Eight years after the dance studio of Taiwanese dance legend Tsai Jui-yueh (
Addressing an audience at the opening ceremony held on the front lawn of the building yesterday afternoon, President Chen Shui-bian (
The facility was named the "Rose Historic Site" to signify Tsai's passion and love for dance.
"It shows our respect for the mother of Taiwan's modern dance and her love for her passion, which is like the love of a mother for her child," Chen said.
Chen said he had the honor of meeting Tsai in 1997 when she returned home from Australia for a visit. During their conversation, Chen, who was Taipei mayor at that time, said that he suddenly realized how scarce performing venues were in Taipei.
Tsai inspired him to take more interest in the art of dance and strengthen his resolve to promote Taiwanese art, he said.
The Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Club, formerly called the China Dance Club (中華舞蹈社), was Taiwan's oldest modern dance studio. It witnessed the personal plight of Tsai and her family during the political turmoil over the past decades.
Tsai began her dancing and teaching career in Taiwan in 1946 at the age of 25.
In 1947, Tsai married poet Lei Shih-yu (
Tsai and her baby boy were forbidden to leave Taiwan with him, and that winter Tsai herself was imprisoned.
She established her dance studio in 1953 when she got out of jail. By the 1960s, the dance club had become an important venue for international dance exchanges.
Tsai emigrated to Australia with her son in 1983 because of what she called the stifling political atmosphere in Taiwan, and because her son was recruited as a professional dancer by the Australian Dance Theatre.
The city had originally planned to demolish the dance studio in 1994, but a conservation campaign launched by local artists led to its designation as a municipal historic site in 1999.
Located on Zhongshan North Road, Sec. 2, the Japanese wooden building burned down four days after it was designated a historic site, giving rise to suspicions of foul play.
After the fire, then Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) pledged that an investigation into the blaze would be completed within a month. No arrests were made. An NT$18 million (US$562,500) reconstruction project was launched and was completed in November 2003.
Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Foundation (蔡瑞月文化基金會) was awarded the operational contract for the site.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the