The decades-old No. 1 Granary in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山), which was built under the Japanese colonial administration toward the end of World War II, could be given a new life, thanks to a scheme to revive culturally significant properties launched by the Taipei City Government’s Department of Cultural Affairs in August.
The program aims to revitalize idle or abandoned historical buildings by inviting private corporations and individuals from the cultural innovation sector to repair the properties and put them to use.
Once renovated, most of these buildings would be used by the cultural industry. They cannot be used as private homes.
Hidden away in an alley near the Breeze Center on Fuxing S Road, the 200 ping (660m2) brick and cypress-beam granary was constructed to serve as the primary wartime emergency grain storage facility in the city.
Construction of the granary seemed imperative at the time, particularly when Taipei could be at risk of food shortages in the event of US military strikes on Taipei Bridge, a vital link between Taipei and what is now known as New Taipei City (新北市).
The granary was outfitted with three doorways emblazoned with the word “No Fireworks” and was built with a high ceiling and a number of small windows to facilitate ventilation and ward off mildew.
Designated by the Department of Cultural Affairs as a cultural heritage site in February last year, the granary still bears the scars of World War II, as evidenced by the many shrapnel and bullet holes left by the US military during air raids.
While the exterior has suffered greatly over the years, the interior has been preserved in good condition.
“There are not many old buildings left in the city that share a similar architectural design with the No. 1 Granary,” the department said.
Former granary administrator Yao Mu-sen (姚木森), who served in the Taipei Administration of the Taiwan Provincial Government’s Food Bureau — the predecessor of the Council of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Agency — before being transferred to a managerial post at the granary in 1957, praised the effort to find new uses for historic buildings.
“While I support the city government’s cultural revitalization plan for old houses, it would be better if repair and renovation works could focus mainly on the interior and not make major changes to the building itself,” Yao said, adding that the granary was later used to store burlap grain sacks.
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