You must be living in the future because I don’t see much in the way of “modern and clean.” I would characterize Taipei today as something more like – well, you said it yourself – a large construction site.
[quote=“hansioux”][quote=“hannes”]Here are some great ones
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/chaotang/16654836[/quote]
great pictures from Taichung and central Taiwan.
it’s amazing how many people were in Fengyuan back then. Today the streets are usually empty…[/quote]
I can imagine it, Fengyuan is still very crowded though compared to other parts of Taichung. You can tell it used to be very prosperous.
You must be living in the future because I don’t see much in the way of “modern and clean.” I would characterize Taipei today as something more like – well, you said it yourself – a large construction site.[/quote]
The Taiwanese ability to ignore all shoddy structures in sight is quite impressive!
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A behind the scenes clip of the upcoming movie KANO. But there are a lot of Japanese era footage of Taiwan.
Taipei’s New Park Baseball Field. Build in 1907. The home plate was first located in the southwest side. When the field was rebuilt in 1917, the plate was moved to the northeast.
First baseball field in Taiwan, which hosted the first ever baseball game recorded in Taiwan. The tower of the Presidential Palace (was the Prefect Palace) can clearly be seen. Today it’s those ponds in the park with the Taiwan Museum across from NTU hospital. The KMT felt baseball fanaticism is a symbol of Japanese colonialism. So when they illegally took over Taiwan, once of the first thing they did was turning it to a soccer field. Then they dug the whole thing up to make the pond in 1961, and built towers to commemorate Sun Yat-sen…
https://maps.google.com/?ll=25.042188,121.515803&spn=0.001652,0.00284&t=h&z=19
US Map of the Japanese era:
The ball park was visible during American bomb raids during WW2. If the picture below looks at bit smoky, that’s cause the city was in flames after American bombing.
(WW2 US aerial photos from gis.rchss.sinica.edu.tw/GIArchive/?p=444)
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/9948/taihoku.jpg
(full picture for better viewing)
In that full picture, follow that thick black smoke coming out of the Prefect Palace, the ballpark is to the left of it at the center of the picture. The Americans did a pretty good job bombing the crap out of Taipei, but left the baseball field intact. That’s darn good precision bombing back in those days.
Life took these in the 50s.
What the baseball field looks like today:
Pretty good, perhaps they avoided the museum.
Absolutely, a pagoda and statue of some Chinese revolutionary is a great way to replace a baseball field.
At least it’s more interesting than baseball. 
What a pity that they did away with the football field. It would be great if Taiwan were a footballing nation.
I agree that baseball can barely count as a sport. But as an American, I find it hard to put my support behind soccer just because I don’t know much about it.
They built the Zhongshan Soccer Stadium and the baseball stadium where now is Taipei Arena. So that might be the reason why New Park was remodeled. Though I don’t know when either of the changes took place.
True, but then they took down Zhongshan Soccer Stadium for the Flora Expo and now it’s sort of an exhibition space. Useful, cool-looking, but not suitable for playing soccer anymore.
They built the new stadium for the Deaflympics on Bade Road instead, which is actually quite nice. In sharp contrast to the football the Taiwan national team plays… those games are uggggly. 
They built the new stadium for the Deaflympics on Bade Road instead, which is actually quite nice. In sharp contrast to the football the Taiwan national team plays… those games are uggggly. [/quote]
Actually, Zhongshan Soccer Stadium was YuanShan baseball field before KMT torn that baseball park down as well. Yuanshan Baseball field was built by the Japanes back in the 1921. It was the second baseball field in Taipei.
Second baseball park in Taiwan, built in 1918, is the Chiayi city baseball park.
Old pictures of Banqiao, 板橋 Pán-kiô, which was known as 枋橋 Pang-kiô
from an article about someone drawing an old map of the walled city of Pang-kiô.
libertytimes.com.tw/2014/new … ots=TPhoto
the source is from the Fang-qiao Culture Organization
facebook.com/pages/%E6%9E%8 … 9789978964
The walled city was built before Taipei city in 1855. The walls were torn down by the Japanese in 1903.
So sad. The entire country has been bulldozed to make way for factories and tenement buildings.
That’s progress, eh? :s
That’s progress, eh? :s[/quote]
Those folk in Dapu may have a thing or two to say about progress.
Unfortunately most factories were built on pristine farming land. Now many factories are being bulldozed and luxury housing built in their place in the cities. But no real planning takes place.
After KANO is released, people seems to have a reignited interests to get to know the Japanese era. Someone on PTT did some of the comparison shots that we did here as well. They added some captions to poke fun at the “beautiful” KMT colonized Taiwan.
disp.cc/b/689-7oZR
Imperial v.s. Sky dragon
Tokyo of Taiwan Taisho Chō Dori v.s. Spooky Town of Taiwan Zhong-Shan Rd.
Kagi Post office v.s. Jia-Yi wtf…
Kirun Station v.s. Ji-long coffin
Japanese’s Kirun Post office v.s. Chinese’s Ji-long Post office
Tainan Taisho Chō Dori v.s. Tainan Zhong-Shan Rd. 2
Prefecture City Shirogane Chō Dori (Platinum District Rd.) v.s. Deteriorating City Zhong-Yi Rd.
Japanese rule v.s. Chinese colonialism
Taihoku Sakae Chō Dori v.s. Taipei City Heng-Yang Rd.
Pingdong station: Return visits v.s. Getting the hell out
Tainan Ginza Dori v.s. Tainan Chiang the mafia Rd. (Zhong-Zheng Rd.)
Imperial Taipei v.s. Chinese Taipei
European v.s. Hellish
I was about to post these same photos!
The pictures are great.
The captions are about to give me an aneurysm.
Some of the comments on the bottom of the PTT page are even worse.