About

The ancestral home of the Mei-He Lin Family in Daxi is Longxi County, Zhangzhou Prefecture, Fujian Province. In 1804, the first-generation founding ancestor, Lin Bang-xing (1733–1837), crossed the sea to Taiwan. Along with his cousin Lin San-ju, he was entrusted by his nephew Lin Ping-hou (1766–1844) to sell government-monopoly salt in the Xiaoli area (present-day Bade). Lin Bang-xing’s eldest son, Lin Deng-yun (1815–1888; courtesy name Hong-liang, art name Bu-qing, also known as Qi-hai), served as the manager of the Lin Ben Yuan Estate’s rent collection office in Dakekan. In 1869 (the 8th year of the Tongzhi Emperor), he began the construction of "Meihe Shanzhuang" in Touliao, San-ceng, Daxi, Taoyuan—an area close to Cihu and the Touliao Reservoir. To this day, Meihe Shanzhuang stands as a massive courtyard complex consisting of two main halls and five wings. In January 2004, it was registered as a historic building of Taoyuan County (now Taoyuan City) under Document No. 0930534224. The site is located at Plot No. 277, Touliao Subsection, Sanceng Section, Daxi District, Taoyuan City; the originally registered area of 5,100 square meters was expanded to about 10,300 square meters by the 2020 amendment notice.

Lin Hejing (967–1028), also known as Lin Bu, was a renowned hermit poet of the Northern Song Dynasty from Qiantang in Zhejiang. He never married, instead retreating to Solitary Hill (Gushan) at Hangzhou's West Lake for over twenty years, where he cultivated plum trees and raised cranes — calling the plums his wife and the cranes his sons. Posterity honored him with the title 'Plum Wife, Crane Sons.' His celebrated lines on plum blossoms — 'Sparse shadows slant across the shallow clear water; subtle fragrance drifts on the dusk-yellow moon' — established plum blossoms as a lasting emblem of refined solitude in Chinese literature.

By one account, around 1923 Daxi literatus Zheng Yongnan bestowed the name 'Meihe Shanzhuang' upon the Lin family villa in Touliao. The family had originally hoped to inscribe a plaque after eldest grandson Lin Weilong achieved official rank, but as those ambitions stalled with the end of the Qing examination system, they invited Zheng Yongnan to name the villa using this allusion. The shared 'Lin' surname created a literary connection, while the characters 'plum and crane' captured the family's cultivated heritage — bringing the spirit of a Northern Song hermit to this century-old home in Touliao, Daxi, Taoyuan. According to the National Cultural Heritage Database registry, however, Lin Dengyun himself named the villa after the same allusion when it was built, 'Rongfeng Di' being a later plaque — both accounts are preserved.

For over a hundred years, 'Meihe Shanzhuang' has carried this name. The villa now stands as one of Daxi's most culturally significant historic buildings — a living symbol of seven generations of the Lin family's literary tradition and the broader Qing-era Taiwanese gentry culture. Whenever plum blossoms bloom or cranes pass overhead, the villa seems to echo with the Solitary Hill hermit of a thousand years past.