Penghu in the winter is like a lover scorned. In the summer months, hundreds of thousands of tourists come to this archipelago of sixty-four islands to breathe its crisp sea air, walk along its winding, golden coastlines, and play in its azure waters. They visit with history as they wander through centuries-old temples, fortresses and castles, and streets lined with low, tile-roofed houses built with coral volcanic rock. Each summer day in Penghu is warm and burnished, and closes with a brilliant sunset. Only thirty-five minutes away by air from Taipei in northern Taiwan, and twenty-five minutes from Kaohsiung in the south, the balmy archipelago is an exotic and popular holiday destination.
But from October to March, when the northeast monsoon wind builds frightening waves, and continuously sweeps the flat, barren terrain, Penghu sits desolate, struggling to keep its romance. The tourists no longer come, and the fishermen repair their nets over and over again. The whirling dust and sand darken the skies even before dusk, and settle everywhere. And to protect their complexions, the women swathe their faces with kerchiefs, leaving only their eyes exposed to the blustery wind.
Penghu lies in the Taiwan Straits, halfway between the southern province of Fukien in mainland China and the cities of Kaohsiung and Chiayi in southwest Taiwan. Only twenty of its islands are inhabited. Penghu, Yuweng, and Paisha are the main islands, connected to each other by bridges. The city of Makung, in Penghu, is the county seat, the archipelago's largest town, and the site of naval, commercial, and fishing ports. Penghu county includes five townships and ninety-three villages, which altogether have a population of 95,400. Established as an administrative territory of China by the Yuan dynasty in 1281, Penghu served as a bridge for Fukienese immigrants making their way to Taiwan four hundred years later.
The islands of Penghu were once all part of a huge basalt mesa. Underwater erosion lowered the stratum and broke up the mesa into small islets, leaving wondrous rock formations and steep cliffs constructed from pillars of basalt rock. Nothing grows on some of the islands. The sea's salty spray, the winds that can blow to a velocity of 72 kmph, and the high rate of evaporation have conspired to turn Penghu into an agricultural wasteland, where only sorghum, sweet potatoes, and peanuts can grow. But the sea has been kind. Penghu for centuries has been the land of fishermen, and was known to the Dutch and the Portuguese who anchored there in the seventeenth century by its Portuguese name, Pescadores, or fishermen.
Coral thrives in the warm, shallow waters by the coast. The sea north and northeast of Penghu offers sea bream, grouper, bass, lobster, squid, and cuttlefish. The fishing industry brings in an annual catch of 35,000 metric tons, and makes up over 80 percent of the county's production value. Over 150 temples dot the islands, dependent as the fishermen are on the sea's grace. But neither the gods nor the people of Penghu have been able to hold back the depletion of the sea's resources nor the number of young people who take the boat to industrial Kaohsiung and Chiayi, and never look back. The development of the archipelago has lagged far behind that of the rest of Taiwan. Transportation, communications, and medical facilities are poor.
In Shakang, on the northern shoreline of Penghu island, three villagers idle the winter afternoon away, sipping tea in a weather-beaten wooden shed. The oldest of the three, Ou Kun-feng, a fisherman, sighs and says, "The fish are disappearing." He says that driftnet fishing does not spare the small fish, and the fishermen in the coastal areas use poison, dynamite, and electric shock to improve their catch.
Ou-Yang Chen-chang sips his tea thoughtfully. In his thirties and a good twenty years younger than Ou Kun-feng, he had once left Penghu and worked in Kaohsiung for a year as a laborer. "Over there I earned about US$700 a month," he says. "And when I used to fish with my father here, I could earn about US$40 a day. So I came back. I am a fisherman, after all." Ou-Yang now shares a boat with his friend, and during the summer, a good day's catch brings in US$185.
Chen Ying-ying is in her twenties, and unlike many of Shakang's young women, she did not leave the village for a factory job in Kaohsiung or for a man from Taiwan proper. Chen has been put in charge of feeding the village's six dolphins. In the winter, cuttlefish spawn in the coastal sea, and the dolphins follow them into the cove. The dolphins have become a rich source of income, and are often sold to Hong Kong and Japanese buyers who in turn sell them to marine shows. The villagers have built a pen for their dolphins, and in the summer they welcome sightseers who happily pay to feed the friendly dolphins. "Some foreigners were just here," Chen says. "They were trying to convince us to let the dolphins swim back to the sea."
The group is puzzled by the foreigners' concern for the dolphins. They have been taking good care of them, and the dolphins are bringing in much-needed money. Chen says that young people are right to leave Penghu. "They really have no choice," she says. "There aren't many fish left. The old people stay because the sea is an old friend and they can't adapt to life in the city."
There has been talk in the village that a casino will be built on one of the islands, and the three talk animatedly about the possibility of more tourists and better transportation. And then they dash their hopes by agreeing that Penghu's educated people will not like the idea because the casino will surely corrupt the villagers. Chen remains gleeful and says, "If there's a casino, we could earn more money."
A visit to the Department of Agriculture of the Penghu county government confirms Chen's misgivings about the future of fishing in Penghu. Lu Shih-hsiung of the fisheries section says: "Things are getting worse here. The problem is the fishermen don't understand conservation, and think we are taking their livelihood away. They refuse to abide by the law, and continue to use illegal and dangerous ways of fishing. But if they don't stop, how can they continue making a living?"
While the stark and windy winter makes prisoners out of fishermen, it has brought to Penghu refugees from the big cities. Huang Kuei-chen first set foot in Penghu in 1988. With a group of friends, the former Taipei resident now runs a small teahouse in Makung. It is a simple, window-filled teahouse. A narrow, glassed-in bookshelf filled with well-worn books and magazines stands against one wall. "I knew I would come back to stay," she says, as she pours the tea. "I like the desolation. And in the winter the endless sweep of yellowed fields is so unlike any scenery I have ever seen."
It was also in 1988 that artist Chao Er-Dai moved to Makung. Born in Soochow, mainland China, he moved to Taipei in 1949. His is a story of triumph and pain. His parents nicknamed him Er-Dai; "Er (二)," which means "two" because he is the second son, and "Dai (呆)," which means "slow-witted" because as a child he stuttered. Once one of Taiwan's best-known and prolific artists, he moved to Penghu after the murder of his two daughters and the death of his wife. The seventy-five-year-old artist is now a recluse. But he continues to feverishly paint, draw, sculpt, and take pictures. "I had no choice but to come here," he says. "I needed a place where I could be left alone to my loneliness and where I could continue to work as my heart tells me. I will live the rest of my life here."
Kuo Chin-lung has lived all his life in Penghu, and has no intentions of leaving. For twenty-five years he has been teaching at the Makung Senior High School. "Education here is on the right track," he says. "You won't find evening cram schools here." He boasts of computer classes, yet also admits that the schools are getting smaller. Nineteen sixty-nine was the year the population of Penghu reached its peak, to more than 120,000. And every year since then it has declined. "If they're young and optimistic, they move to Kaohsiung," he says.
Kuo does geological research and also belongs to the Penghu Photographic Society. In fact, Penghu's unique geographical features as well as the rich southern Chinese flavor of its old temples and houses have made Penghu a photographer's paradise. Now on its eighteenth year, the society continues to exhibit and publish its members' works. And it is not at all surprising that their photographs are portraits of nature, of hardworking fishermen, of old architecture, and of old people. That, to Hsu Chin-tien, an erstwhile fisherman, is what Penghu is all about.
Hsu is from the village of Kuoyeh, on the eastern part of Penghu island. "You won't see young people in this village," he says. "Three thousand have left to go to Kaohsiung, and only nine hundred people are left here. They're mostly old people and small children, grandparents taking care of their grandchildren." The villagers make their living from fishing and harvesting tzu-tsai, or porphyra, a type of red algae. The village needs help. Its breakwater collapsed during a typhoon, and according to Hsu, the county government, after eight years of planning, has yet to build the village a harbor. "Without it, we won't be able to shelter our boats from the strong wind and high waves," he says. "And if our boats are destroyed, how are we to make a living?"
For many of the Penghu villages, harvesting tzu-tsai is a community activity. Many of the uninhabited islets have an abundance of the algae, and tradition dictates that certain villages have sole rights to these islets. The villagers of Chihkeng on Paisha island harvest on Kupo islet in the northern sea about three times during the winter. Kupo is famous for its fat and crispy tzu-tsai, and for many years fierce disputes broke among several villages as to which of them had the right to harvest the algae on the islet. Finally, about seventy years ago, the Japanese colonial government decided in Chihkeng's favor.
The algae thrive in stormy weather. They grow on basalt rock, instead of underneath the sea. When waves hit the rocks, they absorb the moisture and grow stronger and thicker. After harvest, they are spread and dried under makeshift awnings. Because of their high iodine, vitamin, and protein content, tzu-tsai is valued in Taiwan and the rest of East Asia for their revitalizing power, and are often used in soups.
From the eighth month of the lunar calendar to the second month of the new year (approximately mid-September to mid-March), four people take turns guarding Kupo. According to Sung Tzu-li, who was once the village chief, the guards are there to make sure that the basalt rocks are not covered with debris. "They need to keep the rocks clean, or else the algae will not grow on it," he says. "And when the harvest comes, the guards watch all the boats that come in, to make sure that no boat from another village has come to the islet."
Because of the danger involved in harvesting, many villages forbid women, children, and old people from participating. The rocks are slippery, and there have been accidents when people have lost their footing, slid into the sea, and drowned. Chihkeng is one of the few villages that allow women to join the harvest, but the rule is only male villagers between the age of twenty and thirty-five can get a ticket allowing him to collect the algae. And if a family has no male of this age, it is entitled to only one ticket. The village temple has a committee that organizes the harvests and sells the tickets at US$13 each to villagers, and US$30 each to outsiders. The cost of the tickets cover the rent for the boats and the guards' salaries.
On the day of the harvest, the villagers rise earlier than the fog, and at dawn leave for Kupo in large fishing boat. They wait in their boats until the waves and the wind have subsided, and it looks like the sea will remain calm for the forty minutes it takes to cross to Kupo. Then the twenty-five boats carrying up to eight hundred villagers set sail toward the north. Wearing straw sandals and net gloves, bamboo baskets slung over their shoulders, they congregate at the shore. At 8:30 A.M., a burst of firecrackers signals the beginning of the harvest. There is hardly any talking as they concentrate on pulling the algae off the rocks, deftly and quickly as if in a competition. An hour and a half later, a second burst of firecrackers signals the end of the harvest. The bamboo baskets are full. Those who were fast and skillful have collected more than twelve kilograms. And the tzu-tsai, even while still wet and heavy, can be sold in the market at Makung for US$10 per kilogram.
The community spirit that characterizes the preparation for and the harvest itself is striking, and the orderliness with which the harvesting is done by hundreds of villagers is impressive. But this sort of indefatigable and cooperative spirit thrives all around Penghu, perhaps because that is the way people cope with the hard winters, the luckless land, and the fickleness of the sea.
Because Penghu is beautiful in the summers, it is often touted in guidebooks as Taiwan's Florida. But travel agents claim that most visitors to Penghu go once, and never return. The villagers and the town residents hope that developing Penghu as a prime tourist resort will bring more activity, more income, and the return of their young people. Indeed, Penghu has got everything a great island resort offers. The clear, sparkling sea encourages a great variety of water sports. The architecture of the temples and the old houses connect Taiwan to its rich heritage in southern China. And the basalt rock formations speak of nature's commanding power.
Yet Penghu has been around for centuries, a way station for pirates, adventurers, and people looking for a better life. And it will continue to be there, taking in the summer tourists looking for fun, and the scholars looking for Taiwan's past. Villages like Shakang will continue to welcome tourists who will pay to feed the dolphins. And when the winter comes, Penghu will be there, patiently facing the howling wind and the roaring sea.