In commemoration of the one-year anniversary of the demolition of the Chang Pharmacy in Dapu Borough (大埔), Miaoli County, social activist and artist Liu Tsung-jung (劉宗榮) and others on Friday last week finished a painting on the building’s sole remaining wall.
On July 18 last year, four houses in Jhunan Township’s (竹南) Dapu, including the building housing the Chang Pharmacy, were demolished against the will of their owners to make way for a controversial science park extension project.
Chang Sen-wen (張森文), owner of the the pharmacy, was found dead in an irrigation channel a month after the forced demolition. The cause of death remains unclear.
Photo: Peng Chien-li, Taipei Times
The Protect Miaoli Youth Alliance, which held the commemoration concert on Friday, said it had asked Liu, who had painted Chang’s portrait for his funeral, to paint the remaining wall of the pharmacy to leave an indelible mark in history.
Liu began painting on Wednesday last week, and he said that he had based his concept for the painting on the shield-shaped badge of the police.
Liu added that he had included the portraits of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) to satirize the government for its forced demolition of citizen’s residences.
However, Liu said that he was afraid his work would hurt the family as it also included a portrait of Chang, adding that he had talked with Chang’s widow Peng Hsiu-chun (彭秀春) many times to avoid misunderstandings.
Liu also documented his painting process through the use of time-lapse photography, a technique that creates the illusion of “speeding up” time, and put it on YouTube.
Titled Justice Not Forgotten (正義，不會忘記), the video uses the Village Armed Youth Band’s (農村武裝青年) song City without Memories (失去記憶的城市) as its background music.
The song includes the lyrics: “Cut down all the trees, and tear down all the heritage. You said you would make green parks and low-carbon emission cities, but you’ve built the cities full of condos and sacrificed our orchards and fields, selling the land on which they grow as commodities.”
The song’s lyrics aptly convey people’s helplessness in the Dapu incident, Liu said, adding that he hoped to let more people understand the incident through the less confrontational medium of art.
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
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS