“Asian Review 025” ― Taiwan part2
Songshan Cultural and Creative Park
A three and half hours’ flight by ANA takes us to Taipei Songshan airport. The temperature is not much different from Tokyo. Now, Tokyo seems to be one of the hottest cities in Asia.
Soon after arriving at the hotel, I started rambling the streets. Public rental bicycles are lined up in Taiwan as well. In the mainland, many companies operating the rental bicycle businesses are said to be suffering the management. I wonder how it goes in Taiwan. The usage rate seems to be relatively high.
Firstly, we headed for “Songshan Cultural and Creative Park “, which is close to the Xinyi area where “101” etc. are located. The taste of “Japanese early modernism architecture” in the park attracted my interest.
It is a facility renovated from the former site of “Taiwan President Bureau of Monetary Authority Songshan Cigarette Factory” built in 1937 during the period when Taiwan was ruled by Japan. The area is 6.6 hectares. In addition to the office buildings designated as historic sites by the Taipei City government in 2001, warehouses 1 to 5, manufacturing plants, boiler rooms, inspection rooms as historic buildings, machine repair shops, nurseries, baroque gardens, and etc. were spectacular.
The west side of the former cigarette factory is used as the “Taiwan Design Hall” jointly planned by “Songshan Cultural and Creative Park” and Taiwan Creativity Design Center. It seems that it was created for the “Taipei World Design Exhibition” in autumn 2011. When it was a cigarette factory, there was a machine on the second floor. Therefore there are many beams and pillars on the first floor and no pillars on the second floor. The windows made on one side of the wall seem to have been remodeled, but the corridor surrounding the courtyard makes me feel like a chapel of the Renaissance style.
The building which was used as a machine repair shop has been renovated stylishly using red and white, it became the glass art gallery and the only restaurant in the park called Xiao Shan Tang TMSK. There was an open terrace, and it had a quite elegant atmosphere. How did the Japanese managers and Taiwanese workers interact in the cigarette factory? I tried to look back into the past for a while.
In the premises of Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, I found out that the “Eslite Spectrum Songyan” exists. “Eslite Bookstore” is well known as the Taiwan’s largest bookstore and life-proposal type bookstore. One of the main objectives of this exploring is this commercial facility, and I would like to introduce it in detail again in the latter part of this series. I’ll be right back!
