All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French

Preserving The Keelung Warehouses

Posted: February 15th, 2014 | No Comments »

Keelung in Taiwan is my kind of town – a gritty port city that has just the right amounts of seediness, dirt and charm. It also has a fascinating history both in terms of the foreign presence in Taiwan (about which I’ve blogged repeatedly – see below pic for details and links) but also as one of the major arrival points for the Nationalist Army in 1949. This latter fact is the reason behind the current preservation battle over a cluster of otherwise unassuming warehouses on the waterfront. The threatened structures are the only two remaining buildings of a group of eight warehouses built in 1932 – since then they’ve seen the arrival of many Japanese during the occupation period and then the Nationalists. Between 1945 and 1949, at the port’s peak, more than 50 ferry boats docked at Keelung every day from Guangzhou, Xiamen, Wenzhou, Shanghai and other Chinese cities, most ferrying KMT troops and ordinary folk fleeing the Communists. Let’s hope the alliance of preservation activists and academics in Keelung can save these buildings. History isn’t always about grand and grandiose structures.

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Some more great Keelung architecture here (taken in 2010)

A post of Keelung’s Ershawan Fort here

Keelung’s monument to Prince Kitashirakawa here

A post on Keelung’s French Cemetery here

the marvellous Keelung Harbour Integrated Administration Building here

 



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