Within a massive enclosure across the street from the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, more than 1,000 trees quietly await the day they will leave their decades-old home. Some have already been marked to have their branches and roots trimmed in anticipation of the coming move.
Moving the trees will be the first step in the city government's long-term Taipei Cultural and Sports Park construction project. The Sungshan Tobacco Factory, which was built in 1940 under Japanese colonial direction, will be preserved as a part of a future cultural and artistic center.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
In addition, 10 hectares of the 18.1-hectare space now occupied by the trees is slated to hold a new business and entertainment plaza, official buildings, a small city park and a large dome-shaped baseball stadium.
The project will be completed using a somewhat controversial build-operate-transfer formula, in which private investors will be involved in the construction and operation.
However, the trees currently planted at the construction site are under the protection and jurisdiction of the city government, and must be removed.
Of the 1,081 trees, 137 are protected by law, because they are deemed particularly valuable due to their age, height, width or girth. As a result, any action concerning them must be approved by the City Cultural Bureau's tree protection committee.
Wang Jin-tang (王金棠), undersecretary for the future park's construction planning office, said the city also wishes to preserve the remaining 944 trees.
"We're going into this with a tree-loving attitude," he added, saying that the trees were a public resource that should not go to waste.
According to Wang, 80 percent of the 137 protected trees will be re-rooted within the Cultural and Sports Park, and will be temporarily planted in a safe corner of the construction site.
Other arboreal parks like the Da-An Forest Park (大安森林公園), local school campuses, and tree banks have been chosen from a pool of applicants to take the trees.
Because there are several arboreal species, and a diversity of age and girth, each potential taker had to be carefully considered.
Yet as the matchmaking process comes to a close, the plans for the new cultural and sports park remain inconclusive, mostly because control over the architectural and landscape design will be entrusted to private companies.
Chang Yu-sen (張育森), member of the Tree Protection Committee and a professor of horticulture at National Taiwan University, said "Of course, the government wishes to give the private companies as much convenience as possible."
Because some construction contracts are still under negotia-tion, there are still uncertainties in the groundplan of the new park, Chang said. He expressed concern that all the trees may be forced to adjust to new environments and sustain the stress of moving before it was proven absolutely necessary to the construction project to relocate them. Currently, the tree protection committee has approved a proposal from the Construction Planning Office for performing a root-severing operation on several trees. The operation involves pruning away longer, older roots, and is the first step of the moving process for the trees.
Root-severing will begin next month or in October, Wang said. Because different species are best moved during different seasons, moving the entire tree population will take at least one full year.
Chang explained that the process was quite involved, especially for immense, aged trees with well-developed root systems. However, done well, it does no harm, even if authorities decide later not to move the trees.
"We simply ask the Construction Planning Office to consider leaving more trees in place before anything else is done," Chang said.
In 1956, the Sungshan Tobacco Factory hired a landscape designer to create an adjacent courtyard, and several trees were planted during that time. Because of its rare Western elements, the courtyard was highly prized by the then-famous horticulturalist Cheng Da-wen (鄭達文).
Ling De-lin (凌德麟), professor of horticulture at National Taiwan University, used it as an open-air classroom for his students.
According to Chang, the age of the trees makes them as much a part of history as the factory itself. "Such a large congregation of trees is rare in the city, and its dispersal is truly a pity," he said.
The area was opened to the public as both a historical site and a spot of urban greenery after the factory closed in 1998. Now, however, it has been cut off from public access for the duration of new park's construction.
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