Saving Qidong Street
Behind the three-month-old Taiwan Literature Base is a two-decades long effort to preserve and revitalize a cluster of Japanese-era dorms and an entire neighborhood
By Han Cheung / Staff reporter
An old saw blade has sat on architect Sun Chi-jung’s (孫啟榕) office desk for over a decade.
He found it lodged in a cypress column of a Japanese-era dormitory in Taipei he was tasked to preserve, during the height of a struggle between preservationists and developers who were trying to destroy these houses that sat on prime real estate.
“This is to remind myself to never, never let something like this happen again,” Sun says emphatically.