How cool is it to be a friend of Taiwan?

Taiwan is not yet waiving visas to Belizeans but this morning it stepped up with a donation that will make events at the House of Culture and group visits to the Museum of Belize much more comfortable. Both locations are significant to Belize’s history and are used for art exhibits and cultural events. What they also had in common, was a lack of proper ventilation; a problem that made visitors uncomfortable and was unaffordable for the National Institute of Culture and History. That’s now about to change as the Taiwanese Ambassador officially handed over fifteen air conditioning units which are being installed at the House of Culture and the Museum. Ambassador David Wu says the donation came about after the visit of the Vice President of Taiwan earlier this year.

David Wu, Ambassador, Republic of China (Taiwan)

David Wu

“It all started when our vice president came here in August and he was very impressed by the beauty and the significance of these two institutes of culture and arts. We were very honored that the Honorable Dean Barrow, Prime Minister, he hosted a dinner here and everything was wonderful, but that night was very, very warm and we thought we might as well collaborate worth the House of Culture. And the next day when he went to the Museum of Belize and we found that perhaps we could have further cooperation with these two institutes of arts and culture about how to improve the ventilation in these two places to attract more tourists, to make them more comfortable and to make them more willing to visit the House of Culture and also the Museum. So we talked with the House of Culture President, Diane Haylock and also the Director of the Museum and finally we decided we can install fifteen air conditioning units; four for the House of Culture in their grand hall and eleven for the Museum of Belize for the ground floor and also the second floor.”

Diane Haylock

Diane Haylock, President, NICH

“You could imagine my amazement and delight when Ambassador contacted me shortly after that visit to indicate to us that they were going to donate some AC units to the National Institute of Culture and History for this room as well as the Museum of Belize. And the same thing happens at the Museum of Belize; we have the upstairs area which again gets really, very hot when visitors in large numbers go through that place. So we really, really appreciate this donation because of course we have continuously asked ourselves, where can we find the money to do this? And you can understand, I have not been able to solve that problem because I think it has actually taken approximately one hundred thousand dollars to actually put units in these two facilities.”

The AC units were installed by Dave’s AC World.