Occupying an area of about 3,025m2, Sun Yat-sen Park adjoining to the Taipei Main Station is located at No. 46, Section 1, Zhongshan North Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City. Inside the park sits the “Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House.” Besides introducing Dr. Sun’s traces in Taiwan with paintings and photos, related artefacts such as the tea table, manuscripts, historical documents, and photos of Dr. Sun are also displayed in the house. There is also the desk and chair used by Dr. Sun collected from San Francisco, USA. In the park, there are pines, bamboo, plum trees, ponds, cloisters, zigzag bridges, and lawns. Cherry blossoms and azalea also vie for blooming, enriching the Chinese garden state of the park.
The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House inside the Sun Yat-sen Park was originally the Umeyashiki Ryokan (Umeyashiki Hotel) during Japanese colonization. It is a rectangular building with a dull black “ideal (cement) tile” roof and tightly bonded eaves and clapboard sidings of about 132–165m2 (40–50 tsubo) built in 1899. Around the house short plum trees are grown to make the place secluded and elegant. When dwelling there in 1912, Dr. Sun wrote the characters “博愛” (fraternity) in calligraphy for the hotel owner Muneyoshi Yamato and the characters “同仁” (equality) for his brother Ichiro Fujii as souvenirs. In 1946 the government transformed the Umeyashiki Ryokan into the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House, and late President Chiang Kai-Shek even personally wrote the characters “博愛” (fraternity) on the horizontal tablet overhead the entrance. Inside the house there is a square table and cushions in the exact arrangement when Dr. Sun dwelled there.
In 1983, the Taipei Underground Railway Project was initiated. As the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House was located right above the East Tunnel, and there was strict gradient control for the sinking angle, it was necessary to relocate the building for this key national project. After the project was completed, the house was rebuilt about 50m north of its original location, with China Engineering Consultant, Inc. being the planner and RSEA Engineering Corporation the constructor. The house building was completed on Dr. Sun’s birthday on November 12, 1986, and the whole garden project was completed at the end of February 1987. The central government decided to designate the management and maintenance of the house to the Taipei City Government. On March 12, Dr. Sun’s death anniversary, in the same year, the house was reopened.
Inside the new Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House, records regarding Dr. Sun’s trips to Taiwan are displayed to demonstrate its educational value for history and historical characters. At the “12th Taipei City Cultural Heritage Assessment Committee Meeting” on August 29, 2007, the Department of Cultural Affairs made a resolution on the On October 17, 2007, “Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House Cultural Heritage Valuation Project” to approve the House as a historical building of Taipei City and renamed it the “國父史蹟館” (English name remained as “Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House.” On June 23, 2008, the name on the entrance archway was also changed from “Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House” into “Sun Yat-sen Park,” and a new spatial nameplate “Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial House” was erected in front of the House for name rectification.
