Sitting on a hillside in Taipei’s Bei-tou (北投), a century-old district home to the nation’s oldest hot springs community, a two-story, wooden Japanese-style building has been a permanent feature as long as anyone can remember.
The Beitou Museum is set to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year, and museum director Saalih Lee (李莎莉) has said that she hopes to breathe new life into the old building.
Built in 1921, the structure was initially the Kazen Hotel, colonial Taiwan’s most luxurious hot springs resort, Lee said.
Photo: CNA
“This building celebrates the wabi-sabi aesthetic,” Lee said, referring to a traditional Japanese worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.
Whether an unequal leaf door decorated with cloudy glass, a deserted bathhouse covered in green tiles, or a hidden Zen garden in the building’s central yard, she hopes that visitors would appreciate the museum building for its original style, Lee said.
In its early years, the building was often used by the Japanese military, and at one point, it was a guesthouse for kamikaze pilots, said Lee, who has been museum director for 16 years.
The building changed hands after 1945, became a private museum in 1984 and was designated an historic site by the Taipei City Government in 1998, she said.
Despite its age, the 2,500m2 structure remains full of vitality and offers a combination of cultural exhibitions, dining events and recreational activities, such as fashion shows, Lee said.
Having won the inaugural prize for preserving cultural heritage from the city government last month, the museum is a centerpiece of Taipei’s efforts to promote the idea of museums without walls, Taipei Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun (蔡炳坤) said.
“Taipei is not only a bustling city, but also a city that breathes,” Tsai said.
Through places such as the Beitou Museum, which is largely based on local participation and aims to enhance the welfare and development of local communities, the city has many stories to tell about its history, he said, adding that the museum helps raise public awareness about the importance of Taipei’s cultural heritage.
Beitou is the perfect place for the museum to thrive thanks to its relatively early development in the nation’s history, owing to the hot springs, according to the city government Web site.
The area is also home to historic sites such as the Beitou Hot Spring Museum, Plum Garden, Grass Mountain Chateau and Taipei Beitou Public Assembly Hall, Lee said.
With the cultural sites increasingly offering educational resources and promoting their activities better, Lee said that she hopes that the number of visitors to the museum, currently 50,000 each year, would increase in coming years.
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