The Crooked Mailboxes (歪腰郵筒): How Two Bent Post Boxes Became Taipei’s Most Unlikely Landmark

On the corner of Longjiang Road and Nanjing East Road in Taipei’s Zhongshan District, there is a tiny sidewalk queue that forms all day, every day — tourists waiting to take a selfie with two ordinary Chunghwa Post mailboxes. What makes them ordinary is that they still work. What makes them a landmark is that they are both slouched forward like cartoon characters that forgot to stand up straight.

The Typhoon Soudelor Origin Story (August 2015)

On August 8, 2015, Typhoon Soudelor slammed into Taiwan with sustained winds strong enough to peel off metal signage across Taipei. One of the casualties: a large construction sign board on a building above the Chunghwa Post Zhongshan branch. The board tore loose, dropped straight down, and clipped the tops of the red international mailbox and the green domestic mailbox standing side by side on the sidewalk.

Both boxes bent forward at almost the same angle — as if they were leaning in to whisper to each other. Nobody was hurt. The mail inside was fine. And critically, the slots on top were still accessible, so mail could still be posted through the crooked openings.

Why Chunghwa Post Didn’t Replace Them

Within 24 hours, photos of the bent boxes were everywhere on Taiwanese Facebook and PTT (Taiwan’s answer to Reddit). Locals immediately nicknamed them the 歪腰郵筒 (wāi yāo yóu tǒng) — literally “bent-waist mailboxes.” The name stuck because Taiwan has a real word for this specific slouched posture, usually reserved for tired office workers at the end of a long day.

Chunghwa Post noticed the outpouring and made a decision most postal services would never make: they kept the boxes exactly as they were. No repair, no straightening, no replacement. They even reinforced the bases so the crooked angle would stay put. Within a week, the mailboxes had their own line of commemorative postage stamps. Within a month, Taipei’s tourism bureau had added them to its official English-language attractions list.

The Weird Truth About This Landmark

The boxes are still in daily service. This is the part visitors never expect. If you actually mail a postcard from one of them, it goes into the system like any other Chunghwa Post drop. Locals walk up, post their electricity bill payments, and walk off — while ten meters away a tourist crouches for the perfect angle for their photo. It is one of the most Taiwanese scenes in Taipei: pragmatism and quiet whimsy sharing exactly the same square meter of sidewalk.

The tourism bureau eventually installed a small plaque explaining the story in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean. Chunghwa Post sells a mini plush toy version of the mailboxes at nearby post office branches. And the fact that they survived the exact typhoon that bent them into their new shape became a genuine local symbol — the kind of resilience-with-a-smile that Taiwan tends to lean into.

How to Find Them

The crooked mailboxes are on the sidewalk directly outside Chunghwa Post Longjiang Branch, at the intersection of Longjiang Road and Nanjing East Road Section 3. The nearest MRT station is Nanjing Fuxing (Songshan-Xindian Green Line / Wenhu Brown Line), about a 5-minute walk. Best photo light is late morning when the sun clears the buildings across the street.

If you happen to be in Taipei during typhoon season — which is July through September in most years — the boxes take on extra meaning. They are the physical reminder that Taiwan has an entire cultural relationship with these storms that outsiders rarely see. Even the postal service has a sense of humor about them.

Speaking of Taiwan’s warm, everyday design language, our Taiwan-themed apparel collection is built on the same idea — the small local details that only make sense once you have been to the island.