Taipei Times
Date: Oct 27, 2018
By: Chen Kuan-pei and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
The Supreme Administrative Court on Thursday upheld the heritage status of an old
The 65-year-old Far Eastern Theater in Changhua County’s Peitou Township is pictured in an undated photograph. Photo courtesy of the Peitou Township Office
movie theater in Changhua County, ending a three-year legal battle between the county’s Cultural Affairs Bureau and the Peitou Township Office, which had sought to build on the site.
“Although Peitou (北斗) is a historied township, the town’s former class 3 heritage site, the Tienan Temple, was demolished. If the old theater was also demolished, the culture, history and shared memory of Peitou residents would utterly vanish,” the court said in its ruling.
The Far Eastern Theater is 65 years old and was built on land that was once the private gardens of a clan of local gentry surnamed Hsu (許).
Hsu Tsung-lung (許從龍) built the township’s private academy, the Magpie House (鵲館), in the ancestral garden after passing Qing imperial exams as a xiucai (秀才) civil servant. It played an important role in educating local elites. [FULL STORY]
