At last some attention is being paid to the problem of Taipei’s former Zhongshan Bridge, which has been left, literally gathering moss, for the 16 years that have passed since it was taken apart following the construction of a new bridge.
The old bridge, which is officially listed as a monument, was built more than a century ago. The fact that it was once voted as one of Taiwan’s eight best attractions makes people even more nostalgic about it.
However, when it was dismantled, it was cut into pieces that were placed on the riverbank beneath the new bridge, where they have remained mostly unnoticed, with only mosquitoes and moss for company.
On May 8, the Taipei City Government posted a tender for the preservation and reuse of the bridge.
Various plans have been proposed, the worst of which is to make the stone blocks from the bridge into a memorial within a so-called “landscape park.” It would probably look like Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial.
Does Taiwan not have enough “landscape parks” already? Taoyuan and Pingtung County hold land art festivals every year, and their “landscapes” are certainly much better looking than the dismembered remnants of the old Zhongshan Bridge.
The stone blocks on the ground do look a bit like the Holocaust Memorial, which the Taipei City Government seems so keen on.
The Holocaust Memorial is a phalanx of stone blocks. Its slabs are bigger than bridge’s and there are more of them. The whole thing looks rather like a Western-style graveyard. It was designed to create an atmosphere of unease and being enclosed. Is that what we want for Taipei?
If people walking among the stones stopped to think that it was modeled on something commemorating a massacre, would it not make them feel creepy?
Anyway, if we were to go down that path, monuments would no longer be monuments. Whoever heard of monuments being redesigned? It would mean that the “original appearance” that the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法) says must be preserved would be lost, so it would be downright illegal.
For the bridge to be legally redesigned, its status as a monument would have to be revoked. Apart from that, some degree of creativity would also be required.
Around the time that the bridge was built, the original Taipei city walls were demolished. This posed the problem of what to do with all the piles of masonry.
The clever solution was to use them to build the first Taipei Railway Station and the Taipei Prison. The prison was located near the end of what is now Aiguo E Road, near its intersection with Jinshan S Road, where some sections of the prison wall can still be seen.
As far as the old bridge is concerned, redesigning it would be the worst possible option. As one of Taiwan’s best attractions, it should be restored to its original condition.
Taipei has very few attractions. We seem to be oblivious to beautiful things, which often get demolished at the drop of a hat.
One problem in this case is that the bridge’s structure was already damaged even before it was demolished. A reason for that is that the bridge was blamed for problems every time there was a typhoon.
In 1967, Taipei was made into a special municipality directly under the central government and then-mayor Henry Kao (高玉樹), who had been elected to the post, became its first government-appointed mayor.
Kao’s philosophy was that “the best-looking thing is the most reasonable.” The old Zhongshan Bridge was indeed beautifully designed, and its decades-long contribution to carrying traffic and controlling the river water could hardly be denied.
However, the Water Resources Agency took a different view, and its director-general declared that if the city government would not demolish the bridge, the central government would send soldiers and police to pull it down.
Although it was an empty threat, the bridge’s beautiful granite balustrades and Japanese-style stone lanterns were removed in 1968 as part of a road-widening project.
Kao said that some people pointed out that the Keelung River was only 123m wide at the original bridge, while some stretches of the river upstream were more than 200m wide, and that it was therefore necessary to demolish the bridge and find a way to widen the river.
However, Kao said that the natural land features at both ends of the bridge could definitely not be changed to widen it. He added that during rains the river would only widen where it was shallow, while it was sure to remain narrow where it was deep.
For example, the Guandu (關渡) stretch of the Tamsui River (淡水河) is not very wide, but the river bed is deep enough for the river never to have flooded. This proved that any flooding was not because of the Zhongshan Bridge, and building the bridge at the river’s narrowest point was the obvious choice because a shorter bridge is cheaper to build.
In 1994, elections were reintroduced for the mayor of Taipei. The winner was Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party. As soon as he was elected he declared that his administration would not demolish the bridge.
Once again, the Water Resources Agency slammed the mayor’s decision.
The bridge became a point of contention in the 1998 mayoral election, with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) announcing that if he was elected, he would demolish it. Having been elected, he went ahead with the demolition in 2002. This involved cutting the stone bridge into 45 blocks.
The city government said that the bridge would be rebuilt within a year, but both ends of the bridge were carelessly destroyed instead of being cut into blocks as had been agreed. The city did not live up to its promise to rebuild the bridge.
Lu Ching-fu is a professor at Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Applied Arts.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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