"The Lane That Kept People Alive: Herb Alley in Wanhua"

The Lane Behind the Temple

Exit Longshan Temple Station, turn left, and within three minutes you'll smell it before you see it — something green and faintly bitter, like a forest floor crossed with a pharmacy. That's Lane 224 of Xichang Street, which Taipei people have called Herb Alley (青草巷, Cing Cao Lane) for as long as anyone can reliably remember.

The lane itself is narrow enough that two people walking side by side have to be deliberate about it. On a weekday morning, bundles of dried roots hang from shop awnings, and an older woman at one counter sorts fresh grass stems into paper bags without looking up. It takes about four minutes to walk from one end to the other. Not much, on paper.

What makes it worth more than four minutes is what brought the lane into existence in the first place: the temple directly next door.

Longshan Temple has been the spiritual centre of Wanhua since Qing-dynasty Fujianese settlers built it in 1738. For most of those centuries, if you were sick, you came to the temple. You shook a tube of bamboo fortune sticks until one fell out, matched the number to a printed slip, and the slip prescribed herbs — not metaphorically, but literally: specific plants, specific quantities, specific preparations. Then you walked out of the temple gate, turned a corner, and there was the lane. The whole circuit — prayer, diagnosis, prescription, purchase — happened within a few hundred metres. The shops existed because the temple sent people to them.

That's not ancient history in the way history usually gets filed away. You can still watch it happen on a Tuesday morning.

Three Hundred Years of Staying Open

The story of how Herb Alley nearly disappeared — and how it didn't, quite — is mostly a story about three families who decided not to do anything sensible.

For the first two hundred-odd years, the lane operated on straightforward logic: if you got sick and couldn't afford a doctor (which described most people in colonial-era Taiwan), you came here. Japanese colonial administrators in the early twentieth century were suspicious of folk medicine but tolerated the trade. Herb foragers went into the mountains around Taipei, shop owners learned which combinations worked for which symptoms, and knowledge passed from parent to child the way most knowledge passes in family businesses — imperfectly, incompletely, but enough.

The crisis came in two waves. The first was 1995, when Taiwan introduced National Health Insurance. Suddenly a doctor's visit cost almost nothing. The rational choice was obvious, and most people made it. Foot traffic in the lane dropped sharply.

The second wave was less predictable: bubble tea. Through the late 1990s and 2000s, the same lane-end real estate that might have once housed an herb shop turned out to be worth considerably more selling sugar, tapioca, and cold milk. Several shops converted. A few closed entirely. At one point, the lane had shrunk to maybe a third of its former density.

What kept the remainder going was a combination of stubbornness and reinvention that isn't entirely separable from each other. Lin Feng-jung, whose family has operated one of the older shops for three generations, describes the shift matter-of-factly: his grandfather sold bulk dried herbs. His father began selling pre-brewed teas for customers who didn't want to prepare anything at home. Lin's own contribution was the herb popsicle — a cold bar made from bitter gourd, aiyu jelly, and cooling herbs that became, unexpectedly, something young Taiwanese people on Instagram actually wanted to eat.

None of this was a pivot in the startup sense. The shop still smells like roots and dried flowers. The cooler with the popsicles sits next to the same counter that's been there for decades. But the customer who comes in is now as likely to be a twenty-five-year-old curious about traditional medicine as a sixty-year-old filling a temple prescription. That mix is probably what survival looks like for a market this old.

Other shops have taken slightly different routes. Some have begun offering mail-order herb kits — bundles meant for making a specific tea or soup broth at home, aimed at Taiwanese living abroad who grew up with the flavours and can't easily source the ingredients. A few shops have started explaining their products in English, not because foreign tourists are their main business, but because a bilingual sign next to a bundle of dried lotus seeds costs almost nothing and occasionally results in a sale.

It would be dishonest to say the lane is thriving in the way it once did. Some of the shops look tired. Peeling signage, fluorescent lights that have seen better decades, counters with empty patches where product used to be. A few storefronts stand empty mid-week. The lane survives, but it doesn't overflow.

Getting There & Practical Info

Getting there: MRT Bannan Line to Longshan Temple Station, exit 1. Turn left out of the exit and walk south along Xichang Street for about three minutes. The lane entrance is easy to miss — look for the bundles of dried herbs and follow your nose.

Hours: Most shops open around 08:00 and close by 22:00. Sunday sees some closures, and the lane is quieter on weekends in general — weekday mornings are better if you want to actually talk to a shop owner rather than navigate a crowd.

What to drink: Start with a small cup of the bitter cooling tea (苦茶, kǔchá) — the kind usually served in small ceramic cups for NT$20–30. It tastes like concentrated lawn with a mineral finish, which sounds unpleasant but is oddly satisfying in Taipei's humidity. Roselle tea (洛神花茶) is tart and less confrontational if you're new to the category. Winter melon tea (冬瓜茶) is the sweetest option and the one most likely to convert sceptics.

If there are popsicles in the cooler, buy one. They're generally NT$30–50 and considerably better than the temperature and location would suggest.

Fresh versus dried: A useful thing to know before you browse is that the lane carries both fresh-cut herbs (used that day, kept in buckets of water or loose on the counter) and dried bundles (meant for long-term storage and cooking). Fresh herbs are for immediate use; dried bundles travel well. If you're buying something to take home, ask for dried (乾燥, gāncào means the herb is dried).

Half-day walk: The lane works well as the start of a longer Wanhua loop. From Herb Alley, walk south along Xichang Street to Dongsan Shuei Street Market (東三水街市場) — a traditional wet market that's less cleaned-up than Dongmen or Nanmen and worth seeing for that reason. From there, a ten-minute walk brings you to Xinfu Town Cultural Market (新富町文化市場), a 1930s Japanese-era market hall that's been converted into a creative space. The architecture alone justifies the detour. The whole loop takes two to three hours depending on how long you linger.

Cost: Free to walk through. Budget NT$100–200 if you plan to buy tea and a popsicle and browse a couple of shops. Nothing is priced for tourists.

Sources

• Bank of Culture, "Herb Alley" (文化銀行 青草巷): https://bankofculture.com/archives/4179
• Spectral Codex, "Wanhua Herb Alley": https://spectralcodex.com/wanhua-herb-alley/
• Journey.tw, Herb Lane walkthrough: https://journey.tw/herb-lane/
• Taipei Travel, attraction details: https://www.travel.taipei/en/attraction/details/1693