Restoration work began on the Commander’s Dormitory, one of the buildings of the Japanese Colonial Era Guanxi Police Station historic site building cluster, on January 13. Work will last 300 days and is scheduled for completion in November 2016.
Director of the county government Cultural Affairs Bureau Tsai, Rong-guang said that the overall restoration of the historic site will involve expenditure of around NT$80 million and will be divided into three stages. For the first stage, a subsidy of NT$12.6 million has been received from the Hakka Affairs Council; the original Japanese style wooden employee dormitory will become a backpackers’ hostel and, in future, will be linked with the Zhongzheng Road cultural and creative block plan, the aim being to drive the development of culture and art and in-depth tourism in Guanxi.
Guanxi Township has four historic sites, namely Taihe Temple, Cheng Ancestral Shrine, Dongan Bridge and Guanxi Police Station (including the Commander’s Dormitory and Policemen’s Dormitory,) as well as four historic buildings: Shude Hospital, Taiwan Black Tea Co., Guanxi YuZhang Hall Luo Family School, Guanxi Nanyang Hall Deng Family; it also has Guanxi Catholic Church, Guanxi First Theater, Jintai Tea Factory, and other places of substantial historic significance and value.
Director Tsai said although the township has a number of cultural attractions, for a while Guanxi has lacked places to attract tourists. This time the “big living room” concept has been put forward, with the old Guanxi Police Station at the core, designating the area as a tourist gateway; using a staged method, the entire area will be restored and reused to form a local historic site park and create different kinds of tourism charm.