This building was built to issue commands. Now, it has become a place where words are kept. Walk around to the front, and view it from a little distance. A…
Multilingual AI audio guide exhibit on WOUDiO (PWA). WOUDiO pioneered the world’s first audio guide platform with built-in donation: listeners can support the cultural venue without leaving the listening experience. The text below is the localized description, details, and narration script for this audio guide stop.
This building was built to issue commands. Now, it has become a place where words are kept.
Walk around to the front, and view it from a little distance. A central dome, with wings extending left and right. Only the space before the entrance curves outward in an arc. It is an easy shape to remember. Being easy to remember was this building's job.
It was completed in 1916 as the government office of Tainan Prefecture. The architect was Moriyama Matsunosuke. He designed the Governor-General's Office in Taipei, among many of the island's principal government buildings.
A new ruler first builds what can be seen. For a building conveys itself faster than a system of rule ever could. That this shape of government office came to stand all across the island was, in itself, a message.
The interior burned in the war. Afterward it became a city hall, was used for many years, and eventually stood empty. Following restoration, it opened in 2011 as the National Museum of Taiwan Literature.
Step inside, and you find literature written in Taiwan lined up before you. Writers who wrote in Japanese, writers who wrote in Chinese, and those who tried to set down Taiwanese Hokkien or the languages of the island's indigenous peoples.
The words of those who could not choose in what language to write are now kept within the walls of the very office that once decided which language would rule.
