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FEATURE: Zhuzihu basin holds rich history

"We want to preserve the area's valuable past and add more cultural aspects to this place."

Kao Chen Mei-ying, local farmer

Zhuzihu (竹子湖), a small basin in the northeastern corner of Beitou(北投), is famed as a tourist destination for lovers of calla lilies, but many visitors fail to recognize its historical significance as the first field of the Taiwanese staple food Penglai rice (蓬萊米).

The area's significance in agricultural development dates back to the 1920s during the Japanese colonial period, when Japanese agricultural professor Isonaga Yoshi brought seeds of Penglai rice from Japan seeking to cultivate the strain preferred by the Japanese.

Yoshi developed the plantation techniques at National Taiwan University and then found Zhuzihu, with its humidity and closed geography, was the perfect area for the first plantation as it kept the strain from being mixed with other kinds.

After successful cultivation, Penglai rice -- which is a bit sticky and soft -- has gradually replaced Tsailai rice (在來米) as Taiwan's most popular strain.

Even today, more than 90 percent of the rice people eat is of the Penglai variety, according to Hsu Liang-chi (許良吉), deputy director of the Agriculture and Food Agency under the Council of Agriculture.

Tracing the origins of the cultivation of Penglai rice, Taipei City's Department of Cultural Affairs and members of its cultural assets assessment committee proposed on Saturday to list the Penglai rice seed research center in National Taiwan University, built in 1925, as a municipal monument. They also proposed registering the original Penglai rice field business office and the Zhuzi Hills in Zhuzihu, built in 1928, as historical structures.

Ma Yi-kung (馬以工), a landscape architecture professor at National Tsing Hua University, said the National Taiwan University research center should be registered as a monument.

The building is the only well-preserved Japanese-style wooden structure at a university and it still has valuable lab devices and stores documents used by Yoshi.

The Penglai rice field business office and Zhuzi Hills in Zhuzihu, on the other hand, were reconstructed in the 1960s by Ministry of National Defense. But some of the interiors remain the same, and the historical and cultural significance of the two sites are still worth preserving, Ma and other members agreed after an inspection tour of the three sites.

"Events that occurred at the two sites have not disappeared even though the buildings were rebuilt. They bear the collective memories of the locals from the landscape," Chang Kun-chen (張崑振), an architecture professor at National Taipei University of Technology.

Lai Kuang-lung (賴光隆), an emeritus professor in National Taiwan University's agronomy department and also a student of Yoshi, suggested the cultural department establish the three sites as the Penglai Rice historical corridor.

Local residents in Zhuzihu gathered to advocate the move to recognize the area's historical and cultural significance, seeking to turn the Penglai rice field business office and Zhuzi Hills into a museum.

"People only know Zhuzihu as a place for cabbages and calla lilies, they don't realize that it is also the birth place of Penglai rice. We want to preserve the area's valuable past and add more cultural aspects to this place," said 67-year-old Kao Chen Mei-ying (高陳美英), a local farmer.

Tsao Chang-cheng (曹昌正), chief of Zhuzihu's Huteng Borough, condemned the defense ministry for occupying the two sites as recreational houses to receive guests and military officials.

"Zhuzihu residents are impoverished culturally and it's heartbreaking that this area carried such a glorious and significant past. But the two sites are now private vacation homes for the military," he said.

A representative from the ministry, who refused to give his name, said at the business office that the sites were given to the ministry and rebuilt in 1960 for communication and dispatch purposes, and it was unnecessary to preserve the sites since they were already remodeled.

Shrugging off the ministry's claim, committee members said they may further register the whole area as a cultural landscape for preservation considering the two sites' significance and remaining terraced fields and yards where farmers used to dry the rice.

The registration of the three sites as monuments and historical structures would be completed after the municipal meeting approves the proposal.
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