Schedium

A few years ago I wrote about old houses from the Japanese colonial era  (1895-1945) in Taipei . As a map from 1935 shows , Japanese Taipei was quite small compared to the present-day metropolis.  When British author Owen Rutter visited the island in the early 1920s, Taipei had only about 170,000 inhabitants. In 1945, the population had grown to slightly more than 270,000.   By 2016, however, Taipei City had a population of 2.7 million, while the greater metropolitan area had around 7 million people. Obviously, during the Japanese colonial era districts that are now highly urbanized were little more than countryside.  #Vintage #map (1935) of #Taipei in #Taiwan when is was still under Japanese rule. Source: https://t.co/KLcdSe17tc pic.twitter.com/uN6sXPMujs — Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) October 12, 2017 It is very difficult to reconstruct the urban structure of the residential suburbs in colonial Taipei. Not much remai...

In the heart of Taipei , in the middle of the sea of anonymous apartment blocks built in the decades following World War II, there lies a former industrial area that has remained virtually unchanged since its construction in the first half of the 20th century. This is the former 'Taipei Wine Factory' (台北酒廠), a complex of buildings that belonged to Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Monopoly. By the 1980s. when Taiwan's economy was booming and its capital, Taipei, was growing fast, the presence of this factory in what had become the city centre (but was periphery in the Japanese era ) raised environmental concerns. Therefore, in 1987 wine production was moved to Linkou Industrial Area , in the suburbs of Taipei County (present-day New Taipei City ). However, this 'museum-like' neighbourhood has not been saved by wise and history-conscious city planners, but - paradoxically - by neglect and indifference. Politicians were simply too idle and uninterested in order to make s...

We - the Westerners who have had the privilege to stay in Taiwan long enough to know it at least a little bit better than the occasional traveller - are not the first generation of foreigners who have been to this island and have had the chance to discover its treasures. Most of the people who came here long ago did not write down their impressions, feelings and observations, and their memories are now lost to us. Yet some of them did, passing on to future generations their invaluable knowledge and experience. One of these Westerners was Owen Rutter (1889-1944), a British historian, novelist and travel writer, who visited Taiwan in the 1920s, during the Japanese colonial era. In this post I share with you the 7th chapter of Rutter's book Through Formosa , in which he describes Taipei (called Taihoku by the Japanese) and the general development of Taiwan as a colony. This part of the book is interesting for several reasons.  First, it shows us the Taihoku of the 1920s from...

One evening I was walking along Ren'ai Road (仁愛路) , close to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall , when suddenly I noticed a peculiar old building on my left. I was surprised because I had never seen it on any Taipei guide. On second thought, though, I wasn't sure whether it was an old building at all. It actually looked brand new. Was it one of those neoclassical oriental structures so beloved by the old KMT guard? After all, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, too, looks like an ancient building, but in fact it was constructed in the 1970s.  I drew closer and saw that it was a bell tower. It stood lonely behind a huge high-rise building and next to a gloomy construction site. I looked around to see if there was any plaque that explained its history. I went into the archway at the centre of the tower. Suddenly I heard a coarse coughing and the sound of steps, and I stopped. An old man emerged from the other side of the tower. His scrawny upper body was naked, his skin was dark, and he...