Losheng, welcome to Sinjhuang?
Losheng Leprosy Sanatorium is located in the outskirts of Sinjhuang. Some argue that the locals have tolerated Losheng Leprosy Sanatorium for decades and claimed that the sanatorium hampered the area’s development. However, most locals admit that they’ve never heard about Losheng until this March when the authority announced that the metro would be delayed due to the Losheng campaign. If people had never heard about Losheng before, how could they ‘put up with’ Losheng for long?
“It’s because the majority of the residents come from other cities. Sinjhuang had only ten thousand people when the government sited Losheng over here. Now we have four hundred thousand residents,” Taipei County Councillor Huang Lin Ling-Ling explained.
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| Losheng Sanatorium is located in the outskirts of Sinjhuang. |
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Taipei City Councillor Hsu Chia-Ching notices that even some locals have heard about Losheng, the attitude toward it is negative. “This is part of the reason why they don’t care about Losheng. No matter from what perspective the Losheng supporters try to draw the locals’ interest, it’s just not something that they will identify with,” she commented.
Neighbourhood chief of Losheng’s area Chen Chan-Sen, who has occupied the position for 20 years, said that tolerance of Losheng is not true. “You see we have many new buildings near Losheng. If people are scared of Losheng, what constructors would be so foolish to build a house over here? ”
A Losheng supporter Lin Wan-Chun admitted that a lack of endorsement from the locals is a problem. “At the beginning, we tried face-to-face communication with the locals and found that many agreed with us. But they refused to stand out and speak for us,” she recalled.
Here are some locals talk about Losheng:
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“I don’t rely on the public transport but still I want the metro because the price of my house will increase. I don’t know about Losheng. I put economy and development first.”
Mr Huang, 41, a resident who has lived in Sinjhuang for 30 years
- “I would never accept people saying that Losheng is an asset of Sinjhuang. I have lived here since I was little and I‘ve never heard about Losheng until this March."
- “I have studied at the Fu-Ren University for five years. I had never heard about Losheng before. Is it just fifteen minutes away from our university?"
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