臺北市政府文化局

The Taiwan New Cultural Movement Memorial Hall is housed in a building that was originally the rebuilt Taipei North Police Station, completed in 1933 during the Japanese colonial period. At the time, Taipei was divided into three areas: Taipei City proper, Dadaocheng, and Monga, which were under the jurisdiction of the South Police Station, North Police Station, and Wanhua Substation, respectively. Inside the North Police Station were detention cells and a water dungeon where vagrants, thieves, the unemployed, opium smokers, gamblers, and political prisoners were detained and tortured.

One such detainee was Chiang Wei-shui, a key figure in the Taiwan Cultural Association and the Taiwan People’s Party, who often attracted police attention owing to his prominent role in political activism. Chiang was an early and regular visitor to the North Police Station. 

In his account A Visit to the North Station, Chiang ironically compares the police station to a hotel: 

“They lodged me in the station guest room. I graciously accepted their hospitality, taking off my trousers, shoes, and socks, then going into Room 1 to put my feet up. Inside the room there were already eight or nine other guests sitting down. Upon seeing me, their leader, a gangster joyfully exclaimed, ‘Ah, a star has fallen!’ Everyone gave me a hearty welcome.”

The original police station, where Chiang Wei-shui was detained, was demolished, and a new police station was built in 1933 and was later repurposed as office space for the police force. After a heritage restoration project in 2018, the building was officially reopened as the Taiwan New Cultural Movement Memorial Hall.

The museum preserves intact the fan-shaped detention rooms and the space believed to have been a water dungeon. The dungeon measures only 120 cm high, meaning the average adult could neither have stood upright nor sat down when it filled with water. However, the exact method of how the water dungeon was used to torture prisoners remains unclear to this day.

By looking back on the history of the North Police Station, we can gain insight into how Chiang Wei-shui and others fought to advance the cultural movement in Taiwan.