The management of the Grand Hotel, one of Taipei’s landmarks, yesterday said they would spend NT$500 million (US$16.9 million) renovating the facilities, with the entire effort scheduled to be completed in 2014.
Grand Hotel chairman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) made the announcement in the run-up to the hotel’s 60th anniversary on May 10.
The management said that the renovation project would keep the traditional Chinese architectural elements and at the same time infuse modern style into the structure.
Photo: Yang Chiu-ying, Taipei Times
A series of events will be held to celebrate the hotel’s 60th anniversary, Lee said.
“Aside from the presidents of Taiwan, the hotel has received more than 2,000 important guests from other countries in the past 60 years,” Lee said. “They include the late US president Dwight Eisenhower, late king of Tonga Taufaahau Topou IV and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Yun-lin (陳雲林).”
Lee said the hotel had witnessed several politically significant events, including the conferences celebrating the formation of the Democratic Progressive Party and the People First Party.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) also held his first national affairs conference at the hotel, during which experts suggested the nation abolish the National Assembly and form the Straits Exchange Foundation to negotiate with China on cross-strait affairs.
Because of the hotel’s place in Taiwan’s history, Lee said it had kept many historical items, including the Dragon-Phoenix Chairs on which former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and his wife, Soong Mei-ling (宋美齡), sat.
He said the hotel also had had a chair custom-made out of rosewood to welcome the arrival of King Topou IV, who was said to weigh more than 200kg.
Those items will be on display in an exhibition at the hotel, along with the dining utensils used at state banquets, as well as photograph collections.
To celebrate the 60th anniversary, Lee said that the hotel had introduced a feast featuring dishes served at state banquets, which will be open for reservations from the public. The hotel will offer several discount deals for dining and accommodation.
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