Tug of war at Dalong Elementary
The archaeological site discovered on the campus of Dalong Elementary School, Taipei's oldest elementary school, has not been nearly as fortunate the one in Tayuan.
Like the Dayuan site, the Dalong site was discovered by chance: While the Taipei City Urban Redevelopment Office was working on the Six Arts Plaza in the Dalongdong Cultural District, a local came across the remains of what was possibly a fortified compound dating to the Qing dynasty. Last September, the Taipei City Cultural Affairs Bureau put together a committee to evaluate the site and asked Liu I-chang to begin a preliminary dig.
The archaeological team started work right near the Six Arts Plaza, excavating four trenches on the playground of Dalong Elementary and five others around the campus. During the first part of their dig, they uncovered wooden sandals, rubber boots, and other everyday items from the Japanese era, as well as Meiji-era coins. As they went deeper, they found coins dating to the reigns of the Qing emperors Daoguang and Qianlong. At a depth of 1.5 meters, they began to find traces of prehistoric artifacts from a single cultural stratum, likely that of the Hsuntangpu, who were active 4,300 to 2,000 years ago. They had originally been looking for Qing-dynasty objects and were astounded to have uncovered a completely new prehistoric site.
However, the Dalong site hasn't received the same kind of government, private and scholarly support that the Dayuan Primary site has, and it faces some difficult problems.
"The Dalongdong neighborhood is crowded, and the streets are terribly congested. We finally got the government to undertake a comprehensive redevelopment of the area and were expecting them to build an underground parking lot under Dalong Elementary, but now it's halted again?" exclaims Mrs. Tsai, a 20-year resident, relating locals' expectations of redevelopment. On the other side of the debate are cultural workers who want to preserve the neighborhood's historic value.
"The historic buildings in the neighborhood of Dalong Elementary, including Bao'an Temple, the Confucian Temple, and the row of 44 old shops along Hami Street, are northern Taiwan's most precious educational monuments," says Chen Ying-tsung, voicing the concerns his organization, the Dalongdong History and Culture Studio, has about the neighborhood. "More than 10,000 people have signed a petition requesting that this historic area be preserved in its original form. Now that a 4,500-year-old archaeological site has been unearthed, the city government has no excuse for not halting the construction."
Liu says that since Dalong Elementary is an educational institution, there are no questions about who controls the land, which has allowed the site to be preserved to the present day. However, the school is in an old neighborhood in the crowded Tatung District, where there is little space to relocate the school or the proposed parking lot. He therefore believes the best solution is to allow the school and the prehistoric site to coexist.
But if this approach doesn't pan out, then what? Liu's opinion as an archaeologist is that when the school is rebuilt, all construction should be banned from the southern part of the campus, where the prehistoric site is best preserved. Meanwhile, construction on the northern part should only proceed after it has been explored and evaluated by archaeologists. In short, he proposes a compromise that preserves half of the site as it is and the other half as data.
As for the redevelopment project, Wang Chun-ting, a planner with Taipei City's Department of Cultural Affairs, says that coordinating with the various public works departments has been the most difficult problem. The issue is that the New Construction Office of the city's Public Works Bureau, which is responsible for handing out the contracts for the work, has never before had to simultaneously build a school and preserve a prehistoric site. Since all the contracts have already been issued, withdrawing them and revising the project will require the payment of compensation to the contractors and raise legal questions. The situation has been referred to the mayor's office, and a final decision is pending.
Map of the Dalongdong Cultural District