A private museum in Taichung dedicated to Lin Hsien-tang (林獻堂), a politician and activist who advocated self-rule, is to have its grand opening today, the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau said.
Experts have vetted the Lin Hsien-tang Museum’s substantial collection of artifacts for authenticity and historical value according to the Museum Act (博物館法), the bureau said on Tuesday.
The private museum is the first of its kind in the city and the second in the nation, it added.
Photo: Chen Chien-chih, Taipei Times
As a leading voice in petitioning the former Japanese empire to establish a Taiwanese parliament, Lin earned the nicknames “Father of the Taiwanese Parliament” and “Taiwan’s First Citizen,” said Lin Fang-ying, chairwoman of Ming Tai High School, which founded the museum.
A descendent of Lin Hsien-tang, she had collected more than 10,000 objects linked to him and the Lin clan, she said, adding that she donated them to the memorial wing the school had dedicated to him.
The museum’s opening would coincide with the 70th anniversary of the high school, which Lin Hsien-tang cofounded with other gentry from Taichung, she said.
For the past two years, the school has planned to upgrade the Lin Hsien-tang memorial wing into a proper museum, increasing its floorspace from 100 ping (331m2) to 250 ping and tripling the collection of artifacts, she said.
The collection contains items such as Lin Hsien-tang’s diary, manuscripts and other historical documents of note, including calligraphy by renowned Chinese philosopher Liang Qichao (梁啟超) created in 1911 to mark his visit to the Lin residence, she said.
Other antiques — such as a 150-year-old camphor cabinet, chairs with shell inlays, a redwood bed, utensils and deeds belonging to the Lin clan — deal broadly with the material culture of the late Qing Dynasty and Japanese colonial eras, she said.
The museum is awaiting several explanatory labels for the artifacts, she said, adding that the school’s board of trustees hopes they will provide young Taiwanese with insight into the history that forms their shared heritage.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS