The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee has unveiled a list of destinations for a day trip throughout Taipei featuring properties formerly owned by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Many buildings near Taipei Railway Station and Guanqian Road in Zhongzheng District (中正) were previously owned by the KMT, the committee’s investigations have found.
One of them is the Dr Sun Yat-sen Memorial House (國父史蹟館) inside Dr Sun Yat-sen Park (逸仙公園), which is a three-minute walk from Taipei Railway Station, committee member Lee Yen-jung (李晏榕) said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
The historic Japanese-style building previously housed Umeyashiki, a high-end Japanese restaurant where geishas would entertain guests, she said.
Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) once dined at Umeyashiki during the Japanese colonial era, she said.
Today, visitors take photographs on the premises dressed in kimonos or costumes, she added.
Following the end of World War II, the Japanese left Taiwan and Umeyashiki was handed over to the then-KMT government, committee member Sun Pin (孫斌) said.
Later, the KMT used the “memorialization of the nation’s founding father” to ask the government to give the plot on which Umeyashiki sat to the party for free through a method called “transfer and appropriation,” he said.
In March 1995, the Taipei City Government bought the land from the KMT at a cost of NT$650 million (US$21.14 million at the current exchange rate) to convert it into a park, Sun said, calling the price “outrageous.”
The committee is seeking payment from the KMT for the sale of the land, he added.
After visiting the former site of Umeyashiki, which is open to the public for free, people can walk along Guanqian Road, which was part of a Japanese colonial-era administrative district called Omotecho, the committee said.
Jianguo Tower (建國大樓) and the building which housed the Guanqian branch of Taiwan Cooperative Bank were previously owned by the KMT, it said.
During the Japanese colonial era, the site where the bank’s Guanqian branch is now located was a hotel named Yorozuya Ryokan and a Chevrolet dealership, it said.
Another property previously owned by the KMT is the current site of the store Ten Ren Tea on Hengyang Road, Sun Pin said.
In 1960, the KMT acquired the property using the “transfer and appropriation” method and a year later it was resold to the KMT-run Yutai Development Co, he said.
The property was sold to Ten Ren Tea in 2003, he added.
The Okura Prestige Taipei in Zhongshan District (中山) and the Wonderful Theatre in the Ximending (西門町) area are other stops for people who want to see the properties previously owned by the KMT, committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS