Xindian Chen Surgical Hospital

A well-preserved post-war hospital standing on Guangming Street (光明街) in Xindian, opened in 1958, reportedly as the first surgical clinic in what was then known as Taipei County. It was funded by Lin Xiuqing (林秀卿), operator of the nearby Hemei Coal Mine (和美煤礦), who recognized that the area’s miners had little access to medical care; his son-in-law, Dr. Chen Changti (陳昌梯), ran the practice. Mining injuries made up much of its early caseload, and the hospital doubled as an emergency room, a community gathering place, and the district’s volunteer coroner, with Dr. Chen certifying deaths and performing autopsies for the police and courts.

Improved transportation access, the decline of the coal industry, and the opening of more modern hospitals in the late 1960s steadily eroded the importance of this small clinic. It rebranded as a general clinic at some point and closed around 1995, when National Health Insurance took effect. The family has kept the building and its equipment intact, and it has since served as a filming location for the television drama Light The Night (華燈初上); it now opens to the public roughly once a month.