For 73-year-old Tung Hsiang-ming (湯祥明), Lunar New Year is not a time for family reunions. Since he was sent to the Happy Life Leprosy Hospital in Sinjhuang, Taipei County, in 1951, Tung has spent each holiday with other lepers in the once secluded sanatorium. Still, hot-pot dinners and red envelopes brought some joy to Tung and his fellow patients. This year, however, was different.
Fears of relocation to a new hospital facility -- one with iron-barred windows -- has marred their happiness.
In 2003, Taipei County officials began demolishing the 70-year-old hospital community built under Japanese colonial rule to make room for the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system's Xinshuang Line.
Banyan trees were uprooted, elegant Japanese-styled houses were torn down, and old patients were moved from their homes to prefabricated sheds.
With negotiations with the government appearing less and less fruitful, the frustrated patients knew that soon the rest of the complex would be razed to the ground.
For Tung and other 300 lepers, the demolition of Happy Life was the most unwelcome news for the Lunar New Year.
"When the society turned its back on me and ostracized me in the 1950s, I found peace here at Happy Life. Happy Life is my home and the other patients are my family. I don't want to move," Tung said, sitting in a small pre-fab shanty crammed with a plank bed, TV set, tabletop gas burner and cooking utensils.
For many other lepers, the Happy Life is not just a verdant hospital complex. It is a place where they lived out the pain of parting with their families and where they survived the devastations of leprosy. It is home.
Since many of the older patients were cut off from society and their families decades ago, they now have few ties to the outside world.
Huang Jing-liang (
"I've lived here for more than 60 years without contact with my family. If Happy Life is not my home, what is?" the 75-year-old Huang said.
For these people, the new Huilung Community Hospital, where the Taipei County Government plans to relocate them, can never replace Happy Life.
For the government, however, the MRT project is crucial.
When the Vice President Annette Lu (
"If patients refuse to move to the new hospital, the hospital should improve its facilities and listen more to the patients," Lu said.
"However, the MRT is a nationally significant project. Once such an important project is delayed, the nation will lose a considerable amount of money. Who is going to pay for this?" she said.
According to the county government, changing the route of the Xinshuang MRT line in order to preserve Happy Life would cost more than NT$2 billion (US$63 million) and delay the project's completion by more than three years.
But are the MRT line and patients' rights mutually exclusive? Many city planning experts believe not.
"It is possible to preserve Happy Life as historical and cultural site with the MRT trains running past it. It could be a shared space for modern technology and historical heritage," said Hsia Chu-joe (
If the Taipei County Government and construction companies can move the power plant and water treatment plant from the original hospital complex, Hsia said, the 70-year-old hospital would not have to be dismantled and its patients forced to move.
To seek a solution, the Executive Yuan invited experts to study alternative plans for the MRT line and the hospital last October.
The panel of experts submitted its report to the Executive Yuan last month, suggesting the government both preserve the patient wards and continue construction of the MRT line.
"The panel said that it will only cost NT$300 million to change the route, instead of the NT$2 billion the government claims," said Wu Jia-zhen (
In Wu's eyes, the extra expense is a price the government should pay to redeem the wrongs made 11 years ago.
"The government was wrong when they failed to consider the 300 patients living at Happy Life and rashly mapped out the routes of the Xinshuang MRT line in 1994," Wu said.
"How could they decide to tear down Happy life without the patients' consent and an assessment of its cultural and historical values?" the rights activist said.
For the long-forgotten patients, the pain of being eaten away by their affliction has now long passed. Blindness, deafness, loss of fingers, above-the-knee amputations and wooden limbs do not bother them any more.
"We now only hope to live out our lives here," said Chen Zai-tien (
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
88.2 PERCENT INCREASE: The variants driving the current outbreak are not causing more severe symptoms, but are ‘more contagious’ than previous variants, an expert said Number of COVID-19 cases in the nation is surging, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the ongoing wave of infections as “rapid and intense,” and projecting that the outbreak would continue through the end of July. A total of 19,097 outpatient and emergency visits related to COVID-19 were reported from May 11 to Saturday last week, an 88.2 percent increase from the previous week’s 10,149 visits, CDC data showed. The nearly 90 percent surge in case numbers also marks the sixth consecutive weekly increase, although the total remains below the 23,778 recorded during the same period last year,
RSS