身分都不清楚。
  跮踱老街,有心之士,盍興來乎?
莊永明於一九九一年四月三