Treasure Hill, a historical community in Taipei, will undergo a two-year reconstruction facelift starting in December, the Taipei City government announced yesterday.
Treasure Hill is home to veterans of the Chinese Civil War who fled to Taiwan with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) around 60 years ago. The current preservation initiative dates back to 1999 when the city government promised to preserve the urban area as a "lively community."
The Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs cooperated with the private sector in 2003 on the "Treasure Hill Artivists Cooperative" project, and will launch a two-year renovation plan at the end of the year after the completion of the planning stage.
According to Lin Feng-cheng (林芳正) from the Organization of Urban Re's (OURs), of the 60 to 70 households in the community, about 30 will move to a transitional housing block nearby during construction, while the others chose to take a payout of NT$720,000 to move out of the community.
Local artists who gathered in the community will also be asked to move out during the construction, and can apply to return in two years time.
Addressing a press conference to announce Treasure Hill's overhaul, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said the preservation project was the first government initiative to preserve an area full of illegal constructions for its historical significance.
"Some people would say that those unlicensed constructions are old and shabby, and why not just tear them down? But this community has important historical significance and we want to let the world know that there are more attractions in Taipei than just the Taipei 101 Mall," Ma said.
While the city government expected the new community to include original residents, artists and international youth hostels, some people remained wedded to the city government's original promise.
"We don't think the [Taipei] city government should continue the reconstruction if it really wants to preserve the place," said Yang Chi-chie (楊子傑), an activist from the Treasure Hill Commune, a civic organization dedicated to preserving the community.
"Moving the residents around and renovating [Treasure Hill] will destroy the uniqueness of this community," Yang said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa
RSS