Behind its unadorned concrete walls, the dilapidated wooden house on Tungmen Street had inspired some trepidation on the part of Miss Liu, a teacher at the Hsinchu Girl's High School (新竹女中). Back in the 1980s, she would pass it every day walking home from work. The pavement was dirty with the crushed fruit of an overhanging tree and often there would be some undesirable characters taking the shade. "It was vaguely threatening," she said. "We would often walk on the other side of the road to avoid it."
Liu was standing in the dilapidated old building that had previously made her skin crawl. Now, rather than fear, she felt excitement about this house. It had been partially cleaned up, but the floor was still covered in dust and the sunlight streamed through numerous holes in the roof. But for her, as for others in Hsinchu, this was no longer just a derelict house ? it was a cause, a focus in a fight to preserve the city's cultural heritage.
The house once belonged to Hsin Chih-ping (辛志平), a former principle of Hsinchu Boy's High School (新竹中學) and one of Taiwan's most influential educators. Although he is far from being a household name, a survey by CommonWealth magazine in 1998 placed him in the top 30 of the 200 most influential in Taiwan's 400-year history. The school lists many senior academics, as well as business and political leaders ? an achievement that many credit to his educational principles.
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW, TAIPEI TIMES
That the debate over the preservation of his house has gone beyond being a purely local issue may largely be thanks to the voice of Academia Sinica president Li Yuan-tseh (李遠哲), Taiwan's best known Nobel laureate and one of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) most influential advisors, who publically expressed concern over the issue.
Li was a former alumnus of Hsinchu High and has credited Hsin with being a decisive influence in his life.
A father figure
PHOTO COURTESY OF HSIN CHU-YING.
Hsin's role in providing an environment that helped foster some of Taiwan's foremost academics, business leaders and writers during the oppressive days of martial law has made the issue of preserving his house one very close to members of Taiwan's intellectual community. "He taught us about dissent," said Ni Kuo-rong (
Chang Fu-chun (
Serendipity
PHOTO: IAN BARTHOLOMEW, TAIPEI TIMES
It is fitting that Hsin's name has been brought to public attention again by students seeking to broaden their own horizons. Members of a woodworking class studying the structure of traditional wooden buildings, Wu Jia-sui (吳佳穗) and Li Chian-min (李建敏) first visited the now derelict site of Hsin's home in the hope of salvaging cypress timbers. They had heard that the house was to be leveled to make way for a car park.
"We had learned about how precious hinoki [the still commonly used Japanese term for cypress] was and wanted to preserve some of the timber," Wu said. "But when we realized that this was part of Hsinchu's cultural memory, we felt it wouldn't be right to take the timbers. The house deserved better." Wu and Li, both graduate students at National Tsing Hua University (國立清華大學), soon found themselves on the front line of a dispute with the bulldozers of the municipal government, who arrived only days after their fortuitous discovery. In a discussion mediated by the mayor, demolition of the house was delayed by two months, with NT$800,000 thousand promised to the students to make a study of the house prior to continuing with construction.
Work has halted, but the money, Li said last week, was not yet forthcoming.
Since then, the government has been forced to adjust its position even further, after Li Yuan-tseh publicly expressed concern for the fate of the house in a statement to the Chinese press on Aug. 10.
"With all this public support, we have revised our position too," Li said. "After all, the NT$800,000 would only be enough for a very cursory study. Now some people are talking about moving it whole to another location or restoring it on the current site; this would be much more expensive. Nothing has been said about how it will be done or how much it will cost." Currently the situation is still in limbo, but according to Chang, the government is increasingly supporting the idea of converting the parking tower to an underground facility and preserving the house on top.
Cultural memory
All this does not get around the fact that the house was allowed to fall into disrepair and was all but forgotten since the late 1980s. After all, the single- story wooden house, technically classified as a teacher's dormitory, is not the sort of structure that generally attracts popular interest.
"It is sad," Chang said. "But after Headmaster Hsin left the school, new headmasters came from outside the school, and did not have the same commitment to the unique traditions of Hsinchu High School."
Soon after Hsin passed away in 1985, the house was returned to the school. A minor scandal under the headmastership of Huang Chin-lung (黃金龍) in the mid-1980s was the last many heard of it. On this occasion, plans to restore the house were scotched after allegations that Huang intended to benefit from the renovation by moving into the house himself, Ni said.
"In some ways, the school authorities [as opposed to the alumni] have never been very keen on preserving the close association with Headmaster Hsin," Chang said. "It puts people like me in a rather difficult situation."
With historical associations all but forgotten, an application was made for the conversion of the residential plot into a car park. The application and associated administrative procedures which began in 1986 have recently been completed, so it is no wonder that the municipal government has been reluctant to make further changes to the land zoning -- not least as the contract for the construction of the car park had already been signed.
When the matter came to light, Hsinchu Mayor Cai Jen-chian (蔡仁堅) said that he had no idea of the significance of the site or he would never have allowed the application for rezoning to go so far.
This lapse of cultural memory is likely to cost the municipal government dear.
"Headmaster Hsin was not just an educator, he is also a role model for future generations," said Chu Chun-tse (朱俊哲), director of the mayor's office in Hsinchu.
"Although there is no precedent in the whole of Taiwan for turning back a government project that has already been contracted out, we are willing to make this sacrifice, Chu said."
After a meeting on Aug. 21, Chu said the MOTC has agreed in principle to preserving the house as a memorial and build the car park underneath. "The budget will be about double the original," Chu said "but we are confident that with the minister's support, the project will pass the legislative phase quickly." He expects approval within a month.
"This is the first time that the municipal government has done something like this," Ni said. "They have changed the whole design of a project for which contracts had already been sign. And they did this because city residents expressed their opinions. It has been an educational experience."
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