Taipei, Nov. 18 (CNA) A special zone will be built to help preserve Pepo culture after a culture park for that purpose was destroyed by Typhoon Morakot in early August, Kaohsiung Magistrate Yang Chiu-hsin said Wednesday. Yang was referring to the Pepo cultural park in Siaolin village, in the southern county's Jiasian township, parts of which were buried under mudslides triggered by the typhoon.
The Red Cross Society of the Republic of China has commissioned a consultancy company to plan the new culture park and permanent housing units to help settle the typhoon-affected victims in the village.
"There will be no problem with setting up a culture zone in Siaolin, " Yang said, adding that he has asked the county's cultural bureau to confer on the zone with the Cabinet-level Council for Cultural Affairs.
Yang also said he has asked the tax authorities to study the possibility of waiving land value and house taxes for the permanent housing units, which are also being built by the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation in addition to the Red Cross.
More than 80 percent of the residents of Siaolin village belong to the Pepo tribe, which generally refers to the Austronesian aborigines living in the plains areas of Taiwan.
(By Chen Shou-kuo and Lilian Wu)
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