Taiwan Today

For Chen Mao-liang, Chinese ink paintings are not always confined to paper. "Look at the landscape with the lake shimmering in the sun--it's just splendid!" he says, pointing to a rock sitting on a wooden stand. "The naturally formed lines and colors on this 'rose stone' are so delicate that they seem to have been painted on."

So named for its hues, this stone, also known as rhodonite, is only found in Taiwan around Hualien. "There's some in places like Russia and China, but the Taiwanese variety is especially attractive because of its unique color and veining," says Chen, who moved from Pingtung in southern Taiwan to Hualien on the east coast 13 years ago largely because of his interest in stone. The surrounding area is situated on the line of convergence of the Philippine and Eurasian tectonic plates, Chen explains, so stone of beautiful complexity can be found there.

The eastern region of Taiwan is mountainous and rocky, and Hualien sits at its center, between the ranges and the sea. The county owes its reputation to natural endowment and the factory opened by the central government in 1961, which employed Chinese Civil War veterans to process the marble that abounded there. The business proved successful and stone processing in the area expanded rapidly. Companies focused mainly on cutting huge chunks of marble into the shapes and sizes suited to construction materials such as cladding and tiles. The industry reached its peak in 1994, when Taiwan was the largest producer of processed marble in the world, second only to Italy.

Stiff Competition

Since then, low labor-cost competitors have pushed the industry on the island into decline. According to the Taiwan Marble Association, processing in Hualien has shrunk by 50 percent from its glory days, but it is still home to about 70 percent of Taiwan's businesses in this sector.

While the marble processing business is somewhat atrophied, Hualien is a paradise for people sharing Chen's hobby; in fact, he now heads a local group of stone collectors. The pink marble piece Mountains Reflected in the Lake, which Chen has an enormous liking for, was just one of 440 displayed at the first exhibition held by the Hualien County Culture Bureau in November 2006. The majority of the exhibits are in the traditional Chinese style--either whole stones on wooden stands or cross-sections in freestanding wooden frames.

Mostly based in Hualien, the owners of the exhibits rely greatly on the labor of local aborigines, who are more numerous in eastern Taiwan, to search for and haul the rocks from the ravines. In addition to brute strength, the rock harvesters need a good eye for the job: most stones are, in their natural state, covered in a black oxidized patina. Once lugged out of the wild, these diamonds in the rough are sold to interested people for processing. "The price for a really good one might equal a month's income for a local," says Chen.

After buffing and polishing, a single stone can fetch as much as NT$200,000 (US$6,150) or more. Chen says that Japanese buyers have long been the major source of revenue for ornamental rose stone vendors. Taiwanese buyers have increased with the island's wealth, and collectors from China started bidding in the last five years. "But if I really like one, I would never sell it," Chen says.

In addition to the highly valued pink marble, Fongtian jade is a semi-precious local stone that graced the exhibition and drew a lot of attention from collectors. Named after a once-prosperous neighborhood in Hualien, Fongtian jade is also called Taiwan jade because it is only found here. A nephrite, one of the two main types of jade, Taiwan jade is the material of artifacts excavated from Peinan, Taitung County, cradle of one of the island's Neolithic cultures. The stone also appears in several rare varieties, such as "cat's eye," so named for its likeness to a feline eye caught in strong light.

According to Tsai Wan-yi, whose father was a jade miner in Hualien, the mining of Taiwan jade started in 1965 and ushered in a boom in Fongtian and neighboring villages. In the early 1970s, almost every household in Fongtian was involved in the mining or processing of Taiwan jade, making the neighborhood one of the richest places in Taiwan. Export of the stone earned around NT$5 billion (US$150 million) per year at the time. However, careless and indiscriminate blasting in search of faster profits irreparably damaged the jade mines, and the industry went into decline in the mid-70s.

Not Graven in Stone

"Today our history of jade has already become a valuable cultural asset in Hualien," says Tsai, who volunteers at an association dedicated to the cultural development of one of the Fongtian villages. With a jade museum in Hualien slated to open in the second half of 2007, Tsai hopes his hometown can shine again as people show more interest in local culture.

Specialty rocks aside, Hualien's stone culture without a doubt is closely related to the tradition of sculpture. Artisans first turned out traditional carvings for temples, like dragons and lions, but gradually changed to stave off the competition from China. "Chinese craftsmen can make equally good but much less expensive products," says Huang Ho, a stone sculptor based in Hualien. "This is not only true of stone--you'll find much of the stuff in Sanyi and Yinge [two towns in northern Taiwan known for woodcarving and pottery respectively] is from China," he says.

In the face of such stiff competition, many artisans abandoned the craft, but some decided to move to another level. One of these is Lin Chong-shih, who began an apprenticeship at 17 with a local master. "Nearly all the locally made handicrafts have been replaced by those from China and Vietnam," says Lin. "Fortunately some artisans are creative and have stuck around." Lin himself began to move from handicrafts to sculpting in about 1984 and later became one of the 30-odd Hualien natives who formed the Stone Sculptors Association (SSA) in 1992.

"The past 20 years has seen a transformation in which artisans have tried to make their work more abstract," says Huang, the head of the association. The birth of the biennial Hualien International Stone Sculpture Festival in 1995 quickened the pace in this direction. Initially organized by the SSA and by the Culture Bureau since 1997, the organization asked interested sculptors to send photos of their work and models of proposals for preliminary screening. Finalists were then selected and brought to Hualien to start carving. "The contest drew a lot of attention from locals at the time because few international events took place here," Lin Chong-shih recalls. "As a result, we had more volunteers than we needed."

The festival is now a landmark event in Hualien, bringing more tourists to the region already famous for its natural beauty. Visitors to Hualien in November of every second year can find 10 to 12 local and foreign artists sculpting next to the Culture Bureau and carrying on a vociferous exchange of ideas. "The event has broadened the horizons of local artists and enabled them to look beyond Hualien," says Lin. There are tangible legacies left by participating sculptors as well. After the sculptors spend a whole month on their works, the finished pieces are placed in the Stone Sculpture Museum or in selected spots along the scenic east-coast highway. "They're not randomly placed," says Wu Shu-tzu, director of the Culture Bureau. "Artists decide for themselves."

Rocky Road

Hualien's development as a center for lapidary arts, however, is not without challenges. "Doing stone sculpture is strenuous, dirty and dusty work," says Wu. "I'm afraid this tradition is on the decline."

A stone sculptor now teaching three-dimensional art design at National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Tsai Wen-ching has a similarly dour outlook. "Fewer art students are interested in stone sculpture these days--they prefer things like multi-media and the performing arts," he says. The good news is that stone sculptors may fare better than, for example, wood sculptors simply because stone lasts longer. "Stone sculpture is especially suitable for public art, and the law encourages public art," Tsai says, referring to the Statute on Encouraging and Rewarding Cultural and Art Enterprises promulgated in 1992. According to the statute, "public building owners should set up artwork using an expenditure of no less than one percent of the building's assets in order to beautify it and the surrounding environment."

The SSA has been calling on the local government to build a sculpture park for years; the association hopes that sculptors can work in residence on lengthy projects there and that it becomes a home for the biennial festival. "We want a place where invited artists can stay and work all the time they're here so they can get more involved in the event," says Lin Chong-shih. "The park should house their finished works--it'd be much easier to guide people if all the work was in one place. At present you have to drive for more than an hour to see a piece of work in Taitung."

In response, Tao Li-chu, chief of the culture bureau's visual arts section, notes that a 17-hectare sculpture park near Chihshintan, a scenic spot in Hualien City, is being planned. "This park won't come into existence in the near future, because we have still to address issues like land ownership," she says. "But it's already on Hualien County government's list of major projects."

On another, perhaps shorter, list is the stone left in the wild: years of collecting have taken their toll on nature's supply. According to the Taiwan Marble Association, today more than 95 percent of the marble processed in Hualien is imported. Increased environmental awareness has resulted in the rise of restrictions on marble harvesting and operating jade mines. But as supply has dwindled, the number of members in the SSA has grown to nearly 60, of whom 10 are not local artists.

"Nearly all the precious stone has been collected, except for that in the national parks, where collecting is prohibited," says Chen Mao-liang. "Now we rely on riverine gravel diggers, who sometimes uncover beautiful stones by accident," he says. "Big typhoons expose stones too, although I'd never wish for a natural disaster."

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw