Treasure Hill, a historical community in Taipei, will undergo a two-year reconstruction facelift starting in December, the Taipei City government announced yesterday.
Treasure Hill is home to veterans of the Chinese Civil War who fled to Taiwan with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) around 60 years ago. The current preservation initiative dates back to 1999 when the city government promised to preserve the urban area as a "lively community."
The Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs cooperated with the private sector in 2003 on the "Treasure Hill Artivists Cooperative" project, and will launch a two-year renovation plan at the end of the year after the completion of the planning stage.
According to Lin Feng-cheng (林芳正) from the Organization of Urban Re's (OURs), of the 60 to 70 households in the community, about 30 will move to a transitional housing block nearby during construction, while the others chose to take a payout of NT$720,000 to move out of the community.
Local artists who gathered in the community will also be asked to move out during the construction, and can apply to return in two years time.
Addressing a press conference to announce Treasure Hill's overhaul, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said the preservation project was the first government initiative to preserve an area full of illegal constructions for its historical significance.
"Some people would say that those unlicensed constructions are old and shabby, and why not just tear them down? But this community has important historical significance and we want to let the world know that there are more attractions in Taipei than just the Taipei 101 Mall," Ma said.
While the city government expected the new community to include original residents, artists and international youth hostels, some people remained wedded to the city government's original promise.
"We don't think the [Taipei] city government should continue the reconstruction if it really wants to preserve the place," said Yang Chi-chie (楊子傑), an activist from the Treasure Hill Commune, a civic organization dedicated to preserving the community.
"Moving the residents around and renovating [Treasure Hill] will destroy the uniqueness of this community," Yang said.
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