▎Yuzhenzhai
During the Qing Dynasty, Lukang was a place of great literary prosperity. The founder Huang Jinxi gathered with other literati in his home study "Yuzhenzhai" to exchange poems, drink tea and chat, and entertain them with their homemade dim sum "Phoenix Eye Cake". This tea snack cake, which is shaped like a beauty's eye and symbolizes preciousness and respect, has been highly praised and became famous for its delicate and delicious taste! So, at the suggestion of his literary friends, Huang Jin named the shop "Yuzhenzhai" after the study room where phoenix eye cake originated, taking its jade delicacy and transforming its light into restraint and elegance. In the third year of the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty (1877 AD), he founded the cake shop "Yuzhenzhai", thus starting Yuzhenzhai's century-old cake-making history, becoming an important landmark in Lukang and a representative of Taiwan's traditional cake culture.
▎Yuzhenzhai Study Room
Located at the beginning of Putou Street in Lukang Old Street, it had the same fate as most old houses in Lukang, becoming a ruin due to years of disrepair and fire damage. Huang Yibin, the fifth-generation operator of Yuzhenzhai, has deep feelings for Lukang Old Street because his ancestors once engaged in cross-strait ferry trade. He then worked with Xu Shuji, a cultural and historical worker who initiated the old house preservation movement, to repair this old townhouse from the Qing Dynasty in southern Fujian. He named it the "翫" (ㄨㄢˋ) Study Room based on the lifestyle of the literati in the past who enjoyed entertainment. In this space that inherits the past and creates the new, the newly created tea and snack services and art and cultural experience activities not only continue the century-old essence of Yuzhenzhai's scholarly heritage and the spirit of cake-making, but also give visiting travelers the opportunity to sit down and quietly enjoy the century-old splendor of Lukang Old Street!
