The Chiang Family Village in Lu Tao Yang near the southern Taiwan city of Tainan is a living relic, an archetype of China’s traditional agricultural society. A village in which all inhabitants belong to the same extended family and share the same family name is indeed rarely seen in other parts of Taiwan today. What else makes the Chiang Family Village so remarkable? In addition to the southern Fujian architecture, three things stand out to the inquisitive visitor: the village’s feng shui, the Chiang family’s “village rules,” and the village’s own martial arts battle array.
Germany has its medieval Rothenburg, and the US has its Colonial Williamsburg. On a smaller but no less intriguing scale, Taiwan’s Chiang Family Village attracts its own share of curious visitors and seasoned travelers each year. They come in search of insight into a forgotten Chinese era filled with customs and practices as captivating as those found in more widely publicized historic sites throughout the world.
A unique attraction of the Chiang Family Village is its genealogical purity and its demographic cohesiveness: all residents of the village are related, by blood or through marriage, to a common ancestor in mainland China. They share the same family name, observe the same family rules, and live together in a collection of houses that follow a special design representative of their place of origin on the mainland. Approximately five hundred people live in the Chiang family village now, within an area roughly the size of a large city block in downtown Taipei.
Elder Chiang is one of the oldtimers in the village. He is also one of its oral historians. “Back in the old days,” he tells a group of inquisitive visitors, “our people planted rice, but then the bottom dropped out. So we decided to plant fruit trees instead.” He pauses, fixing his eyes on some distant point as if simultaneously reminiscing about and reliving a sad memory. “That was okay for a while, but eventually the profits dwindled to the point that many of our people had to move to the city to find jobs. Now that the price of fruit has gone up and conditions in the city are not so good, many of our young ones have moved back here.”
Elder Chiang perks up a little as he talks about the present day. “The young guys today grow lots of fruit trees--papaya, mango, guava, orange, carambola. Sometimes they find work in the factories around here or take jobs in construction or as housepainters. Our girls help with the fruit farming or go to the factories. Only a few of the women stay in the village to take care of the kids.” He grins. “That’s Grandma’s job.”
The village was first built in the Ching dynasty by Chiang Ju-nan (江如南), the twelfth generation of the Chiang family and its first member to immigrate to Taiwan from Zhangzhou in Fujian Province. During the Ching dynasty (1644-1911), due to huge gambling debts he had amassed, Chiang Ju-nan left his family behind in mainland Fujian and set out for Taiwan. It is said that he brought with himself only two things: the incense pouch of his distant ancestor Chiang Wan-li (江萬里), and a pair of bamboo blocks used in divination. While he was wandering through the fields of Taiwan in search of a place to stay, he always used the bamboo to practice divination with Chiang Wan-li’s pouch in order to find out whether this place or that would bring him good luck. This practice is what eventually led him to Lu Tao Yang (鹿陶洋, a place name meaning “herds of deer running away to the plain,” in the language of southern Fujian). There, in 1721, he established his family’s village.
The best way to appreciate the Chiang family’s village today is to go there by bus. The short ride from urban Tainan, through the villages and townships of Yungkang, Hsinhua, Yuching and Nanhsi, is just under four kilometers. On the way, visitors are eased back in time--a necessarily gradual transformation from the democracy and highrises of the city, to the patriarchy and unburnt brick of the Chiangs’ village. After passing Nanhsi, bus-trekkers soon catch sight of the Lutien police station. The bus takes a turn down the lane just right of the police station, and the fish pond of the Chiang Family Village soon comes into view on the left.
Arriving at noontime on a typical day, visitors first happen upon “the greeting pavilion,” where they are likely to see some elderly folks sitting on benches chatting, surrounded by a gaggle of happy toddlers. According to Chiang Shui-he, manager of the Chiang Family Village Company, one of the village’s organizations, “the youngest inhabitants of the village are now schoolboys, the 24th generation of the Chiang family in the mainland, the 12th generation down from Chiang Ju-nan, who was the first member of his family to immigrate to Taiwan. Right now, there are about eighty families living in the village,” boasts Chiang, while admitting that “men of the village usually marry girls from the adjacent villages, and their children all go to schools in the neighboring areas.” On any given day, one may see a variety of members of the extended Chiang family at the greeting pavilion.
In fact, the current site of the village is not the original place Chiang Ju-nan settled in Taiwan. Before building his family’s village in Lu Tao Yang, he lived in two neighboring areas. One reason for Chiang Ju-nan’s nomadic lifestyle during his early days in Taiwan was his belief in feng shui (Chinese geomancy), which influenced him to search for the most suitable place to put down roots. As soon as he noticed the physical layout of the area, he made up his mind to start his family’s village there. Today, the property is part of Lutien village in Nanhsi Township, which is part of Tainan County.
According to feng shui, the Chinese philosophy of choosing the most suitable sites for buildings and burial-places, a house is best situated in front of a hill and facing a pool. The Chinese characters can mean “hill” or “a protector in a high position on whom one can depend.” The importance of the pool is also related to concepts central to feng shui. Feng (風, wind) and shui (水, water), in proper relationship, bring about the best conditions for chi (氣, favorable influence). A pool in front of the house can help accumulate chi to benefit the household. The Chiang Family Village was built before a hill, but since there was no pond, family members simply created their own to make up for nature’s oversight.
At first glance, the fish pond at the Chiang Family Village seems no different from any other commercial fish pond in Taiwan today. It has large, multicolored parasols fixed on its banks, and stools underneath with accompanying plastic buckets on one side to contain a visit’s catch of fish. As at other such ponds, bait and fishing rods are available to paying customers. After paying an admission fee, customers are entitled to a seat under one of the colored parasols to enjoy a quiet afternoon. Before it reached its current incarnation as a profit-generating enterprise, however, the fish pond was originally the Chiang family’s feng shui pool.
Evidence of Chiang Ju-nan’s knowledge of feng shui is not hard to find in his village. Even the topography of the pair of small hills that “frame” his descendants’ homes has its significance in feng shui, since this means that the house is “protected” by hills on both sides. The hills are named chung (鐘,“bell”) and ku (鼓,“drum”).
As the elders of the Chiang Family Village point out, before the thoroughfare in front of the village pond was constructed and the property cut into halves during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan (1895-1945), the village property included the farmland on the outskirts of the village. The additional property included the back hill of Lu Tao Yang, as well as the tomb of Chiang Ju-nan and a small temple in front of the fish pond dedicated to the Taoist god of land. These religious elements are important considerations to anyone versed in the tenets of feng shui.
Likewise, the location and orientation of an ancestor’s grave is said to exert a mystical influence on the descendants, either benefiting or harming them. Knowing this, Chiang Ju-nan mandated that his grave never be moved under any circum stances. Improper feng shui, Chiang Ju-nan believed, could have disastrous consequences for future generations of his family.
Constructed in the style typical of southern Fujian architecture, the Chiang Family Village consists mainly of a row of three courtyards that serve as a sort of “central axis,” with each courtyard surrounded by houses at three sides. At the left side are seven wings and at the right side, six. When visitors approach the square between the fish pond and the main entrance of the central axis, the first thing they notice is that all the houses of the village are single-storied.
Yeh Chia-hsiung (葉佳雄), director of the Tainan County Cultural Center and an expert in early Taiwan architecture in the Tainan area, explains the Chiang family village’s three-hundred-year devotion to tradition: “All the houses of the Chiang family village remain one-storied despite the fact that some houses built with unburnt bricks have gradually been replaced by houses made with bamboo wicker, houses covered by tiles, houses built with red brick, and finally cement houses. This is a successful example of historical relic preservation, which is attributed to the strict observance of the family rules by all of Chiang’s offspring,” he admits respectfully.
Strolling contemplatively along the front of the first square, visitors today come upon two banyan trees, one at each side. At the right corner of the square not far from the first tree is a pavilion containing the thurible for burning gold foil paper money. Believers burn the ersatz currency to send it to the netherworld, as an “allowance” for the dead and as a form of bribery to the deities. Lining both sides of the square are rows of houses, every one of which is one-storied. The right row belongs to the family of the third son and the left to the family of the fourth son. Likewise, the right wing of the public hall is regarded as having a more respectable status; therefore, it is allocated to the first son’s family, while the left wing is given to the second son. All of these positionings reflect the traditional Chinese belief in the superiority of the right side.
Yeh explains that, although the Chiang Family Village is impressive enough today simply for the fact that it is a traditional Chinese agricultural town from a bygone era seldom seen today in other parts of Taiwan, the most intriguing aspect of its continued existence is the Chiang family’s regulations. One of the most important of these stipulates that all the houses in the Chiang Family Village are common property, and that without majority consent, no resident is free to sell the property to people who have family names other than Chiang. Additionally, the rules specify that living quarters to the right of each house are for the exclusive use of the families of Chiang’s male offspring. Daughters of the Chiang household, after marriage, must live outside of the village. As a result, all residents of the village have the same Chiang family name.
The Chiang family rules also serve to protect the integrity of the architecture. There is a clause mandating that houses not be built higher than the public hall in this village. Other rules require that a punishment be meted out to anyone who damages public property. This rule is applied impartially to anyone over the age of ten; damage done by any child under the age of ten results in punishment of the young perpetrator’s parents.
The attention given to form, as evinced in the Chiang family rules, is simply another reflection of an underlying concern for harmony, for good feng shui. The primary importance of the principle of balance--be it legal, familial or architectural--impresses anyone who visits the Chiang Family Village today. Symmetry is the organizing principle behind the basic architectural layout of the village.
The first part of the main building is a gate roofed with red tiles with two square pillars at both sides. At the lower part of the pillars is engraved a Chinese couplet of four words, reading “make good friends away from home, and harmonize with the family at home, to achieve prosperity.” This area is the greeting pavilion visitors encounter first when they exit the bus that brings them to the village. The pavilion is a place for the host to receive guests.
At the front side of the pavilion are situated two large storerooms, each about the size of a single-car garage. They are separated by a low brick wall decorated with hollowed-out glazed tiles, which flank the main entryway to the pavilion. The storeroom on the right houses the weapons used in the village’s sung chiang battle array, while the one on the left stores pots, pans, bowls and other kitchen utensils used at the family’s annual lease-renewing feast.
The lease-renewing feast, called Chih Kung (“eating at the landlord’s estate”), is only one of the many Chiang family customs passed down from generation to generation. This feast is held every year on June 20, according to the lunar calendar. The date is significant to the Chiang family in that it is believed to be the birthday of their eminent ancestor, Chiang Wan-li, who is also revered as the family’s guardian. Out of respect, Chiang’s descendants call him “Duke Tung Feng,” a title be stowed on him by an emperor of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1276) after Chiang rescued him from a perilous situation. In Taoism, people who sacrifice their lives for the common good are usually accorded a posthumous title of nobility. The venue of the Chih Kung feast is usually the public hall behind the first courtyard. The feast is an occasion for social inter course among family members and tenants, but also for members of the household to discuss practical matters such as taxes, repair of houses, and assorted expenses.
At the entrance to the greeting pavilion, one sees the public hall behind a narrow courtyard. The hall is a long, rectangular-shaped building, constructed parallel to the front wall of the greeting pavilion. Under a red-tiled roof, the front gate leads straight through the courtyard to the rear gate. Both gates are open and doorless, so one can see through them to the second courtyard and the hall for worshiping the Taoist deities. Above the entrance to the public hall is a wooden board with four Chinese words written horizontally, meaning “the virtue of the anscestors spreads fragrance.” It’s a Chinese custom that families look upon their ancestors as saints, and one the Chiang family follows.
At each side of the front door of the public hall, a Chinese couplet of seven words is inscribed on the pillars. The couplet usually says something propitious for the family, but what is remarkable is that the two Chinese characters for Chiang Ju-nan’s given name are incorporated into the two lines of the couplet. Although the walls of the public hall were constructed with large windows that can be closed, the hall is open to everyone. The small entrances at each side of the hall are also open and doorless. As the core of the living space for Chiang’s family, the public hall is also the center of the architectural axis of the Chiang Family Village.
The paint is new, and several “creature comforts” in the form of electric fans and fluorescent lights have been added, but the interior of the public hall remains pretty much the same as when its vaulted roof and wooden beams were set in place. On the upper beam of the left side of the public hall are attached a row of red paper strips bearing the names of the contributors and their contributions to the patronage of the village’s battle array. Among the contributions are money, rice, chicken, pork, vegetables, drinks and Chinese medicines.
In addition to being a spot for the members of sung chiang battle array to take a rest after drills, the public hall is also a place for public gatherings of the Chiang village organizations, associations and companies. These groups include the Chiang Family Village Company, the Committee for the Chiang Family Village Trust, and the Lutien Community Development Society, which manage public property, preserve original architecture, and plan social and educational events for the community.
Behind the second courtyard is a hall for worshiping Taoist deities. In this hall, the Chiang family offers sacrifices to five deities. A place of honor is reserved for “Duke Tung Feng,”" the Chiangs’ eminent ancestor. The rest of the altar is shared by four other folk deities: the duke’s brother Li Ching, Commander Tien Fu (said to be the master deity of the sung chiang battle array), the Chinese Goddess of Mercy, and her mother. The last courtyard leads to the entrance of the Chiang ancestral shrine, which is the last part of the central axis.
Chiang Ting-ying (江庭英), former chief coach of the village’s sung chiang battle array, is now in his seventies. He recalls that when he was about ten years old, there were only about one or two hundred inhabitants in the village, and that the houses did not have as many wings as they do today. “When I was a little boy back in the Japanese period, one of the old folks told me that the village used to be surrounded by a fence of thorn bamboo to protect our clan from bandits. That was about 120 years ago, even before the Japanese got here. Anyway, there were lots of bandits back then, and they would raid villages and kidnap people and hold them for ransom. Our people built four watchtowers, one at each corner of the fence, and put two guards in each tower. Just to make the point, they bought two cannons and set them up under the trees at each side of the main gate. But the Japanese banned the private ownership of firearms, so the cannons ended up in the river. Too bad,” he shrugs.
“During the period of Japanese occupation,” Chiang Ting-ying explains, “elders of the Chiang family were very obedient to the Japanese authorities. The Japanese government reciprocated by leaving the village alone, by not imposing rigorous requirements. After the Japanese went back and the Kuomintang government arrived to rule Taiwan, the Chiang family continued to live on farming.” From rice to fruit trees, the change of farm products testifies to the passage of time the village has experienced. Chiang Shui-he remembers that the Chiang family owned the largest area of land before the Japanese came. “During that time, nearly each family in Chiang’s village owned about ten hectares of land. From Chiang’s village all the way to Yuching, every inch of land you walk on belonged to the Chiangs,” he boasts.
The village has seen its share of hardships. “Our people didn’t start trying to sell any of their land until they got into the habit of opium smoking. And Taiwan’s first land reform act in 1949 forced us to sell some of our land to tenant farmers. That was such a bad experience that, to this day, descendants of Chiang’s family still follow the tradition of not setting foot in politics,” says Chiang Shui-he.
One man, however, doesn’t follow the Chiang family’s traditional disdain of politics. The newly elected village head of Nanhsi Township, despite the fact that his family name is Kuo, may also be called a member of the Chiang family. The explanation is certain to baffle anyone unfamiliar with Taiwan’s practice of men “marrying into” the families of women. Kuo’s grandmother was a Chiang. According to the local custom, since Kuo is not the first grandson, he is allowed to take his grandfather’s family name--instead of being required to take his grandmother’s, which would be the usual uxorilineal pattern. Chiang Shui-he delights in telling such tangled tales about the genealogy of the Chiang family. “I know this historical anecdote because [Kuo’s] grandfather used to be one of my childhood playmates,” says Chiang Shui-he.
Currently, the Chiang family’s long-standing farming tradition finds expression in the cultivating not only of fruits and vegetables, but of scholars from among the family itself. According to Chiang Shui-he, two from among the Chiang family’s twentieth generation have received doctorates from universities in the US. The Chiang family is also especially proud of one of the men of the 21st generation, who got his doctorate in Taiwan and decided to develop his career here.
Strolling from one wing to another of the various houses in the Chiang family village, visitors will notice that many houses are closed and vacant. Among the houses that are still inhabited, though, some retain their original architectural condition (however carefully cleaned and kept!), while others have been rebuilt with modern materials. One can even find emblems of modern culture in the form of a garage here and there. Agricultural implements and equipment, such as the three -wheeled “flatbed motorcycle” used for carrying farm tools, can also be seen at the roadside in the village. One of the Chiang families even set up a beauty parlor in a small area between two wings of a house.
One of the most impressive features of daily life in the Chiang Family Village is the martial arts defense force, which the village calls its sung chiang battle array (宋江陣). This name has its origin in the Chinese classic, The Legend of the 108 Heroes (水滸傳). According to Chiang Ting-ying, the battle array was formed during the Ching dynasty, in order to defend the family property against local bandits. Originally, the force was made up entirely of members of the Chiang family, based on their strength and fitness for battle; these days, the group includes men from the neighboring villages as well. About sixty men currently participate.
The battle array practices in the evening, on the second and sixteenth days of every lunar month. Their regimen begins after dinner, around seven p.m. At that time, members of the battle array gather in front of the worship hall in the second courtyard and, for the next three and a half hours, practice a variety of martial arts calisthenics to the accompaniment of drums, gongs and shouts.
It’s a habit passed down from the agricultural society well before the Japanese occupation. In olden times, the villagers plowed the fields in the daytime and, after returning home and having dinner, practiced the sung chiang battle array at night. The habits of today’s members of the battle array are surprisingly similar to those of their ancient counterparts, but the variety of professions they practice in the daytime comprises a wider range. Evenings are the only chance they have to get together.
The sung chiang battle array employs a curious aggregation of martial arts weapons. These accoutrements include pitchforks, clubs, swords, battle-axes, harrows, farm-rakes, scimitars, bamboo shields, and oilpaper umbrellas. This strange arsenal was twice perceived as a possible threat--first, during Taiwan’s Japanese occupation, and later, during the martial law period--and the villagers were forced to halt their martial arts practices. For about thirty years, the battle array’s flag was shelved above the door-god of the worship hall, a sign to the villagers to remember the sung chiang spirit of the 108 heroes. It was not until 1996 that the Chiang family resumed its practice of the battle array exercises, with support from the Council for Cultural Affairs of the Executive Yuan.
In order to hand down the skills of the battle array to younger generations of the Chiang family who had only heard about them, surviving members of the array traveled to several towns in search of martial arts masters who would be able to teach them and return to serve as coaches. The battle array now serves as a means to bind the townspeople together in fellowship and common devotion to tradition, replacing its original function of defending the village from outsiders. Lai Chia-hong (賴佳宏), manager of the Lutien Community Development Society, points out that the revival of the battle array today is but one evidence of the villagers’ will to unite the spirit of the Chiang family. Watching the members of the sung chiang battle array practice their art while shouting in unison to the eurythmy of gongs and drums, festooned in bright red and yellow, we know that the legacy of the Chiang Family Village will never cease.
The regimentation and discipline of the battle array are once again an expression of devotion to the harmony of form, with which Chiang family life is saturated. It is also worth pondering the origins of this devotion in terms of the Chiang family’s “rootedness” in the elemental world of agrarian nature. Parts of that world are seen and parts are unseen, hidden--not unlike the halls and corners of the Chiangs’ houses. “The Chiang Family Village is a living museum, the archetype of a traditional Chinese agricultural village,” says Wang Ming-hung (王明蘅), a professor of architecture at National Chengkung University. “In the village, you can see the line between public sphere and private domain very clearly.” By “public sphere,” Wang means the central architectural axis of the village, and by “private domain,” he means the houses in the wings. “The idea that the Chiang village sets up family rules for all residents to obey is right,” Wang argues. “That’s what urban planning is all about.”
In April 1997, under the guidance of the Executive Yuan’s Council for Cultural Affairs and the Tainan County Cultural Center, and by commission of the Nanhsi Township administrative offices, Wang Ming-hung finished a project evaluating the traditional architecture of the Chiang Family Village. He explains how, “from the standpoint of preservation, the government should provide technical assistance to the village, because as the time goes by, they need new rules. To put it in computer terms, the Chiangs need to know more about the ‘hardware’ of construction--how to conform to the original style in constructing new buildings. In fact, in the current market, construction materials similar to the original ones by which the village was built can still be purchased. On the other hand, from a ‘software’ point of view, the Chiangs need to learn how to manage their estate.” Wang suggests that the empty houses of the village be used as guest houses for visitors. “It would be meaningful for visitors to experience the living environment of earlier immigrants by themselves,” Wang says. “It’s extremely important to take care of this right away--otherwise, it’ll be too late,” he adds.
Yeh Chia-hsiung, director of Tainan County’s Cultural Center, has similar view. “This kind of project can wake the Chiang villagers up to the urgency of historical relic preservation. To raise the necessary funds, one measure may be entertained. If part of the village can be opened to the general public as guest houses, and if they could display relics from the past for visitors’ benefit, a lot of visitors would want to spend their weekends here. Visitors would love to see the villagers’ battle drills, and taste some local products like carambola and plum chicken after they go sightseeing at the nearby Nanhwa dam and Tsengwen dam. In this way, not only can the historic village be preserved, the younger generation of the Chiang family may also return to their hometown and make a living by managing their ancestral estate. Of course, to meet the goal, some public facilities such as modern toilets need to be set up,” Yeh admits.
Lai Chia-hong, manager of the Lutien Community Development Society, has a slightly different view. “Naturally we want to preserve Taiwan’s early immigrant culture as faithfully as possible,” he says. “But if we just open up the unused homes indiscriminately for public use, the original architecture will be damaged in less than two months. That would be a disaster. To avoid it, we need to limit the number of visitors to about two or three hundred people, then make any necessary repairs before another group comes in.”
The sincerity of Lai’s concern is personal and genuine: he himself is a matrilineal descendant of the Chiang family, through his great-grandmother. He is also an artist with a master’s degree in sculpture from the University of Madrid, and his concern for the Chiang family’s welfare is tied up with his sense of aesthethics. “As an artist,” Lai explains, “I’d like to remind the Chiang family that new things are not necessarily better than old things. Historical relics are irreplaceable. Once the original thing is destroyed, not even money can buy it back. To help preserve the Chiang family’s village for years to come, the government should allocate funds and earmark them for repairs to the damaged buildings as soon as possible. As you know,” Lai concludes, “time takes its toll on old architecture mercilessly. If we don’t do anything about it now, I’m afraid we are going to regret it tomorrow.”