National Taiwan Museum - South Gate Branch Introduction
During the Japanese colonial period, the Government-General of Taiwan established a monopoly on opium in 1897, subsequently incorporating camphor (in 1899), salt (in 1899), tobacco (in 1906), and alcohol (in 1922) into the monopoly business. The "Taipei South Gate Factory of the Government-General of Taiwan Monopoly Bureau" was founded in 1899 as an important production base for the manufacturing and testing of the two main monopoly products: camphor and opium. It was renamed South Gate Factory in 1901, and in 1931, it was further renamed Taipei South Gate Factory, making it the only public camphor processing plant in Taiwan during the Japanese era. After the war, the factory was taken over by the government, and after the February 28 Incident in 1947, the Taiwan monopoly (public sales) business was reduced to three items: tobacco, alcohol, and camphor. In 1952, the factory was renamed Taiwan Provincial Camphor Refinery, and in 1956, it was again renamed Taiwan Provincial Camphor Factory. In December 1967, the camphor industry was opened to private ownership, resulting in the closure of the factory. Today, only a small white building (storage warehouse), a red building (camphor warehouse), and a 400-bushel water reservoir remain, with the existing site area being less than one-eighth of that during the Japanese colonial period. In 1998, the South Gate Factory was designated as a national historic site by the Ministry of the Interior. Starting in 2004, the National Museum of Taiwan, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture (originally the Cultural Construction Commission of the Executive Yuan), began developing the "Taiwan Museum System" as part of the Capital Cultural Park project, repurposing historical urban spaces into museum settings. In 2006, the land and buildings of the factory were transferred from the National Property Administration to the National Museum of Taiwan, which refurbished the historic buildings for exhibition use and constructed a new storage facility, with the restoration and repurposing plan designed by the office of architect Jan Yi-Chung. The restoration process of the factory resembled an anatomical study of architectural history, involving collaboration among various professional fields such as architectural design, structure, electromechanical equipment, preservation, archaeology, traditional crafts, history, and engineering.
