The former residence of “Young Marshal” Chang Hsueh-liang (張學良), a key figure in modern Chinese history, was reopened to the public on Saturday after undergoing renovation, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by his relatives in Hsinchu County’s Wufeng Township (五峰).
About 20 documents related to Chang’s daily life when he was in Wufeng, including photographs, newspaper clippings, copies of his manuscripts, letters and a special amnesty decree, have been put on display at the site, which was renovated at a cost of NT$47 million (US$1.55 million).
Chang, the son of warlord Chang Tso-lin (張作霖), played a key role in kidnapping Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in 1936 in an effort to persuade Chiang to go all out against the Japanese troops who had invaded China, in what became known as the “Xian Incident.”
Photo: Tsai Meng-shang, Taipei Times
He wanted Chiang to form an anti-Japanese alliance with his Chinese Communist Party rivals instead of trying to eliminate them.
After negotiations and amid widespread public protests for Chiang to be released, Chang freed Chiang after two weeks.
Although Chiang’s Nationalist troops did later fight with the communists against the Japanese, Chang was court-martialed for insubordination and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Four days later, he was granted amnesty, but placed under “stringent supervision.”
Chang was kept under house arrest for 53 years, with Chiang ensuring that he was moved to Taiwan when the Chinese Nationalist Party government lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to the island in 1949.
Chang was sent to Wufeng, a mountainous township home mostly to Aborigines, where he was held until 1990, three years after martial law was lifted. Chang and his wife, Chao I-ti (趙一荻), moved to Hawaii in 1993, where he died in Honolulu in 2001, a year after his wife.
The Hsinchu County Government invited eight of Chang’s relatives, including his younger sister, Chang Huai-min (張懷敏), to Saturday’s ceremony.
During the ceremony, Chang Huai-min said the tour of Wufeng made her miss her brother. She said her brother was enthusiastic about photography and often took pictures of their relatives when he was in China. However, she had few opportunities to meet him and missed him a lot after she went to teach at Fu Jen Catholic University and National Taiwan Normal University.
The old house was almost destroyed by a typhoon in 1963 and has been restored to its original Japanese architectural style, a county government official said.
The building was first opened to the public in December 2008.
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