The New Taipei City government should include the whole Puantang Lay Buddhist Monastery (普安堂) complex in its review of the site’s historical value, activists said yesterday, blasting the city government’s Cultural Heritage Review Commission for excluding historic tombs and springs in the area from its survey.
“The old tombs are evidence that this was an area that was cleared for farming 300 years ago. Even though Puantang was officially registered during the Japanese colonial rule, it is a 100-year-old temple located on grounds that have a 300-year history,” said Lee Jung-tai (李榮台), the temple’s spokesperson and sister-in-law of the monastery’s abbot.
Following a court ruling canceling the designation of the site’s “historic architecture,” the cultural review process is “back to square one” as the city government considers whether to designate it a “historic site,” Lee said, panning the city government’s decision to only include the Sanheyuan (三合院) complex and a stone path in an on-site inspection last week.
Photo: Chang An-chiao, Taipei Times
Lee said the temple formerly served as the home of its founders, whose ancestors were buried in nearby tombs and who had used the adjacent spring to farm the surrounding land.
“The concept of lay Buddhism is that every home also serves as a temple. Nearby you also have the land you farm and, following the practice of Qing Dynasty families, buried their dead there to demonstrate ownership,” she said.
The family that owned the property had donated the structure, along with the nearby tombs and springs, to Puantang during Japanese rule.
Controversy over ownership of the land on which the temple stands has complicated the historical review process for the site, whose designation as having historic architecture was canceled following a lawsuit by the neighboring Cih-you Temple (慈祐宮), under whose name ownership is registered.
The temple’s quest to be designated as a protected historical site is part of an ongoing battle over land ownership between the two temples, which previously saw the Cih-you Temple win a court order to demolish part of the Puantang temple following Puantang’s refusal to pay rent for site usage.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai