Each city has its own story to tell. Taiwan, lately in the news because of a recent natural catastrophe, has Taipei as its capital city. This city had five gates each with a distinct character. While I am no architect, I think it would shed some light to learn from mistakes foisted on other cities by planners so that our capital Valletta might be spared a similar fate.
Taipei was the only city in Taiwan to have a wall built with finely hewn stone blocks. More than 30,000 slabs were used for the bastions. Moreover, though not built on a roughly rectangular peninsula like Valletta on its Gholja Xiberras, Taipei had its wall in a rectangular shape. This shape, like our own Valletta, was determined by natural features surrounding the area such as the Danshuei River to the west, Sindian Creek to the south, the Songshan Hills to the east, the Cingsheui Rift to the southeast, and the Datun mountain chain to the north. Taipei’s wall took five years to build, was nearly five kilometres in circumference, and it took about 90 minutes to walk round it. It was about five metres high and wide enough on top for a two-horse carriage – slightly less than Pope Pius Street atop our own City Gate that will be split into two dead ends if Valletta’s City Gate is torn down!
Unfortunately, Taipei’s old-fashioned walled-city appearance was short-lived, as the Japanese colonial government tore down the walls about 105 years ago. This barbaric practice was undertaken with the excuse of putting in place their municipal development plan. The finely hewn stones which had been the labour of so many fine stone masons and dedicated craftsmen where ingloriously used to build drainage canals and prison walls and as foundations for other buildings of the occupying power!
Although Taipei’s surrounding walls, as those of some other cities, notably in Europe, are no more, Taipei still boasts its gates, standing alone but proud sentinels of the treasured past. Taiwan’s capital city originally had five gates, one for each point of the compass and an extra smaller one for the south wall, rather like a logistic enhancement. Each gate had its own distinctive design. Not paradoxically, the main south gate was regarded as the main approach to the city and was the most ornamented one with its distinct slanting overhung roof sheltering the lower battlements.
In the Chinese architectural and feng shui traditions, the south front of a city walls is usually where the main gate is situated. No exception to this rule, Taipei’s South Gate is the largest of the city gates with the most elaborate design of all. The roof of the original gate, for example, was twin tiered with upward-curving, tapered corners. This style was usually reserved for use only for important constructions.
In contrast the North Gate was the passageway for Ching Dynasty officials. Not surprisingly, it was through this gate that the Japanese army first entered the city in 1895.
If the West Gate were still existent, it would now be standing virtually in a half moon shaped traffic roundabout on Jhonghua Road. The early Japanese colonists, out of fear that it would continually remind the Taiwanese people of their Chinese cultural roots, tore down this West Gate. Luckily, a number of the more enlightened Nipponese came forward and dissuaded colonial officials from demolishing the other gates.
When the Chinese on Taiwan began enjoying all the rights and privileges one takes for granted in a multiparty parliamentary democracy, the East Gate became a sort of landmark for political demonstrations. The democratically elected leaders in such a democratic country, rather than fearing mass demonstrations, are careful to listen to what the massed electors want to convey. This East Gate is also now sited in a roundabout at the intersection of Ketagalan Boulevard and Jhanshan South Road – midway between the Office of the President of the government of the Chinese on Taiwan, and the headquarters of one of the main political parties, the nationalist Kuomintang.
While the East Gate, South Gate and Small South Gate lost much of their original character when they were given facelifts in 1965, the country was run like a one party state and no opposition to the nationalist government’s dictates were allowed. Fortunately, the North Gate, by a quirk of fate, escaped a similar denuding. At the time city planners assumed that it would be dismantled in connection with the construction of an elevated highway. It was saved however for despite martial law, which was in vigour in Taiwan, an island constantly fearful of mainland China’s intentions, popular protests were still staged enough to save it. The proposed highway was eventually redesigned to accommodate the gate, just west of Taipei’s train station.
Taipei is described by some scholars as “the last Ching Dynasty’s feng shui city” alluding to the use of traditional Chinese geomancy to design its basic layout. Our own capital city has no less a claim to its own distinct tradition – are we to be the generation to witness what enemy Nazi, Fascists, Revolutionary French or Ottomans failed to do in tearing down Valletta’s Gate?
G. Bonett
MARSALFORN