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Taipei residents
salvage culturally valuable tiles
By Liu Jung / Staff reporter
Locally made tiles from the
Japanese colonial era are seen in Taipei on Saturday.
Photo: Liu Jung, Taipei Times
After the recent demolition of a
dilapidated Japanese-era house near National Taiwan Normal University, residents
of Gufung Borough (¥j·) in Taipei gathered together to try and save the roof
tiles from the house.
About 200 borough residents turned up to the demolition site on Saturday to form
human chains so they could pass the tiles by hand out of the heap of rubble to a
temporary storage location 450m away. Of the 1,500 pieces of tile salvaged, only
500 were undamaged.
The borough residents plan to use the tiles to build walls around flower gardens
and to form artistic decorations in the park that is planned to replace the
house.
Several pieces of tile were identified as being the works of Tsai Chuan-ju
(½²¤t¦Ë), a master of ceramic art during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. Experts
said that the culturally valuable tiles were cast from Tsai¡¦s original mould and
not from later mass-production moulds.
Borough warden Kung Hsien-chuan (¤Õ¾Ë®S) said the house, which occupied nearly 100
ping (330m2), was built by a sugar company during the Japanese occupation of
Taiwan, and served as lodgings for out-of-town or overseas company personnel who
had to come to the city on business. The house was later used as a military
dormitory.
The house was between 70 and 80 years old and made entirely out of wood. The
timber used to build the house was from Chamaecyparis formosensis, or Formosan
Cypress, a building material that is highly valued in Japan, while the roof
tiles were all hand-made in local tile factories during in the Japanese colonial
era. Most of the tiles were stamped with the logo of the factory that made them.
Because of the lack of greenery in the area and because the house had been
vacant for the past three years, Kung petitioned the Ministry of National
Defense, which owns the plot of land where the house stood, to tear it down and
build a park.
After talking with borough residents and with the Taipei City Government, the
ministry agreed that the land could be used as a park.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
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