The Eslite Bookstore chain on Monday officially opened the nation’s longest underground book street in Taipei, creating what the city hopes will become a new tourist attraction.
The 261m book street, named R79 Eslite Underground because it is close to exits R7 and R9, is in an underground walkway between the MRT Zhongshan Station and MRT Shuanglian Station.
The walkway used to be part of the Zhongshan Metro Mall, an underground shopping mall that sells clothes, food, discounted books and other products, but Eslite won a bid in March to transform a section into a book street.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The underground complex features more than 60,000 titles on a wide variety of topics and also includes shops that sell cultural and creative products, vinyl records, stationery, food and coffee.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who attended the opening ceremony, said the transformation of the underground walkway was a success, predicting that the book street, which opened ahead of the Taipei Universiade, would become a new scenic spot for travelers visiting the city.
Ko also praised Robert Wu (吳清友), the founder and chairman of Eslite Corp who died of heart disease last month, as a man who “changed the definition of bookstores in Taiwan.”
“He brought humanities, art and creativity into people’s lives,” Ko said, adding that the book street was Wu’s last project.
Wu’s daughter Mercy Wu (吳旻潔), who has taken over as Eslite’s chairwoman, said her father’s wish was that commuters who used to spend five minutes walking the corridor will stay for at least half an hour and that others will pay special visits to the book street.
“The beauty of the Zhongshan underground book street is that it creates a lot of opportunities for people to run into books,” she said. “We hope to create these chance meetings not only in Taipei, but in various public spaces across Taiwan.”
Eslite is to pay rent to Taipei Rapid Transit Corp for the space, which the metro company estimated would increase its earnings by more than NT$10 million (US$331,115) per year compared with the previous operator of the space, which suffered annual losses.
Maru Yuan, who works in the publishing industry and visited the book street on Monday, said that in an age of fewer bookstores, the book street is a way to bring ordinary people closer to books.
“It may be crowded outside, but inside it is a paradise for reading,” she said.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS