Curtain rises again at historical venue

When Taipei's Chungshan Hall (中山堂) was re-opened to the public earlier this week the political clamor that has surrounded a decade of renovations and the use of over NT$400 million of Taipei taxpayers money appeared to have abated somewhat.

"Obviously the amount of cash and time spent on the building caused a lot problems and meant the project had plenty of vocal critics," said Wang Cheng-ping (王正平), the hall's director, earlier this week. "But now we're finally open I hope we can get down to business and entertain people."

Although designated a "national relic" in 1992, the building's appearance was more representative of a national disaster before renovations began.

Years of neglect had seen the buildings eye-catching colonial-era exterior blacked almost beyond recognition by grime and there was more peeling paint in the ornate columned interior than there was wall space.

Although not completed until 1936, the original concept behind the building's construction was to commemorate the ascension to the throne of Japan's Emperor Hirohito in 1928.

Costing the nation's colonial rulers over ?980,000 (US$7,440), the building, then known as Taipei City Hall, was the fourth largest governmental-built structure in Japan's fast-expanding empire. It was in fact was only outsized by those in Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo.

Ironically enough, the building would be the venue for Japan's surrender to the Provincial Administrator of Taiwan, Chen Yi (陳儀) in 1945. The building was renamed Chungshan Hall shortly afterwards.

After nearly 50 years of use by civil servants and theatergoers, renovations on the 60 year-old structure began in the early 1990s.

In 1994, the Council for Cultural Affairs (文建會) and then Taipei mayor Huang Ta-chou (黃大洲) figured NT$8 million would be more than enough to see the building returned to its former glory.

The hefty sum of cash proved inadequate, however. And from between 1995 and 1998, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), then mayor of Taipei, was forced to allocate an additional NT$200 million to the renovation of the building and its performance hall, Chungcheng Hall (中正廳).

With renovation almost complete, but amid complaints about "shoddy workmanship" and "second-rate, noisy and uncomfortable chairs," a minor fire in 1998 saw over NT$2.5 million worth of renovation work go up smoke.

Refurbishment began again Oct. 23 of the same year, with the Taipei City Government, under the direction of Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) setting aside NT$20 million for the refurbishment of the hall's banqueting area, the 230-ping Kuangfu Hall (光復廳), and an additional NT$46 million to redecorate and replace the chairs in the 492-ping amphitheater.

At the time, those involved in the project expected renovations to be completed by May of this year. As May faded into June, however, it became apparent that the project wasn't going to be completed on time. Needless to say a heap of bad press and harsh words put Wang in a pretty difficult situation.

"We got flack from nearly everyone, but it really wasn't our fault. Because the building is a national relic, we couldn't make any changes to the exterior or the interior, which led to many time-consuming and technical problems," explained Wang. "There are columns that could have been taken out and the stairwell could have been totally replaced, but we couldn't do either. Instead we were forced to work around this."