India-Taipei Association Director-General Sridharan Madhusudhanan, India’s representative to Taiwan, on Thursday said that the Presidential Office Building in Taipei had captured his interest because of its striking similarity to the Chennai Central railway station in Chennai, India.
Madhusudhanan said on Facebook that when he saw a photo of the Presidential Office Building in the news, he was again reminded of how much it resembled some of the buildings in India and “especially the grandeur of Chennai Central railway station, around which I lived and worked for a decade.”
Intrigued by the similarities, he did a quick search to see whether there was any connection between the architects of the two buildings, but found none, Madhusudhanan said.
The Presidential Office Building in Taipei was designed in 1907 by Japanese architect Uheiji Nagano, Madhusudhanan said, adding that he was writing the post on Sept. 28, the 150th birthday of the architect.
Madhusudhanan’s post about the two structures attracted wide media attention in Taiwan after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) shared it on her Facebook page.
The Indian diplomat has a great fondness and respect for Taiwan and deep curiosity about its culture, Kuan said, citing his participation in the annual Dajia Matsu pilgrimage earlier this year.
Joining the thousands of devoted Matsu followers on the pilgrimage, Madhusudhanan walked nine days and eight nights along a 400km route that passed through four cities and counties in central and southern Taiwan.
The diplomat, who is also an author, has translated the Chinese classic Book of Songs, a collection of ancient poems, into the Tamil language.
Madhusudhanan has led the India-Taipei Association since August last year.
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:
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