The Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) yesterday criticized what it said was Taichung City Government's neglect of the culturally important Huilai (
With security consisting of a meter-high, unsecured wire fence, and wild dogs reportedly roaming all over the site, officials' claims that Taichung is a city which respects culture above all else, are hard to believe, the group said.
Unsecured
PHOTO: LIAO YAO-TUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
According to Ho Tsung-hsun (
Ho described how on the nine occasions he has been there in the course of a week there were no police patrols, and on five of the occasions the site was completely empty, apart from wild dogs roaming the land which could have easily chewed the ancient bones that have been dug up and left out in the open.
Ho said, "I was thinking of taking one of the bodies back to Taipei as proof of the lack of security, but on second thoughts the idea of a dead body in my trunk didn't seem quite right."
Ho described how while he was there, he even had time to write a slogan, "Rescue Huilai relic site," as a sign of protest, completely uninterrupted.
"Taichung government would rather spend NT$90 million (US$2.7 million) on the Guggenheim museum than a few million dollars to make this site, a natural heritage site, into a museum. The government should be ashamed of itself," said Ho.
Competing with malls
Discovered in May, the Huilai site is reported to be one of the best preserved sites found in Taichung in the last 70 years.
Its reputation has been such that archeologists from England have traveled to Taiwan to take a look.
Of the 45,375 ping that the site originally occupied, only 3,025 ping remain available for excavation, as the rest of the site is now home to malls, car businesses and other commercial entities.
Ho said that the reason the site has fallen into its present state is because it hasn't been categorized as a cultural relic. As such, it doesn't fall under the protection of corresponding laws, nor is it allocated the necessary funds for development.
Although previous complaints about the lack of security were followed up with police patrols, they were abandoned of late due to insufficient funds.
According to Ho, the government didn't classify the area as a heritage site because they intend to sell the land, valued at NT$1.5 billion.
Ho said that, last year, the Tai-chung City Cultural Affairs Bureau provided NT$850,000 in funds, but with only five archeologists working there and a book about the site being published this wasn't really sufficient.
Ho confirmed that funds are now being provided by Taichung's National Museum of Natural Science.
Ho said, "I think one of the great tragedies is that Taiwan respects economic growth above all else. Cultural growth isn't respected, let alone the development of prehistoric relics which people aren't educated about."
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching