Chinese Communist Party authorities have restored an 80-year-old house once used by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), as changing relations with Taiwan transform an archenemy into a recognized figure.
Political differences were plastered over as Nanjing — once China’s capital under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — spent US$4.9 million to renovate the three-story house at the base of a hill.
It was one of several houses used by Chiang and his wife Soong Mayling (宋美齡) before they fled to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war.
Photo: AFP
Chiang led Taiwan as president until his death 26 years later, still proclaiming himself the rightful ruler of the whole of China.
For decades, the building was kept as a state guesthouse and closed to the public, but the doors were thrown open after a year-long renovation was completed in October.
“This renovation has a very important use for cross-strait cultural exchanges, so we considered that,” said Liao Jinhan, deputy head of the Chinese government agency that administers the surrounding scenic area. “Our feeling is that the house is a very important cultural heritage landmark.”
The chance discovery of an original architectural plan in a closet in the house allowed workers to faithfully restore the building, down to the basement coal room.
“We completely followed the blueprint from that time. You can see from photos of the time, it is exactly the same,” property manager Zhou Zhongxing said.
“The renovation is significant for cross-strait cultural contacts as it shows the mainland’s focus on preserving historical heritage related to the Kuomintang [KMT],” Shanghai Institute for International Studies research fellow Tong Liqun (童立群) said.
“To take relations one step further would mean exchanges in the field of politics, and that is where the two sides are having trouble,” she said.
The historical sensitivity is such that officials commonly refer to the house as the “Mayling Palace” after Chiang’s last wife, despite its status as the former residence of a Chinese head of state.
Soong Mayling was one of the three Soong sisters, who between them married two top Chinese leaders and a wealthy businessman who served as Chinese finance minister.
Few images of Chiang can be seen inside the property, although the study holds a portrait of Sun Yat-sen (孫中山), founding father of the Republic of China — who is revered by both Communists and Nationalists, and whose tomb is on the hill and visible from the house.
An exhibit on the couple’s lives in Taiwan is called “Years on Taiwan island,” highlighting the Chinese doctrine that it is not a country, but part of Chinese territory.
The house has Chinese features, such as the curved roof, but the interior is Western in style, reflecting Soong’s education in the US.
The building also gives subtle hints about the couple’s lifestyle.
Chiang had a room off the main bedroom where he slept, reflecting his military habit of rising early, while Soong Mayling required a Western-style oven, which still survives, and kept ashtrays in the rooms for smoking — a habit she picked up in the US.
A small chapel shows the couple’s embrace of Christianity: Soong Mayling, who was Methodist, insisted that her husband convert to her religion.
“The manor is like its mistress: graceful and elegant, knowing both Chinese and Western style,” a sign reads.
Soong’s achievements are on display in an exhibition which praises her for building support for China in its fight against Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, and her charitable causes.
“She had class,” tour-guide Chen Chen said. “Soong Ching-ling (宋慶齡), the second one, was very pretty.”
The middle Soong sister, Ching-ling, was Sun’s wife and stayed in China after the Communist takeover. The eldest of the trio, Soong Ai-ling (宋靄齡), married financier Kung Hsiang-hsi (孔祥熙).
Since opening in October, tens of thousands have paid the 30 yuan (US$5) ticket price to see the house, but it has proved especially popular with the elderly, some of them old enough to remember Chiang’s time.
A panel in one part of the exhibition reads: “The perfect combination of traditional Chinese architectural style and modern Western construction technology puts this building in the perfect realm of architectural history in modern China.”
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS