Growth depletes Huashan joy
The Huashan Cultural and Creative Industries Park, also known as the Huashan 1914 Creative Park, or sometimes just Huashan, occupies a large stretch of land in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山). The park is a popular spot for Taipei residents to visit on their days off, as well as being one of Taiwan’s classic cultural and creative locations.
Apart from the bewildering range of exhibitions and activities that take place there, Huashan’s biggest attractions are the broad plaza that lies in front of the historic buildings and the grassy plain that lies behind them.
In these wide-open spaces, children can run around, let off steam and play to their hearts’ content.
As most people know, the Huashan of today includes a variety of historic structures that are officially listed among Taipei’s cultural assets. Some of the buildings belonged to the former Taipei Wine Factory, originally built by a private company, and later operated by the Monopoly Bureau of the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office under Japanese rule, and by its successor under the Republic of China government.
Another part of the Huashan complex is the former factory of Japan Camphor Co’s Taihoku Branch, and an adjacent area used to be the railway system’s Huashan Freight Station.
However, what many people might not know is that Huashan is about to see some big changes. The area adjacent to the western edge of Huashan park’s grassy plain is destined to become a huge complex known as the Huashan Judicial Park, which will incorporate the Taiwan High Court and Taipei District Court.
This edifice will reportedly consist of five floors below ground and nine floors above. Meanwhile, the area in front of Huashan Park is the planned construction site for a large building called Huashan 2.0. Do we in the 21st century still equate progress with erecting tall buildings, and do we believe that 2.0 will be better than the previous version?
Let us recall how Huashan came to be preserved in the first place.
In 1997, the Golden Bough Theater (金枝演社) performed a stage play at Huashan, but police arrested some of the organizers on a charge of “occupying state land.”
In the wake of that incident, negotiations took place between the Taiwan Provincial Government’s Office of Culture and the Monopoly Bureau, as a result of which the bureau commissioned the culture office to manage and maintain the site for three years starting from 1999.
This arrangement marked the official birth of modern-day Huashan as a creative venue for artists, performers and nonprofit groups. This was the original purpose for which Huashan was established.
More than 20 years later, the Ministry of Culture came up with a “development plan for the Huashan 2.0 cultural content business cluster” that would occupy an area of about 3,000m2.
According to a media report, design illustrations show the buildings occupying a large area, including a rooftop garden that, combined with the modernistic exterior, will surely become a new hotspot for taking photos and “checking in.”
Are we really reverting to the old idea that putting up buildings is the only way to make progress and breathe life into cultural heritage? So what if the buildings occupy a large area?
The Huashan of my dreams is the magical Huashan where I took my children to run around and blow bubbles — a place where we could pursue a happiness of our own creation.
The big grassy plain and wide-open plaza — these are the Huashan that Taipei residents really love.
LEE TUNG-MING
Taipei
Taiwan’s fall would be “a disaster for American interests,” US President Donald Trump’s nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy Elbridge Colby said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday last week, as he warned of the “dramatic deterioration of military balance” in the western Pacific. The Republic of China (Taiwan) is indeed facing a unique and acute threat from the Chinese Communist Party’s rising military adventurism, which is why Taiwan has been bolstering its defenses. As US Senator Tom Cotton rightly pointed out in the same hearing, “[although] Taiwan’s defense spending is still inadequate ... [it] has been trending upwards
Small and medium enterprises make up the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, yet large corporations such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) play a crucial role in shaping its industrial structure, economic development and global standing. The company reported a record net profit of NT$374.68 billion (US$11.41 billion) for the fourth quarter last year, a 57 percent year-on-year increase, with revenue reaching NT$868.46 billion, a 39 percent increase. Taiwan’s GDP last year was about NT$24.62 trillion, according to the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, meaning TSMC’s quarterly revenue alone accounted for about 3.5 percent of Taiwan’s GDP last year, with the company’s
There is nothing the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could do to stop the tsunami-like mass recall campaign. KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) reportedly said the party does not exclude the option of conditionally proposing a no-confidence vote against the premier, which the party later denied. Did an “actuary” like Chu finally come around to thinking it should get tough with the ruling party? The KMT says the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is leading a minority government with only a 40 percent share of the vote. It has said that the DPP is out of touch with the electorate, has proposed a bloated
In an eloquently written piece published on Sunday, French-Taiwanese education and policy consultant Ninon Godefroy presents an interesting take on the Taiwanese character, as viewed from the eyes of an — at least partial — outsider. She muses that the non-assuming and quiet efficiency of a particularly Taiwanese approach to life and work is behind the global success stories of two very different Taiwanese institutions: Din Tai Fung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). Godefroy said that it is this “humble” approach that endears the nation to visitors, over and above any big ticket attractions that other countries may have
RSS