A 112-year-old lighthouse on one of the outlying islands of Matsu has been upgraded to a national historical monument, with a ceremony marking the event to be held on July 1, Lienchiang County Cultural Affairs Department Director-General Wu Hsiao-yun (吳曉雲) said.
Dongyong Lighthouse in Lienchiang County’s Dongyin Township (東引) was first designated a national historical landmark by the Council of Cultural Affairs in 1988, but it was later downgraded to a county heritage site following changes to the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法).
Lienchiang County had been fighting for the lighthouse to reattain its status as a national landmark since 2008, Wu said.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
The county’s appeal gained ground after a restructuring of the Executive Yuan, which transferred management of the lighthouse from the Ministry of Finance’s Customs Administration to the Ministry of Transportation and Communication’s Maritime and Port Bureau, whose director-general, Chi Wen-jong (祁文中), supported the application, Wu said.
The European-style lighthouse situated on the slope of Shih Wei Mountain (世尾山) was built with financing from the British government a year after the British steamer SS Sobraon ran aground and sank near Dongyin Island in 1901, the Matsu National Scenic Area office said.
Although all passengers and crew survived the shipwreck, the shipping firm suffered heavy losses, and with the opening of maritime traffic to the Port of Sandu, it was decided that a lighthouse was necessary to mitigate navigational risks.
The lighthouse used to be a strictly restricted facility and lighthouse workers lived with their families in an adjacent dormitory, and raised their own chicken and pigs for meat.
The materiel and comforts provided by the lighthouse was said to be the envy of local residents, who nicknamed the facility “the Dongying Mansion,” which has stuck to this day.
The elegant structure has become a major attraction for tourists — including South Korean, Chinese and Western visitors.
Lienchiang County Commissioner Liu Tseng-ying (劉增應) said he was glad to see the lighthouse’s designation as a national historic monument, adding that he hoped the Maritime and Port Bureau and the Department of Cultural Affairs would invest resources in the lighthouse to promote tourism on Matsu.
The lighthouse could become a third attraction in addition to Matsu’s famed rare Chinese crested tern and bioluminescent blue tide, Liu said.
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked