This is the result of the rural people's own efforts for improvement. Supported by the local government with the assistance of the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, 57 villages in Taipei, Ilan, Taoyuan, Nantou, Tainan, Pingtung, Changhua and Taichung have since 1957 started remodelling their way of life.
Take the 280-family village of Hsiaowei in Ilan for example. Its neat outlook presents a striking contrast to the dreariness existing now only in their memory. The cement paved drying ground, formerly of rugged earth scattered with the excrement of livestock, may serve as a tennis court. Rural people begin to take a fancy in colors. Most houses are now painted. Windows have been enlarged. Gutters around the houses are bubbling with clean water. Nowhere are seen stagnant and muddy puddles as before.
The inside of an average house of Hsiaowei gives people even a greater surprise. Walls formerly dingy are whitewashed. Furniture is properly arranged and not a single spot retains dust. Though there still exist no ceilings and floors, the environment does not make people feel as if the place is damp.
Then the kitchen presents, by all odds, a dazzling sight. Utensils and larders are cleansed and scrubbed till they shine. Since the rural cooking range is now equipped with a chimney sticking out of the roof, the kitchen there is not tarnished by the smoke like that in the urban area where coal is used.
The visitor can learn the size of a family by counting the toothbrushes that hang in good order on a wooden shelf. Model villagers are now acquiring habits of personal hygiene. Each of them now owns his own toilet set which includes a toothbrush, a cup, a basin and towel. In a Chiu family in Tinpu Li (village), Ilan, one can see 35 such sets arranged in six ranks. There are 35 members in this family.
Rural life is also improved through changes of many other ancient practices. The commode in a family lavatory is covered. An innovated and unique clothes drying frame is erected in the compound, while chickens and ducks are mostly fenced off. In some households, even pigs are washed every day. These well-groomed animals appear in high spirits, seldom seen drowsing or snoring like their dirty cousins.
At home two old brothers relax with a pot of tea and recall happy memories of their young days. (File photo)
A total of 1,347 village girls have, through the assistance of nurses of local health centers and stations, finished their special course on sanitation. They have helped 5,270 rural families in the eight prefectures carry out the improvement. Their skills cover maternal and child care, individual and family sanitation, home nursery work, first aid as well as food and nutrition. Statistics show such improvements of environmental sanitation as covered wells, dining tables, garbage tins, lavatory commodes, etc., have been completed 77 percent while that of individual sanitation—everyone owning a toilet set—91 percent.
Public activities, with which the model villages distinguish themselves from other communities, include construction of roads, establishing of harvest nurseries and farmers' clubs, training classes for helping rural youth acquire some skill they can use all their life.
People may ask if it does not run parallel with the Communist commune system on the Chinese mainland. It is important to note that the extraordinary social development here is based on the free will of the people and the welfare of individuals and families. The Chinese Communists, in contrast, seize all gains from the forced labor of the communised people.
Selection of villages for setting up the demonstration at the beginning explicitly inform the nature of the community development. Some suggested to start the project with pauper homes on the ground that they need such improvement, while others thought only the well-to-do are qualified in leading the "new life movement." A contest was also suggested as a way to pick up the demonstration villages. However they came by, all the model villages are characterized by spontaneity, self-reliance and voluntary spirit.
The essence of the project is, therefore, the rural people's initiative. When JCRR offered one family a grant of NT$200 for lavatory improvement, this family promptly reacted with NT$1,000 of its own to build a complete standardized lavatory. Villagers of Tayin are now launching a fly control campaign and their novel design of a fly swatter has been widely adopted by the neighboring villagers. A competitive spirit is already prevailing among the rural communities in these areas.
The day nursery provides lunch for children, so farm women may devote a whole day to their field work. (File photo)
A total of 10,000 meters of road have been voluntarily widened by villagers of Shanfeng in Taoyuan and 2,000 meters by villagers of Tinpu of Ilan. In addition to pooling their labor, some villagers provided construction materials. A family in Toucheng township has moved one of their ancestral tombs along the road that is being widened. Such a deed would once have been considered impious by the ancestor-worshiping people.
Besides, the 300-family village of Tayin of Ilan, which was not included in the project, also serves as a good example. As soon as its representatives visited some nearby project villages, the total population automatically started their improvement work.
Once you have formed a habit you will find it difficult to relinquish it. While you are enjoying a higher living standard, you will certainly not forsake it. Farmer Wu Shih-ting of Hsiaowei village of Ilan is proud of his remodelled home and proclaims that he will continue to improve the living standard because he has never felt so vigorous and hopeful before.
"I have set an example for my relatives and friends in other villages," he recently told his visitors. Wu has four boys and two girls. His second daughter was married last winter to a businessman in Suao, a Pacific town in northeastern Taiwan, and has become a gospeller spreading good tidings of the new life. The marriage has influenced not only her new home but also half a dozen of her neighbors who have found themselves interested in the home remodelling project.
Making sweet dried fruits is an important subsidiary work of farm girls. They are attending a food processing class. (File photo)
Rural folk in these areas catch on to the fact that social development will not persist without the support of a healthy rural economy. Some villages, when starting the changes, launched a production boosting project. A balanced social and economic development, therefore, is fast progressing, particularly in those economically backward places.
Farmers in Pateh village, Taoyuan, for instance, started to grow citrus trees in their tea garden two years ago. With the help of local government extension workers, Farmer Won planted some 120 citrus trees between rows of tea trees in his 0.35-hectare plantation. The Wons expect to harvest 2,400 kilograms of citrus fruits annually in a few years along with 900 kilograms of tea leaves.
Another farmer has learned from extension workers to prune his tea trees. His two-hectare tea plantation, after being pruned, registered a 28 percent increase of production in 1958 over that in the previous year. His tea garden now looks as neat as his living room. Farmer Hsu is also raising 10 hogs and nine piglings, all of Taiwan's best stock. The improved hog raising method, too, helped him improve his livelihood.
According to Chen San-chien of Tahu, Ilan, he recently made a net profit of NT$2,500 in two months' time by selling 500 catties of cookies. He has acquired some food processing techniques among 130 trainees in that prefecture. A total of 1,000 girls in the whole area have attended 21 sewing classes during the past three years.
A new type composting safe from parasites and hastening maturing of compost is now being introduced by JCRR. This farming method, like many other new techniques, has found quick acceptance among model farmers during its demonstration stage. But this one has particularly won the favor of the model villagers because of its improving effect on both environmental sanitation and personal hygiene.
Top: A bamboo cover is made to protect food from flies. Bottom: Over 20 sewing classes like this have been conducted in the model village during the past three years. (File photo)
Model villagers are not only practising the new process but well understand the many merits it brings about. According to Farmer Chang Wen-yu of Yushih village, the new method now helps him produce compost in three weeks while the convention alone requires four months for compost to mature. "In my old compost house," Chang told a reporter, "hookworms often crawl to the surface of the great compost pile where they still survive." This is exactly what is prevented by the new method.
Farmers in model villages now make small compost piles, as taught by local farm extension workers, of no more than 1.5 meters high and 1.5 meters wide, which are turned frequently. Dr. S. C. Hsu, chief of the rural health division of JCRR, estimates that such a compost pile can reach 70°C, the temperature more than enough to kill hookworm larvae and ova in one day. Visitors now can see dark uniform piles dotting around the villages. There is no odor problem, as in compost houses.
Another factor that enables model villagers to pour in more labor for boosting production is establishment of farm nurseries. Farm women are glad to send their children to the nurseries which cost only one day's earning from the field for good care of their children for a whole month. The nurseries are of course unlike those run by Communist communes. The Communists remove the young generation from the family; here the parents take their children home each day when work is over.
The "model village" project was started in 1957 with improvement of living conditions and the boosting of production as its target. It may be called a project on community development, intensified rural development or township reconstruction. Conservatism and superstition handicapped its progress in the first stage.
In many rural areas, inhabitants are more often than not superstitious. Rural Taiwan is not an exception. An already withered old tree in the courtyard should remain there forever, since removing it· will irritate its spirit and bring calamities. To drive a couple of nails into the wall to make a towel horse as required under an individual sanitation project, a "red letter day" must be chosen. Then the kitchen god is said to be blasphemed if they are advised to remodel their kitchen range and make a door on it to save fuel. One more nail on the range will cause a pregnant woman of this family to bleed during the delivery.
These are just a few examples. There are many others. But Taiwan farmers are reasonable and upon seeing the advantages enjoyed by their neighbors they are persuaded to change. A dirty house often becomes the cleanest one overnight in its neighborhood. The training classes usually spawn a school of energetic and brisk young women who were formerly lazy and slipshod. An old woman in a northern village once told a lecturer of those training classes, gracefully, "Your advice has been ten times more effective on my daughter-in-law than my daily instructions; now she does her household chores voluntarily, and I can't pick fault with them."
While the Chinese Communists are vehemently pushing forward their family dismantling project, people on this side of the bamboo curtain are making their best efforts in the improvement of human condition. Free China is now wielding a force of example, the example of freedom and prosperity in its fight against world Communism.