Enigmatic veteran who spent a lifetime building a house from discarded materials has died inside his creation
Taiwan News
Date: 2017/01/09
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
Taipei (Taiwan News) — They say a man’s home is his castle, and in this case a mysterious old man, who
Builder of the “moving castle” walking in front of his creation (By Central News Agency)
had become a local legend for spending decades constructing his curious citadel, lived his last hours in his handcrafted fortress of solitude.
Located at No. 1 Chung Cheng Road in the Taitung City Waterfront Park, stands a strange structure that locals say an elderly man, known only by his surname of Lee, has spent at least 30 years building up and patching using abandoned materials that he’s scavenged, such as wood, bricks, and glass. The four-story patchwork of assorted waste materials has been dubbed by locals as “Taitung’s Moving Castle” after the anime film “Howl’s Moving Castle” directed by Hayao Miyasaki and the novel by the same name written by British author Diana Wynne Jones. It is also known as the “White Hovel” for its pure white exterior.
As to how and why he built the house, the definitive answer remains unknown as he was hearing impaired and inarticulate in his later years. What is known is that the house consists of four floors, with Lee dwelling primarily on the second floor, while he grew vegetables on the third floor. [FULL STORY]
