The proprietor of Pingtung City’s colonial-era former Yamato Hotel (大和旅社) said he would be refurbishing the building without applying for public subsidies.
Built in 1935, the Yamamoto was a Japanese luxury hotel situated near Pingtung Railway Station that served the colonial military and business elite. The post-WWII slump hit the hotel hard and it closed its doors in 1999 after decades of decline, selling the property to a cake shop.
In 2014, the Pingtung County Government listed the former hotel as a cultural heritage site.
Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei Times
Hsu Yuan-shun (許源順), chairman of Christmas lights manufacturer Yuanshuan Industries Co and a self-described lover of old buildings, said he purchased the deeds for NT$90 million (US$2.9 million) from the building’s 30 owners.
Hsu said that while he could apply for a subsidy to cover 95 percent of the cost of restauration under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法), prefers not to have to deal with government red tape and feels that following legal requirements for restoring a heritage site would impose unnecessary delays.
He said he would rather repair the structure as soon as possible on his own dime.
Photo courtesy of Yamato Hotel
The restoration project began on Aug. 8 and would involve input from Divooe Zein Architects executive architectural designer Divooe Zein (曾志偉) and historical structure restoration expert Lin Shih-chao (林世超), he said.
Repairing the old structure has proved harder than anticipated, Hsu said, adding that installing modern elevators, bathing facilities and lighting has been a challenge.
The ceramic tiles used in the original structure, which he is trying to source, are mostly out of production and their manufacture has become something of a lost art, Hsu said.
After refurbishment, the building is to feature a coffee house on the first floor, a hostel on the second floor and an activity space on the first floor, he said.
“Restoring the hotel is not about earning money, but about leaving something for future generations,” Hsu said, adding that he hopes the building will become self-sustaining.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas