The Taichung Cultural Affairs Bureau is today to unveil an exhibition of artifacts discovered at facilities affiliated with the former Taichung Prison, giving visitors a glimpse into the lives of the Japanese colonizers at the time.
The main building of the former prison, built during the Japanese colonial period, no longer exists, but several affiliated buildings remain: a bathhouse, the Budokan martial arts hall, a governor’s mansion and a few dormitories.
The exhibition, titled “Construct, City within City — Go Back, Meet and Rediscover” (起造．城中城─穿越．遇見．再發現), is to be held at the former prison’s bathhouse and officials’ dormitory in the city’s West District (西區).
Photo: Su Meng-chuan,Taipei Times
The facilities are being renovated as part of a Ministry of Culture project to inject new life into historical sites, with the governor’s mansion and bathhouse scheduled to be opened to the public next year.
The Budokan is now the Natural Way Six Arts Cultural Center.
Speaking at a promotional event on Thursday, Downtown Renaissance Association chairman Su Jui-pi (蘇睿弼) said that the exhibition is to feature details about the government’s ongoing renovation of the facilities, as well as historical objects found during the construction, such as Japanese-style ridge tiles and vintage suitcases.
People can visit part of the bathhouse, where they can dip their feet in cold water, Su said, adding that the fence on the path from the bathhouse to the dormitory would showcase the stories of 54 of the city’s famous historical figures.
The bureau is holding a special event on Aug. 8, when up to 40 people can stay for a night at the dormitory, bureau Deputy Director-General Dennis Tseng (曾能汀) said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS