Taiwan Today

Educators from the United States and Europe would like to incorporate the thinking that goes into traditional Taiwan temple design and construction in their teaching materials. A film documenting temple preservation in Taiwan, made by Lu Huei-min, a professor at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, has attracted much attention at the 2009 Licensing International Expo in Las Vegas in the U.S. Staff from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Discovery Research K-12 program believe Lu’s film, a three-dimensional animation, could be made into an educational game for the development of logical thinking for elementary and middle school students. Canadian and German toy manufacturers have also contacted Lu, with the idea of making “Xin Hui Temple” into an educational game along the line of building blocks. Xin Hui Temple in Xinyuan township, Pingtung County, was built in 1926. The architect and craftsmen blended the spirit of western architecture with traditional Taiwanese temple structure, creating Taiwan’s unique diedou timber-frame structure. Lu said diedou timber-frame structure uses tenon and mortoise joints to put building components together in layers, without using a single nail. It is Taiwan’s most traditional and complex structure, utilizing simple but elegant construction techniques. Lu said she learned in 2005 that local residents planned to demolish the 83-year-old Xin Hui Temple and build a new temple on the site. “When we got this news,” she said, “backhoes were already at the temple. We urgently began preservation work, asking the temple to give us two months to survey and record the building’s structure, dismantle the entire thing, and move it to the campus for rehabilitation and step-by-step reconstruction. Then we applied to the National Science Council for the Rural Art Museum Digital Archive Project.” The NSC estimates that Taiwan products on exhibit at the Las Vegas expo are worth NT$600 million (US$18.25 million). In addition to Xin Hui Temple, the cartoon pictures produced by Bright Ideas Design, Artilize Worldwide and Cathay Creative are receiving a great deal of attention from buyers from around the world. (THN)