National Museum of Taiwan Literature Audio Guide

National Museum of Taiwan Literature: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to National Museum of Taiwan Literature

   Welcome to the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, known in Chinese as 國立臺灣文學館. You are standing at number 1, Zhongzheng Road, in Tainan's Central West District, in front of one of the city's most recognizable landmarks. This is the first national-level literature museum in Taiwan, and it is run by the Ministry of Culture. Its mission is to collect, preserve, research, display and promote Taiwanese literature. It opened on the seventeenth of October, 2003, and it chose to honor the spirit of the Taiwan Cultural Association, founded in 1921 by Chiang Wei-shui and other pioneers. Here is the twist. This grand building was not built for books at all. It began life in 1916 as a government hall, and it has been a seat of regional administration, a military office, a city hall, and now a home for manuscripts, diaries and letters. Over the next few minutes we will trace that long journey together, from the architect's drawing board to the shelves of today.

2. 02

   National Museum of Taiwan Literature: A Hall Built for Government

   Before it was a museum, this was the Tainan Prefectural Hall. It was designed by Moriyama Matsunosuke, an architect of the civil engineering bureau of the Taiwan Governor-General's Office. A topping-out ceremony was held on the eleventh of October, 1913, and on the twentieth of May, 1916, the Tainan offices moved in from the old Qing-era Circuit Intendant's Office, a site that is now Yongfu Elementary School. The site itself has a story. In 1910 the head of the Tainan agency asked the colonial government for a new building, and the plan began with other candidate sites. Then, in 1911, a severe storm hit southern Taiwan, and about 80 percent of the old government hall was damaged. The new hall was placed instead beside the northern side of the Confucius Temple. The building grew in stages. At first only the front entrance and its towers stood. The two wings were added between 1918 and 1920. In September of 1920, Taiwan's western districts were reorganized into five prefectures, and Tainan Prefecture, covering today's Yunlin, Chiayi County, Chiayi City and Tainan, took this hall as its seat. The city government offices shared the building too.

3. 03

   National Museum of Taiwan Literature: Roofs, Towers and a Mansard Crown

   National Museum of Taiwan Literature: In 1998 the city handed the building to the central government, and the architecture department of National Cheng Kung University, led by architect Chen Bosen, took on the restoration.

   Look at the front of the building and let the details speak. The structure is built with load-bearing brick walls, steel beams and reinforced concrete, rising two floors. Its original roof was a copper-tiled Mansard roof, the steep double-sloped style that spread through French public buildings in the nineteenth century. On either side of the main facade stands a round tower. This was considered one of the finest government halls of the Japanese colonial period. Similar halls were built in Taipei, where it is now the Control Yuan, and in Taichung, where it later became the former Taichung city hall. The Mansard roof did not survive the Second World War. Incendiary bombs struck the building, and the roof, the tower tops and the wooden parts were almost completely destroyed. After the war it was repaired, and the roof was rebuilt as a simple two-slope design. That is why the roofline you see today is different from the one that was originally crowned in copper. The main entrance faces the park once called Taisho Park, now Tang Te-chang Memorial Park, a favorite spot for photographs and even wedding portraits.

4. 04

   National Museum of Taiwan Literature: From City Hall to Literary Home

   National Museum of Taiwan Literature: Twelve sets, comprising 182 pieces, are designated important antiquities.

   After the war, the hall changed hands. In 1949, the Republic of China Air Force Supply Command moved from Shanghai to Tainan, and one of its offices took over the building. In 1968 the Tainan City Council voted to ask the command to leave, and 9 million New Taiwan dollars was offered to help pay for its relocation. On the seventh of April, 1969, the building was handed to the city government, which had previously worked from a former elementary school. That is how the street in front of the hall came to be named Fuqian Road, meaning the road in front of the government office. When the city government moved to Anping in October of 1997, the old hall found a new purpose. A preparatory office was set up here for both the national literature museum and a cultural heritage research center. In 1998 the city handed the building to the central government, and the architecture department of National Cheng Kung University, led by architect Chen Bosen, took on the restoration. Their idea was to respect the monument and let old and new speak to one another. Later additions were removed, and the inner corridor and outer walls became interior space. A new section was joined to the historic one, forming a building with two floors above ground and three below. Work ran from March of 1999 to January of 2003. The building became a national monument on the tenth of November, 2003.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Inside, the museum holds about 130,000 items, a figure from May of 2023. Twelve sets, comprising 182 pieces, are designated important antiquities. They include manuscripts by the poet Hong Qisheng, the 1927 diary of Liu Na'ou, the manuscript of Yang Kui's Model Village, a wooden plaque from the headquarters of the Taiwan Literary Federation, and issues of the Taiwan Shin Minpo newspaper from 1933. The permanent exhibition follows Taiwanese literature from the Qing dynasty to the present. It uses manuscripts, books and letters, and some texts come alive in projection theater presentations. Special exhibitions turn to different themes and invite you to take part. As you leave, try to find the places where the old walls turn inward and become part of the interior, and see how the historic and new parts speak to each other. Then step outside and look across to the park and the Confucius Temple nearby. What do you think a government hall might whisper to a house of writers?