Taiwan Today

Often overlooked, Chiayi has made considerable cultural and social gains in recent years.

Some Americans who live on the coasts of the refer to the country's interior as "flyover country," because they only see states like and from the air. It is a belittling, and sometimes disparaging, term. If there is an equivalent region in Taiwan, a section of the island that the hip and the influential seldom view except through the windows of a high-speed train, it is likely to be the patchwork of farmland and small towns between the southern boundary of Taichung City and the Tainan section of the Southern Taiwan Science Park.

Chiayi is part of this flyover region. However, while it might not seem to be the most exciting part of in the eyes of urbanites, those living in this heartland area see things differently. Proof in point: According to CommonWealth, a Chinese-language business monthly, ranked as one of the 10 happiest places in in the magazine's annual "Happiness Survey" of 23 cities and counties for 2007 and 2008.

and are separate local government units, with the latter possessing twice as many people and more than 30 times as much land as the former, which it surrounds. In recent years, the greater Chiayi area has benefited from various infrastructure works, but one project in particular has won widespread national attention. Appropriately, given that county notables include creative icons Lin Hwai-min, the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre founder, as well as rock star Wu Bai, the new facility is a cultural undertaking: the NT$6 billion (US$188 million) National Palace Museum (NPM) Southern Branch.

The NPM Southern Branch is being built 13 kilometers west of in , the Chiayi County Government seat. Designed by US architect Antoine Predock, the centerpiece of the main museum building will be a multifaceted, jade-tinted, glass-and-cypress structure inspired by and pointing toward 's highest peak. Inside there will be 32,000 square meters of exhibition space. The "cultural campus" surrounding the museum will include an Asian-themed courtyard, gardens, an auditorium and man-made lake.

According to the NPM, the mission of the Southern Branch is "to be a world-class of art and culture that will foster a new consciousness of the cultural connections between and the rest of and the world beyond." As well as selections from the NPM's overall holdings, the Southern Branch's exhibitions will also host those from other museums that demonstrate links between , and the rest of the world. The five permanent galleries of the planned facility will focus on Asian texts and writing, Buddhist art, textiles, ceramics and Western influences.

"Cultural democratization and cultural decentralization are in vogue throughout the world," says Chiayi County Deputy Magistrate Huang Gui-nan regarding the decision to locate the new museum in the area. He points out that in 2004, the French government chose Lens, a town with even fewer inhabitants than Taibao's some 36,000, as the site of the 's satellite museum.

The birth of the NPM Southern Branch has suffered its share of problems, however. According to the deputy magistrate, "unceasing criticisms and misunderstandings" and "delays in scrutinizing the budget and rumors" have complicated the building of the museum. Nevertheless, he says that the project is of "extraordinary significance to Chiayi's people ... It is not merely a gift falling from heaven, but a clarion call announcing that 'Chiayi is taking off.'"

The NPM Southern Branch was originally expected to be completed by 2007, but the delays have pushed that date back substantially. "We hope the project can be completed smoothly and the museum can open in 2011," Huang says.

High-speed Impact

"The high-speed railway [HSR] has turned western into a 'one-day living circle,' and this will have a significant influence on the future development of both the city and the county," Huang says. "The HSR station will help the county seat become a new transportation hub for the Yunlin-Chiayi-Tainan region. In the future, this area, together with , will form one metropolis with two centers."

Taibao is still some way from being a major urban center, however. Anyone who gets off a train at Chiayi's HSR station in Taibao will notice that the area immediately around the station is still almost completely undeveloped. There are roads and hundreds of newly planted trees, but very little else.

However, there has been a building boom three kilometers to the west of the station, around the boundary between Taibao and . This is where the NPM Southern Branch is being built, and where most of the county government's 7,800 employees work. For the time being, however, the county nucleus looks like a company town, or perhaps a mini-city dominated by three industries: government, health care and education.

Population growth has not caught up with the building boom, however, as at least one-third of the combination shop/houses across the road from 's Chiayi branch are still empty. From the nature of the businesses--pharmacies, caregiver agencies, sellers of wheelchairs and crutches--that do operate in the area, however, it is clear that the hospital is one of the drivers of the local economy.

The medical center is already massive, and it is not yet finished. The complex will eventually cover 80 hectares--more than the NPM Southern Branch. In addition to the 3,000-bed hospital, there will be a nursing home with 2,000 beds and a senior citizens' home.

Aside from the NPM branch, some other aspects of cultural life are thriving in . The Hsin Kang Foundation of Culture and Education, which is based in the , now employs eight full-time salaried staff, up from six in 1995, when it was featured in a Taiwan Review article. "It's very easy to get local people interested in the foundation, because everything we do concerns their daily lives, such as the library, art exhibitions and performances, environmental protection, youth education and so on. The people who join our activities are aged from kindergarten to over 70 years old," says Frank Chang, the foundation's chairman.

A relatively new addition to the county's cultural offerings is the Chiayi Performing Arts Center, which was inaugurated in 2005. The center has five performance spaces, including a 979-seat main hall. Cloud Gate Theatre has performed there, as has the New York-based Paul Taylor Dance Company. The center is hosting an exhibition on Asian art and culture through January 4, one of a series of events that will eventually lead up to the expected opening of the NPM Southern Branch in 2010.

official Huang mentions two tourist attractions that have already been made over with the help of the county government--Dongshi's Fisherman's Wharf and Liujiao's . The former is part of an effort to diversify the economy of Dongshi, a blue-collar fishing town. At the latter, visitors can tour a disused sugar refinery, take a ride on a train that formerly was used to haul sugarcane, and learn about the sugar industry, which was once very important to Chiayi's economy.

Not everyone agrees with Huang and Chang's views about the county's cultural offerings, however. A 10-minute walk from takes one to a small teashop called , where the customers are almost all students. Some attend the Taibao campus of Tatung Institute of Technology. Others, like Dario Wang, go to .

Wang, a junior in the Department of Information Technology, finds Taibao dull. "When I was a sophomore, I rented a room in Chiayi City and rode my motorcycle here everyday, because Taibao is so boring," the Kaohsiung native says, adding that he has only recently moved back to Taibao so he can better concentrate on his studies and "get up later each morning."

Economic Challenges

Because has traditionally depended on agriculture, it has seen not only a declining population, but also an aging population, Huang says. This reflects the situation occurring in many agricultural communities in , in which young people are choosing to move to more urban areas instead of becoming farmers. Between 2000 and September 2008, a period in which 's total population grew by 3.6 percent, the number of people registered as living in fell by 2.4 percent to 548,652.

For sure, the county's economic progress still lags its neighbors. According to statistics published by the Executive Yuan's Council for Economic Planning and Development, in 2006 the county had an employment rate slightly higher than the national average, but a mean annual household income of approximately NT$835,200 (US$26,100). By comparison, in 2006, the statistics show that annual household income in just to the south averaged approximately NT$922,900 (US$28,840), while to the north averaged approximately NT$931,000 (US$29,100). Only the east coast's was poorer than in terms of annual household income in 2006.

"The main industries in the Chiayi area are agriculture and ordinary manufacturing," Huang says. The county grows one-eighth of 's rice, and the hilly parts of Meishan and Zhuqi townships are famous for citrus fruits and tea. But when asked to list major manufacturing enterprises based or headquartered in the city or the county, local government officials are hard-pressed to come up with household names. Perhaps the best-known company in the area is AGV Products Corp. Ltd., a maker of condiments and processed foods. AGV employs more than 1,000 people at its head office and main factory in , just north of .

"The growth of the service industry has been deficient," Huang says. "In terms of employment opportunities and professional services, the situation isn't good. This has caused people to move away and local development to fall behind."

Huang's plan for revitalizing the local economy is threefold. Firstly, he says, the county government is trying to attract high-tech and precision-machinery companies to places like Mazhouhou Industrial Zone and . At the latter, an 86-hectare parcel of land is being turned into an herbal medicine and biotechnology industrial park; the first tenants are expected to begin operations in 2009. According to county government press releases, it is likely to become one of 's top five biotech clusters. The creation of these industrial areas marks something of a rebound for , as it suffered a setback in August 2008 when it was passed over by the National Science Council in the selection of a site for Phase IV of the .

"Secondly there are medical services, including the special-purpose area, and Formosa Plastics Group's planned retirement community near Taibao," Huang says. "Thirdly there are the sectors of culture and tourism, which are sustainable industries."

According to the deputy magistrate, the county's dependence on as an educational and cultural center has been diminished by the HSR system and by new roads such as Taiwan Highway No. 17, a coastal north-south route.

The city and the county are not rivals, however. They remain "as close as lips and teeth," Huang says. "Instances of county-city cooperation are numerous and all related to citizens' welfare. I believe that there will be many opportunities to cooperate when promoting tourism in the future."

City Life

"Taiwan's overall development has been 'heavy in the north, light in the south,'" says Chiayi City Mayor Huang Ming-hui. This has caused the population to be concentrated in the two large metropolises, namely Taipei and Kaohsiung.

Chiayi City, located some 240 kilometers down the Sun Yat-sen Freeway south of Taipei, may not be a place where issues of national importance are decided, but it has produced its share of decision makers. Vice President Vincent Siew and former Premier Chang Chun-hsiung were born in the city; both men attended high school there before attending universities in Taipei.

Chiayi City has been faring reasonably well in many other respects. Unlike the county, the city has not suffered a population outflow. As of August 2008, Chiayi City had 274,074 inhabitants, up from 1999. In 2006, the mean annual household income in the city was just more than NT$1 million (US$31,250), on a par with Tainan City and Taichung City.

According to the annual social welfare index published by CommonWealth, Chiayi City also has one of the strongest medical sectors in Taiwan. The city has more health professionals and inpatient beds per capita than anywhere else in Taiwan, according to the 2008 survey, which was published in the monthly's September 24 issue.

Chiayi City's hosting of the 2008 Double Tenth National Day fireworks display was a fillip for local tourism. The city's hotels were fully booked that weekend as tens of thousands of outsiders poured into the area. However, the local hospitality industry is having to adjust following the opening of the HSR system. O.K. Lee, special assistant to the general manager of the Chinatrust Hotel in Chiayi City, says before the new railway opened, around 60 percent of his hotel's guests were businesspeople; the remainder were tourists. Total guest numbers have not changed much, he says, but now tourists significantly outnumber business travelers.

Taipei-based businesspeople making the trip to the Chiayi area are less likely to stay overnight now because of the new railway. However, Lee explains that the bullet train also makes it very easy for Japanese and mainland Chinese visitors who fly into Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to get to Chiayi, from where they can proceed to Alishan, the famous resort in the county's mountainous east.

Jessie Weng, a lecturer at WuFeng Institute of Technology in Chiayi County, is well placed to compare the area with other parts of Taiwan. Born in Chiayi City, and raised there and in her mother's native village of Taibao (now part of Taibao City), Weng has lived and worked in her home region; Tainan; Zhongli, some 30 kilometers southwest of Taipei; and Taipei itself. "Cultural life is not especially colorful in Chiayi, although the city government is trying to organize more cultural activities in addition to the annual International Band Festival and a few concerts and performances at the cultural center every month," she says.

According to Chiayi City Mayor Huang Ming-hui, the city government has taken many measures to improve the city's physical appearance. "If there's a distinct improvement in the way the city looks, this could attract a wave of sightseers, which in turn would bring many opportunities," she says.

The amount of park space enjoyed by city residents has increased, from 1.22 square meters per person in 2001 to 1.51 square meters in September 2008. That is still significantly less than in Taiwan's other major cities, but there are long-term plans to increase the area covered by parks from the current 40-plus hectares to more than 130 hectares.

City Parks

By the end of 2008, the city had 30 parks, including the 2-28 Memorial Park, a NT$920 million (US$28.7 million) central government project that Huang Ming-hui pushed hard for during her 1999-2005 stint in the Legislative Yuan. Once the park is completed, the city will assume responsibility for its management and maintenance.

"As well as children's playgrounds, gardens and green campuses, we already have the Riverside Sports Park and the Shuanglan Scenic Area," Huang Ming-hui says. The latter includes Lantan and Renyitan, two reservoirs just east of the downtown area.

The Chiayi City mayor expects that various infrastructure projects, including sewer construction, will create "a finer urban culture" and "a special kind of urban atmosphere."

Both Chiayi City's Huang Ming-hui and Chiayi County's Huang Gui-nan describe the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that links the city with the HSR station, county hall and Puzih as "Taiwan's first." The network does have some unusual--although not unique--features. Unlike most other buses in Taiwan, BRT vehicles run along dedicated bus lanes; because of this, they move faster than most private cars when traffic is heavy. BRT stops are comfortable places to wait, and information throughout the system is presented in both Chinese and English. The BRT system has a total length of about 30 kilometers, with the main line connecting the HSR station in Chiayi County with downtown Chiayi City.

While those from larger urban areas may view the Chiayi area as Taiwan's version of flyover country, those who live in the area disagree. "I feel rich when I'm in Chiayi," lecturer Jessie Weng says. "The lower cost of living and the better environment and weather are really important factors making one's daily life more pleasant. When friends visit me from Taipei, there are places I can take them to that I also enjoy. We've got the mountains, the plains, and the sea."

"It's important that we should have our dreams, and be brave and steadfast in turning our dreams into reality," Chiayi City's Huang Ming-hui says. "Chiayi's growth and changes will not only be seen by Taiwan, but also by the world."

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Steven Crook is a writer based in Tainan County.

Copyright © 2009 by Steven Crook