Historic sites in Keelung dating back to the Dutch and Spanish colonial periods are to be restored, after the city government pledged to make a large financial contribution for their restoration.
Keelung Harbor has long been an important point of contact between Taiwan and the outside world. First visited by Spain and other nations more than 400 years ago, the area is home to numerous historic relics. The Keelung City Government has said it would allocate NT$550 million (US$17.34 million) to preserve the relics in a restoration project subsidized by the Ministry of Culture.
The project seeks to rebuild parts of the Baimiweng Fort, Keelung Fort Command and the residences belonging to it.
The project will be a cross-agency effort that, in addition to members of the Keelung Cultural Affairs Bureau, will involve the Urban Development Bureau, Public Works Bureau and Keelung Department of Transportation and Tourism, Keelung Cultural Affairs Bureau Director Peng Chun-heng (彭俊亨) said.
Peng added that the project will be of tremendous proportions, covering Dashawan (大沙灣), Syugang (旭崗), Peace Island (和平島) and the west side of Keelung Harbor, all of which were focal points of historical interaction between Taiwanese and Europeans due to their strategic importance.
“It is my hope that through the restoration of these cultural properties, the improvement of these public spaces and the tying of them together as related places of interest we can retell the story of historical Keelung,” Peng said.
Dashawan is to form the core of the Sea Voyage History Cultural Park, which is to include a memorial for those who died at sea, a commemorative park for the Sino-French War, remnants of a stone protective barrier that surrounded the harbor at Dashawan, the Keelung Fort Command and the associated officers’ residences.
Peng said that many of the sites would be connected with a foot path and would be accessible from parking lots.
The Keelung Fort Command was previously inaccessible, as it is on Keelung Coast Guard property, but now that appropriation measures for the site have been taken, renovation work can begin next year, said Kuo Li-ya (郭麗雅), head of the Cultural Affairs Bureau’s property section.
Kuo said the residences that have sustained extensive damage have been cordoned off with steel barriers.
The buildings will be restored next year along with the command building, Kuo said, adding that Baimiweng Fort on the west side of Keelung Harbor will be connected with Pengjia Islet (彭佳嶼) lighthouse by a system of walkways.
“Aside from the restoration of the properties, we plan to replicate the atmosphere of different time periods with mobile guided-tour technology and overlapping maps, which would let people experience the scenery of different time periods and let them know what was happening in those periods,” she said. “We will enable the sites to tell their stories.”
Peng said he expects the about NT$820 million project, of which the government will cover NT$550 million, to be completed in 2019.
The project will allow the story of these sites to be told, as well as boost the leisure and tourism industries, Keelung city councilors Yu Hsiang-yao (游祥耀) and Lan Min-huang (藍敏煌) said, adding that the project could benefit from cooperation with locals and creative artists.
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