Losheng Sanatorium:The Price of Preservation

Though named Losheng ("happy life"), life and death in this place were never very far apart.

From the top of the hill, passing some grass-covered graves recently damaged by arson, we come to some buildings on the periphery, including two churches and a Buddhist temple. In front of the temple is a dark green banyan tree dubbed the "suicide tree" by residents. In their quest for deliverance from the torment of their illness, patients would hang themselves from the tree using strips of cloth.

As we progress downward, the triple-sectioned main structure comes into view, in the shape of two back-to-back E's. Here we can see how the Losheng Sanatorium was designed with quarantine as its main purpose, with the sections isolating the pathogens and patients. In the middle is a "changing room" that served as a restricted area between the second and third sections: medical practitioners and patients passing through were disinfected here.

note: The buildings on the Losheng campus were built up the hillside over time. Thus the oldest and most important of them, the hospital building, is at the bottom. However, the 41% preservation plan proposed by DORTS includes only the residential area further up the slope.

Streams of tears

When Losheng stopped admitting new patients in 1996, after more than 70 years, there were more than 300 people living within the foliage-enshrouded dormitory area. But even earlier, in 1994, plans for the Hsinchuang Line had been completed, with the sanatorium site earmarked for use as a train maintenance yard. The seeds of today's struggle over Losheng's preservation were sown at that time.

In fact, in 2001 the sanatorium management intended to apply for historic building status for Losheng and asked the Taipei County Government to come and investigate. However, the county government said they could not consider the case because the MRT line had already been planned. The same year, legislators including Luo Wen-chia addressed this issue, and asked the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) to convene an emergency hearing.

Yet the attitude of the CCA at that time was not very positive regarding this cultural preservation dispute. The Taipei City Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS), an interested party in the dispute, was also unresponsive, and bulldozers closed in on Losheng, tearing parts of it down. At the same time, a plan to build a new hospital area and help patients move there was carried out.

By March 2007, 175 of over 300 sanatorium patients had moved into a new building adjacent to the old one and 49 had returned home or moved into the community. The level of satisfaction of patients who moved into the new building was quite high. Despite this, 70 patients remain unwilling to relocate into the new facility, insisting on staying in the sanatorium where they have lived for decades.

These elderly patients, averaging 75.2 years of age and having lived in the hospital as long as 42.5 years, have little recollection of the homes they left while still young. In the Losheng dormitories, encircled by green trees and chirping birds, they have whiled away the years in the company of old friends; this undoubtedly is the best destination for their twilight years. Whether from simple nostalgia or refusal to be trifled with by government authorities again, these old folks are acting on their final, humble wish to defend their home turf, giving legitimacy to Losheng's preservation.

Secondly, in terms of preservation for the sake of community memory, Losheng Sanatorium is the only existing historic site that is witness to the modern history of epidemic control in Taiwan, and also offers an excellent opportunity to meditate on patients' rights. In post-SARS Taiwan, after the experience of the onslaught of an emerging epidemic, Losheng's value is even more evident.

Involving patients' rights and cultural value, the issue of Losheng's preservation has attracted great support from cultural circles as well as social organizations such as the Losheng Youth Alliance. After years of construction work, about 70% of the left and right sections of the original sanatorium campus has already been dug up, and with the imminent demolition of the remaining central area, calls for preservation have been mounting.

In 2005, the protests of the Losheng Youth Alliance began to grab public attention, drawing support from such figures as film director Hou Hsiao-hsien, Professor Hsia Chu-joe of NTU's Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, and Japanese theater director Daizo Sakurai. That November, the alliance and these celebrities allied with students from numerous universities in a protest movement for the Losheng Sanatorium residents. They besieged the CCA, calling for them to immediately proclaim Losheng as a provisional historic site.

The CCA accepted the proposal. Then in March 2006, the Taipei County Government organized a committee to evaluate the site. However, despite the case's having grown into a national issue, the committee acknowledged that Losheng has value as a national cultural asset, but declined to designate it a historic site.

Shortly thereafter, after consulting DORTS the county government proposed a "partial preservation" plan for the remaining 41% of the site, and suggested the two main buildings should be preserved by taking them and reassembling them elsewhere. The proposal was supported by the Executive Yuan, but did not satisfy the protest groups. In February 2007, the CCA commissioned the British engineering consulting firm Mott McDonald Group to do a study, and then proposed a new plan to preserve 90% of the remaining campus.

The CCA gradually solidified its stance from declaring the sanatorium a provisional historic site to proposing the 90% preservation plan. But Hsinchuang's civic representatives, eager for the deadline for the MRT line's opening to be met, fear that should the issue not be settled soon, the opening will be delayed indefinitely. So at the end of March a number of Taipei County councilors held a 10,000-strong march, expressing their indignation and concern at the government's postponing MRT construction for the sake of Losheng.

Hidden in the mountains of Hsinchuang, the main grounds of the Losheng Sanatorium are now a barren expanse, having ceased operation years ago. But now that the area is seen as a valuable cultural asset, it has once again become a center of attention.

A zero-sum game?

From the responses of the Taipei County Government, the CCA and the Executive Yuan, it is not hard to see that Losheng's value as a cultural asset has been affirmed. Yet, after the Hsinchuang demonstration, this matter gradually grew into a confrontation between MRT supporters and Losheng preservationists. Is the oft-seen conflict between preservation and progress inevitable?

No matter how lofty the ideal, we need to look at realities, and two key elements of such realities are time and money.

The foreign-endorsed plan proposed by the CCA states that the preserving 90% of the remainder of Losheng would only cost an additional NT$290 million and delay construction by four months. But this is worlds apart from the estimate of DORTS.

According to DORTS' estimates, with contractors' claims for construction delay on contracts already issued for electric trains, control systems, track, and civil engineering, the indemnity due will be as high as NT$1 billion for each year the opening is put off. If extant buildings were to be fully preserved on their original sites, the MRT tracks would have to be rerouted, delaying completion by 62 months and increasing the cost by NT$4.5 billion; or the train yard would have to be relocated. However, in view of the rising clamor of calls for Losheng's preservation, DORTS has stated that if the government makes a policy decision to save the site, it will cooperate.

After MRT construction began here in 2002, as much as 70% of the Losheng Sanatorium campus was demolished. However, the tranquil, age-old residence area, including the dorm in the rear left, are still preserved.

Rejecting a standoff

Standing in solitude in Hsinchuang gazing at the slopes of Kueishan, Losheng, with its vegetation and buildings, is gradually withering like the patients who live inside. The hectic world outside is completely cut off from them, but at present they draw our attention.

On April 13, Premier Su Tseng-chan requested Taipei County's Bureau of Transportation to once again defer the demolitions, and the preservation effort entered the key final two months. Preservation advocates have raised suspicions of government collusion with vested business interests, while supporters of demolition are suspicious of the attention-seeking of celebrities, egging on the sanatorium residents to take a stand and making the situation impossible to turn around. How should we choose between the 41% and 90% solutions? How can a true estimate of the 90% solution be quickly evaluated? These matters are of particular concern.

After three years of tumult, the Losheng issue is destined to become an instructive reference for Taiwan in the preservation of cultural assets. How can culture be treated as an asset? What is the cost--financial and otherwise--of preservation? By comparing concrete data from the two preservation proposals, the solution should not be difficult to arrive at. For this reason too, during the final two months before the deadline set by Premier Su, what awaits decision is not only the fate of Losheng, but also what Taiwan values. When the decision is announced, we hope that there will be no regrets in anyone's hearts.

Hidden in the mountains of Hsinchuang, the main grounds of the Losheng Sanatorium are now a barren expanse, having ceased operation years ago. But now that the area is seen as a valuable cultural asset, it has once again become a center of attention.

note: The buildings on the Losheng campus were built up the hillside over time. Thus the oldest and most important of them, the hospital building, is at the bottom. However, the 41% preservation plan proposed by DORTS includes only the residential area further up the slope.

Though the patient dorm area is old and crumbling, its low-rise design lets in more light than does modern hospital architecture. It's a place some residents refuse to move away from.

Though the patient dorm area is old and crumbling, its low-rise design lets in more light than does modern hospital architecture. It's a place some residents refuse to move away from.

Though the patient dorm area is old and crumbling, its low-rise design lets in more light than does modern hospital architecture. It's a place some residents refuse to move away from.