Although it has been superceded as the main transport link between Changhua County and Yunlin County, the Hsiluo Bridge has retained its place in the hearts of local residents. The bridge, which was completed in 1952, will be celebrating its 50th anniversary as the center of a cultural festival designed to showcase the tourism potential of two of Taiwan's less high-profile counties.
Started in 1937, when Taiwan was still a Japanese colony, construction of the bridge was delayed by World War II and was only completed with American funding in 1952. At the time, at nearly 2km in length, it was the longest bridge in Asia and served as a major artery of north-south transportation. This role has since been overtaken by the newer expressways, but the bridge remains a powerful symbol of unity -- at least, on this occasion, when the two county governments have got together to throw the biggest party ever for this local engineering monument.
The highlight of the event will be regular displays of martial arts put on by the Yunlin county government -- in what was once a rough and wild area, Yunlin had the reputation of producing the best martial artists -- and copious displays of flowers, for which Changhua is famous. In addition, many other local specialties will be on display, with temporary rice and soy source museums set up on the Yunlin side of the bridge -- both products for which the county is famous.
According to Lin Re-yang (林日揚), head of the Yunlin Tourism Bureau, local enthusiasm for the event has been so great that there have been twice the number of applications for stall space as stalls available.
Last year, official figures for attendance at the Hsiluo Bridge Festival was 300,000 people, but Lin said that with all the additional activities put on for the 50th anniversary, he expected at least 500,000 over the nine-day event this year.
Puppeteer Huang Hai-tai (
The festival is the prelude to a comprehensive revamp of the bridge into a tourist attraction that Lin hopes will bring domestic tourist dollars to both Yunlin and Changhua counties. "We will be spending quite a lot of money putting lighting along the length of the bridge, making it a lovely environment in which people can drink coffee and relax," he said.
While the bridge is still used by pedestrian traffic -- mainly vegetable farmers taking the produce to market -- Lin said that even this function will come to an end in around two years, and there is a proposal at the moment to turn the bridge into a sculpture corridor.
The opening ceremony for the festival will take place between 5pm and 9pm tomorrow along the length of the bridge and there will be events daily through to next Sunday.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist