After Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s giant Rubber Duck bid farewell to Keelung Harbor a few days ago, a group concerned with the city’s culture and history gathered at the port’s No. 2 and No. 3 West warehouses in the cold weather to protest against the city government’s plans to demolish these two historically valuable buildings.
The city will hand the area over to the port’s management company, Taiwan International Ports Corp (TIPC), which will build a new cruise terminal. The protest caused a standoff with police and represents one of many conflicts over the preservation of Taiwan’s cultural heritage.
Any government should be responsible for protecting important cultural heritage. However, whether it be the Puantang (普安堂) lay Buddhist monastery in New Taipei City (新北市) or the Keelung wharves, local governments complete ignore culture and care only about development and commercial profit. In addition, destroying such precious cultural heritage while dispatching police is the kind of behavior that one would expect in more savage and uncivilized countries.
These are the only warehouses in the port remaining from the Japanese colonial era. The buildings witnessed Keelung Port’s rise in importance during the Japanese period, the arrival of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government after its retreat to Taiwan, Taiwan’s economic takeoff and the recent delivery of Taiwan Railway Administration’s Puyuma Express trains.
While the buildings’ exteriors may not seem spectacular, their interior steel frames show industrial technology from the 1930s which, coupled with the memories of those who arrived in Taiwan for the first time in 1949 at the port, makes these buildings important to our heritage and worthy of preservation.
However, in the name of development, the Keelung City Government used its Cultural Affairs Bureau to find a legal way of establishing that the area lacks “cultural value” before handing it over to the TIPC, which plans to replace the buildings with a cruise terminal and other facilities.
Shockingly, the Cultural Affairs Bureau said that incorporating five sets of original steel girders into the new structures would provide sufficient symbolism.
When excavators move in to tear the buildings down, the government and the TIPC will say that the job has already been contracted out and cannot be halted. However, there have been many examples of demolitions being stopped after contracts were issued. For example, the current site of the Directorate-General of Highways in Taipei had been signed over for demolition, but the tear-down was halted and the building eventually preserved as a historical site.
The Keelung City Government has also said that preserving old warehouses gets in the way of development and commerce. However, there are many examples of warehouses overseas that are preserved and turned into world-class tourist attractions. For example, the warehouses at Otaru Port in Japan’s Hokkaido bring in a great deal of commercial revenue each year, while the warehouses at Maizuru Harbor in Kyoto Prefecture are not only a cultural asset, but the entire area has historical significance and is full of memories about people who moved after World War II. This is precisely why this harbor is currently applying for UNESCO World Heritage status.
Keelung boasts lots of cultural heritage. Destroying it in the name of development is outright stupid. If the people of Keelung do not wake up before the elections and vote out this thoughtless and crude regime, it will be impossible to preserve the city’s culture and history.
Hung Chih-wen is a professor of geography at National Taiwan Normal University.
Translated by Drew Cameron
China has not been a top-tier issue for much of the second Trump administration. Instead, Trump has focused considerable energy on Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and defending America’s borders. At home, Trump has been busy passing an overhaul to America’s tax system, deporting unlawful immigrants, and targeting his political enemies. More recently, he has been consumed by the fallout of a political scandal involving his past relationship with a disgraced sex offender. When the administration has focused on China, there has not been a consistent throughline in its approach or its public statements. This lack of overarching narrative likely reflects a combination
US President Donald Trump’s alleged request that Taiwanese President William Lai (賴清德) not stop in New York while traveling to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, after his administration also rescheduled a visit to Washington by the minister of national defense, sets an unwise precedent and risks locking the US into a trajectory of either direct conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or capitulation to it over Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities have said that no plans to request a stopover in the US had been submitted to Washington, but Trump shared a direct call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平)
Heavy rains over the past week have overwhelmed southern and central Taiwan, with flooding, landslides, road closures, damage to property and the evacuations of thousands of people. Schools and offices were closed in some areas due to the deluge throughout the week. The heavy downpours brought by the southwest monsoon are a second blow to a region still recovering from last month’s Typhoon Danas. Strong winds and significant rain from the storm inflicted more than NT$2.6 billion (US$86.6 million) in agricultural losses, and damaged more than 23,000 roofs and a record high of nearly 2,500 utility poles, causing power outages. As
The greatest pressure Taiwan has faced in negotiations stems from its continuously growing trade surplus with the US. Taiwan’s trade surplus with the US reached an unprecedented high last year, surging by 54.6 percent from the previous year and placing it among the top six countries with which the US has a trade deficit. The figures became Washington’s primary reason for adopting its firm stance and demanding substantial concessions from Taipei, which put Taiwan at somewhat of a disadvantage at the negotiating table. Taiwan’s most crucial bargaining chip is undoubtedly its key position in the global semiconductor supply chain, which led