The old street follows the Jingmei River as it winds through the valley, its traditional shop-house architecture — narrow facades, deep interiors, covered arcades shading the footpath — recognizable as the Taiwanese old street form that developed through the Qing dynasty and into the Japanese colonial period. The buildings are not identical; they accumulated over decades, each owner making choices about materials and details, and the variety gives the street a lived quality that uniform restoration would have erased. Today the ground floors of most buildings are food stalls, with tofu preparations on offer from vendors who have been developing their recipes across generations. The smell arrives before the buildings do: the particular fermented, savory warmth of braised tofu mingling with the steam from open-air kitchens.

In the 1980s, Shenkeng Old Street nearly disappeared. A road-widening and redevelopment proposal would have demolished the historic buildings to make way for wider lanes — a fate that befell hundreds of similar streets across Taiwan during the decades of rapid economic development. Local residents campaigned against the demolition, insisting that the street's character was worth preserving even at the cost of modern convenience. They prevailed. In 2010, a large-scale restoration project began, returning the buildings to something close to their historical appearance while making structural improvements. A management committee was established in 2014, and a 2013 New Taipei regulation gave it the authority to collect funds dedicated to ongoing heritage preservation. The street's survival was not inevitable — it required people who cared enough to argue, and then to organize.

Shenkeng's identity as a tofu town predates the old street's current fame. The district's position in a river valley with clean water sources historically supported beancurd production, and the food became embedded in local commerce. What the street's revival accomplished was to concentrate and amplify that identity, turning a local specialty into a destination. Vendors offer fresh tofu in its simplest forms alongside preparations that take hours: braised tofu that has absorbed soy sauce and spices through long, low cooking; smoked tofu with a dry, firm texture and a faint char; stinky tofu, whose pungent aroma is either the point or an obstacle depending on your palate. The tofu popsicle, made from sweetened soy milk, serves as both snack and souvenir and has become one of those singularly memorable food experiences that people describe to friends for years.

Shenkeng sits about 14 kilometers southeast of central Taipei, reachable by taxi from Muzha Station on the Taipei Metro's Wenhu Line — a short ride that crosses from the city into a greener, quieter landscape. The hills around Shenkeng are part of the range that separates Taipei's urban basin from the broader New Taipei municipality, and the valley feels distinctly different from the dense streetscapes of central Taipei. Visitors tend to arrive in the late morning, eat their way through several stalls, and depart by afternoon — the rhythm of a day trip designed around appetite. The Jingmei River path near the old street offers a place to walk and let the meal settle, and the surrounding hillsides provide context for understanding why this location, with its water and its shelter, became a place worth building in the first place.