Notre Dame and the Spontaneous Combustion of Taiwan’s Historic Buildings

This is a translation from the original 悼聖母院大火之後──談台灣歷史建築保存的困境與未來 by Li Chih-ming (李志銘), an author. Originally published by Voicettank. Translation by Tim Smith.

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It has weathered over 800 years worth of history, holding off against the rages of war, witnessing the rise and fall of kingdoms and dynasties. For several centuries, the songs of Parisians, along with the ringing of the bells, and the prayers of multitudes of Catholic adherents, have been a part the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Not only did this cathedral give rise to the Notre-Dame School that created “polyphonic music,” the institution was also the fermenting grounds for what would become the University of Paris. The imposing Gothic-style cathedral that rose out from the middle ages, standing tall to this day, with its exquisite architectural relief and its sacred rose-designed stained-glass windows, had turned into burning cinders overnight.

Construction on the Notre Dame de Paris first started in 1163 and was completed in 1345, over 180 years later. It has been renovated several times throughout history, especially following the French Revolution in 1789, when the destruction in much of Paris was particularly fierce. The cathedral was ransacked and nearly destroyed. The interior statues were severely damaged and several precious cultural items or classic tomes were looted, and the cathedral was even used as storage for wine.

Forty-two years later (1831), author Victor Hugo used the famous building as the backdrop to his story, Notre-Dame de Paris, which became a best-seller. Only then did Parisians once more give their attention to the cathedral. In 1845, the Cathedral finished its culmination of 25 years of renovation, making the church a focal point of not only Paris but also the world, bringing countless tourists to the French capital.

In Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo had lyrically called Notre Dame a “great symphony composed of stone,” describing the cathedral as “a great building resembling that of a tall mountain, created over hundreds of years.” Just from looking at the architecture, the Notre Dame Cathedral may not be the most beautiful cathedral in all of Europe, nor is it the grandest, but it is doubtlessly a place that embodies the spirit and culture of the French nation. Even in movies, the Notre Dame is an eternal landmark of Paris, having become a symbol of emotional loyalty. In the 2004 Richard Linklater film Before Sunset, The male and female leads run into each other several times in Paris. When they take a river cruise on the Seine, they look towards Notre Dame as the female lead says: “But you have to think that Notre Dame will be gone one day.” Nobody thought this utterance could ever be a prophecy.

Watching the first images of the fires, people couldn’t help but think of a miserable, post-war Europe, with only the shells of bombed out buildings remaining. Despite this recent disaster, this is by no means the Notre Dame’s worst cataclysm. If we look back into the past of this Gothic edifice, the entire premises is a reminder of the scars of history. Fortunately, as long as the light of faith resides within people, there, hope also remains.

Natural disaster versus intentional destruction

Far away in Taiwan, many people immediately expressed sorrow over the losses of Notre Dame. Yet we have no doubt that the French will do everything they can to preserve and restore their prized cultural treasures, even if it might take several decades. Even though rebuilding Notre Dame is a daunting task, everyone expects the French to restore Notre Dame to its former glory no matter what it takes.

If this happened in Taiwan, who knows if anyone would have the patience for it. Certainly, us Taiwanese would “pray for Paris” or express sympathy for Notre Dame, but what about the cultural sites in our own backyards? Various databases such as the Taiwan Cultural Assets Fire List, The Master List of Monument Arson and Google Maps’ Taiwan Cultural Assets Fire and Damage Map show that almost every month there are historical buildings that have “spontaneously combusted” for no reason. There are even more old buildings that haven’t yet been officially registered as cultural assets, which conveniently “goes up in flames on its own” when the land is up for grabs by developers. These things are so common that we don’t think twice about them.

In other words, while the fire that devastated the Notre Dame Cathedral is a “natural disaster,” Taiwanese historic buildings going up in flames is clearly the result of profit-generating arson!

These arson cases are so common the authorities have no way of catching up with them. According to a 2016 SanLi News report, a Japanese architectural specialist, Watanabe Yoshihiro, wrote a book titled A Timeline of Taiwan’s Japanese-Era Buildings, in which he worked with Taiwanese netizens via Google Maps to create a digital map of Japanese buildings, collecting together a record of nearly 1,000 existing structures belonging to the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan’s history. However, Watanabe didn’t leave the map accessible for long. The reason being was that he wanted to prevent unscrupulous developers from using his map to find these buildings and burn them to the ground.

Watanabe points out that during Japan’s economic bubble in the 80’s, quite a lot of arson cases were started for similar reasons. But following the burst of the economic bubble, the land value in Japan had plummeted, which in turn saved the remaining historic buildings from redevelopment.

Owing to the Taiwanese people’s “pragmatism,” history and heritage isn’t high on Taiwan’s priority list. We see this in the indifference towards Taiwan’s own mother languages, cultural assets, and other markers of our identity. Many people have an attitude of “just let it burn.”

Included among followers of this mindset is Taipei’s mayor, Ko Wen-je. Although Ko has said things like “the progress of the city won’t come if we sacrifice our cultural sites” or “urban development and economic policy should both maintain a principle of ‘cultural priority’,” since taking office in 2014 he began calling preservationists and academics “cultural terrorists,” claiming they are holding the city’s development hostage. At the same time, he thoroughly capitulated to construction consortiums and businessmen, even calling the new cultural assets protections passed by the parliament “unconstitutional.” Ko has thoroughly showed his true self after he was elected, ditching his campaign promises.

As for implementing cultural property laws, fundamentally solving the chaos of “cultural assets arson” requires not solely relying on volunteers in community nonprofits, but rather establishing a robust system to properly account for heritage value in property evaluations. At the very least we should make the process of registering cultural assets public and transparent. This system should provide information and advice to property owners and developers, and be authorized to subsidize owners for loss of redevelopment opportunities, costs for maintenance, or other property value transfers.

But for those who are negligent in protecting cultural assets or those who intentionally destroy cultural assets, there should be severe consequences such as being banned from land development. There should also be a comprehensive listing of active historic sites and disaster prevention management. With these kinds of changes in place, we can save even more cultural assets.

Preservation and repurposing

Historic sites don’t just need preservation. They also benefit greatly from appropriate maintenance and use. They are not simply a dead physical space from the past, and we should think of them as assets to create more value right now. They can be a nexus for creativity, life, culture and tourism.

Historical monuments are living beings. They live and they die. What’s important is that their spirit never dies. As long as their stories are there and their data is recorded in history, they can rise from the ashes.

Prior to the Notre Dame fire, Ubisoft, a well-known video game developer in France, had consulted with historians and art specialists for over two years to create 3D-model scans of the cathedral for Ubisoft’s game “Assassins’ Creed: Unity.” Ubisoft used the scans and research to build up a completely detailed digital model of the building, which is now immensely helpful to the rebuilding process of the cathedral.

Coincidentally, in 2018, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture and Academia Sinica’s Digital Culture Center collaborated in a special exhibition at the “Taiwan Comics Base” located near Taipei Main Station. The exhibition features the upcoming film Scrolls of a Northern City, featuring historical Taipei as the backdrop. It showcases a 3D model of the famed former Kikumoto Department Store (currently a nondescript office building) in an entire reproduction of Japanese colonial Taipei as imagined by manga artist ARKU. His artwork includes the old Sakaemachi district (modern Taipei’s Hengyang Road), a newly-opened Kikumoto Department Store from 1932, as well as the 1935 Taiwan Exhibition.

The Taiwan Digital Model Library, which is a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Science and Technology, currently has a hundred digital models, including existing buildings such as Taipei 101, the Red House in Ximending, models of 44 kinds of insects and other animals, and 25 historical monuments and sites from the files of the Cultural Assets Bureau of the Ministry of Culture. Some of these buildings have already long disappeared, such as the original Kikumoto Department Store and the Chung-hwa Market Bazaar, but will continue to appear in works such as Scrolls of a Northern City and Magician on the Skywalk.

(Feature photo of Notre Dame by Antoninnnnn for Wikicommons, CC BY-SA 4.0)