The Bonito Flake Museum in Hualien County’s Cising Township (七星) reopened last week and announced the development of a new soy sauce with bonito flakes.
The museum is creating the soy sauce to sustain the traditional local industry and pass it on to future generations, it said.
Once an abandoned bonito flake factory, the original wooden building was at least 50 years old. It was repurposed into a museum in 2003 and was a popular tourist destination in the Cisingtan (七星潭) area before it burned down in July 2017.
The owner of the building, Jota Food Co, decided to rebuild the museum on its original location.
Parts of the new structure are preserved from the former building, burn marks included, museum manager Yu Kuo-feng (余國豐) said.
Cising was a thriving center for bonito flake processing, an industry that began in the Japanese colonial era, Yu said, adding that at its peak, there were more than 20 factories in Cising alone.
However, with factories moving to Southeast Asia in the 1980s, the industry has been declining, and the original museum building was one of the last factories to close down, Yu said.
Yu’s father, former Jota Food president Yu Tsung-po (余宗柏), had bought the factory, saying that someone had to preserve the memory of Hualien’s local industry.
It is unfortunate that much of the antique fishing equipment on display in the museum was destroyed along with the original building, Yu Kuo-feng said.
Some antiques were saved, including a mailbox that has had more than 30,000 letters deposited in it and a first-generation bonito flake shaver, he said.
Yu Kuo-feng also announced the museum’s collaboration with local soy sauce factory Hsin Wei to develop a bonito-flavored soy sauce.
Hsin Wei was founded in 1927 and has been a staple of local taste, said Hsu Heng-hsun (許恒巽), the third-generation owner of the soy sauce factory, which has transitioned to become mostly a tourist facility.
The collaboration aims to not only renew the memory of the local bonito flake and soy sauce industries in the minds of residents and tourists, but also to pass down the memory, Hsu said.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe