After the recent demolition of a dilapidated Japanese-era house near National Taiwan Normal University, residents of Gufung Borough (古風) in Taipei gathered together to try and save the roof tiles from the house.
About 200 borough residents turned up to the demolition site on Saturday to form human chains so they could pass the tiles by hand out of the heap of rubble to a temporary storage location 450m away. Of the 1,500 pieces of tile salvaged, only 500 were undamaged.
The borough residents plan to use the tiles to build walls around flower gardens and to form artistic decorations in the park that is planned to replace the house.
Photo: Liu Jung, Taipei Times
Several pieces of tile were identified as being the works of Tsai Chuan-ju (蔡川竹), a master of ceramic art during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Experts said that the culturally valuable tiles were cast from Tsai’s original mould and not from later mass-production moulds.
Borough warden Kung Hsien-chuan (孔憲娟) said the house, which occupied nearly 100 ping (330m2), was built by a sugar company during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, and served as lodgings for out-of-town or overseas company personnel who had to come to the city on business. The house was later used as a military dormitory.
The house was between 70 and 80 years old and made entirely out of wood. The timber used to build the house was from Chamaecyparis formosensis, or Formosan Cypress, a building material that is highly valued in Japan, while the roof tiles were all hand-made in local tile factories during in the Japanese colonial era. Most of the tiles were stamped with the logo of the factory that made them.
Because of the lack of greenery in the area and because the house had been vacant for the past three years, Kung petitioned the Ministry of National Defense, which owns the plot of land where the house stood, to tear it down and build a park.
After talking with borough residents and with the Taipei City Government, the ministry agreed that the land could be used as a park.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS