Taiwan Today

Workshops are endeavoring to save a vanishing part of “mainlander” culture.

The 1990s were a decade of heady change in Taiwan, as the catalyzing effect of lifting martial law in 1987 helped create an increasingly open society. One result of that growing liberalization was a renewed emphasis on the long-overlooked narratives of ethnic groups such as the Holo, Hakka and indigenous peoples. In a startling indication of how much things had changed, the government, which had previously been focused on maintaining Chinese culture, began throwing its weight behind the drive toward local diversity. In 1997, for example, the Ministry of Education introduced a program called “Knowing Taiwan,” which consisted of junior high school courses that focused on the country’s history, geography and society, subjects that had previously centered on mainland China.

The mania for local history and culture continued largely unabated through the early 2000s, when an interesting thing happened: Taiwan’s “mainlanders”—the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to Taiwan from mainland China with the Kuomintang government in the late 1940s—began to realize that their own culture was in need of preservation. That, needless to say, represented a momentous shift, as the mainlanders and their descendants had long enjoyed strong links with the government and a comfortable social position.

In Taiwan, much of the work of preserving the country’s diverse local culture and history has been done by workshops organized by individuals or groups. While such workshops play an important role even for ethnic groups that enjoy Cabinet-level representation through bodies like the Council for Hakka Affairs and the Council of Indigenous Peoples, they are vital for mainlanders, who lack specific government support in cultural affairs.

Following the successful model pioneered by earlier groups, a workshop named the Association of Mainlander Taiwanese (AMT) was formed in 2004. Yang Tsung-rong (楊聰榮), who sits on the AMT’s board of directors and is an associate professor at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, says that the workshop has become increasingly focused on long-term cultural concerns. One of the most noticeable of those concerns—and thus a major focus of the AMT—is conserving the unique villages that sprang up to house military personnel who moved to Taiwan with the Kuomintang government and their dependents. According to the Kaohsiung Museum of Military Dependents’ Villages, which was established in 2007 in Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan, nearly 650,000 mainlanders immigrated to Taiwan between the late 1940s and 1952. By 1984, the museum’s data shows that nearly 110,000 households in 888 military dependents’ villages nationwide had registered with military authorities.

While higher-ranking officers were allocated more space in bigger, nicer houses that were newly built or vacated by the defeated Japanese colonizers in 1945, most lower-ranking officers and enlisted men lived in hastily built units with limited interior space. Such quarters were often crammed side-by-side along small alleys. The Kuomintang government initially believed that it would be staying in Taiwan for only a short while, but as the decades went by and the dream of “retaking the mainland” began to fade, the homes of many military dependents deteriorated. In response, in the 1980s the government began focusing on arranging new housing for military personnel and their families. Today, more than 90 percent of the 110,000 households recorded in 1984 have left the dependents’ villages.

The homes in many of the villages fell into further disrepair as occupants moved to new accommodations, and for years preserving the structures and culture of the villages remained an afterthought at best. Despite its name, for example, the Act for Rebuilding Old Quarters for Military Dependents promulgated in 1996 was aimed at razing the dated structures and building new ones, not preservation. Typically, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) owned the land occupied by the old dependents’ villages, and once residents had moved out, the MND usually demolished all the remaining buildings. The land was then used to build new apartments for military dependents, or in some cases was sold in accordance with the National Property Act to fund the construction of apartments elsewhere.

With the MND focusing on building new housing and the Cabinet-level Veterans Affairs Commission concentrating solely on welfare matters for retired military personnel, the government displayed little interest in preserving the remaining dependents’ villages. “That’s why related cultural matters have been promoted largely by nongovernmental groups like us,” Yang says. Among other efforts, the AMT helped make more than 40 documentaries on the vanishing villages from 2007 to 2010, he says.

Cultural Conservation

Before bulldozers had destroyed all of the remaining dependents’ villages, however, efforts by the AMT and other activists, including some non-mainlander ones, began to pay off. In 2007, for example, the Act for Rebuilding Old Quarters for Military Dependents was revised to provide for cultural conservation.

The amendment allows for the preservation and restoration of one or two military dependents’ villages in each of the five areas of the country—the northern, central, southern and eastern regions as well as the outlying islands—which means that up to 10 of the villages could be saved. The villages must be chosen by local governments and then approved by an evaluation team at the central government level. The nine-person evaluation team is composed of scholars and delegates from the MND, the Construction and Planning Agency under the Ministry of the Interior and the Cabinet-level Council for Cultural Affairs. The team is currently considering for preservation 17 sites proposed by local governments around Taiwan. For his part, Yang considers 10 sites to be too few and expresses hope that each of the 17 proposed or even more can be saved. While the final number of approved restoration sites has yet to be determined, funding is not, as the MND has already set aside a total of NT$400 million (US$13.3 million) for the effort.

Lin Fung-ching (林芳琦), deputy chief executive of a workshop known as the Kaohsiung Military Dependents’ Villages Culture Development Association, is a backer of the less-is-more strategy of preserving a limited number of the housing areas. “If we wanted to try preserving all 888 [registered] villages, imagine what a challenge that would pose to local development,” she says.

Lin’s workshop was formed in 2007 and operates the Kaohsiung Museum of Military Dependents’ Villages. The group concentrated initially on helping protect the rights of military dependents as they were being resettled in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District, which is home to a major naval base. However, as more and more homes in the old dependents’ villages were knocked down, the group became aware that an important part of Taiwan’s history was in danger of disappearing. “We were a small society that saw great assimilation,” says Wang He-ping (王和平), chief executive of the Kaohsiung workshop. Wang lives in Zuoying District’s Mingde New Village, which was placed on the nationwide list of 17 proposed sites at the urging of the Kaohsiung City Government because of its cultural value. By assimilation, Wang refers to the ethnic diversity of the military dependents’ villages, as soldiers or officers came from many different places in mainland China, and many of them also married local Holo, Hakka and indigenous women. “Perhaps we’re a minority culture, but we’re not a minor part of Taiwan’s culture,” he says.

Wang’s goal is to preserve Mingde as a “living museum” that would see villagers continue to live in their old, yet well-maintained homes. Meanwhile, artists in need of workshops would be encouraged to move into vacant houses, as would café, restaurant and home-stay operators. “Our culture is much more than buildings,” he says. “It can’t be adequately demonstrated by just putting some objects in old homes for visitors to see.” Instead, he says he envisions something along the lines of a “creative cultural park” that would also offer food as well as music and opera performances.

Lin also backs emphasizing people and culture at Mingde. “Just preserving the old buildings in a village doesn’t offer much for visitors,” she says. “Instead of focusing on the ‘hardware’ part, we want to devote greater attention and effort to helping visitors grasp the everyday lifestyle of people who live here.” As an example of that way of life, Lin cites preparations for the Lunar New Year holiday in the dependents’ villages, which include activities such as writing calligraphy on red scrolls and making lanterns from powdered milk cans.

Wang’s vision extends beyond Mingde itself, as he hopes that an eventual conservation area will expand to neighboring military dependents’ villages along the border of the Zuoying naval base. Along with the old homes, such a conservation area would also help preserve the vicinity as an extended “green belt,” as it already features many trees, parks and open fields. That would add to Kaohsiung’s tourism resources and keep up with the world trend of reducing carbon emissions, he notes. “Of course, we’ve still got to cooperate with the city,” he says. “We know we need to keep our blueprint in line with city planning projects.”

Collective Culture

In northern Taiwan, the New Taipei City Military Dependents’ Villages Culture Association has been working since its formation in 2007 to preserve the approximately 60 houses of Sanchong First Village in the city’s Sanchong District. Sanchong First Village was formerly occupied by family members of personnel serving in an air defense artillery unit. A campaign by the New Taipei City Government helped the area land a place on the list of the 17 dependents’ villages proposed for preservation around the country. “We might have lived here for just six decades, but villages like ours represent an undeniable part of Taiwan’s collective culture,” says Wang Ji-xin (王繼新), a founding board member of the Sanchong group and a former resident of the village. “The bulldozers that remove the houses in the village will also remove an irretrievable piece of Taiwan’s pluralistic culture.”

All of the residents had moved out of Sanchong First Village and into purpose-built apartment buildings elsewhere in New Taipei City by 2006, which means that unlike the situation at Mingde, there is no possibility of preserving a living village. “We’ll start by sorting out the artifacts and recording the oral histories of the villagers,” Wang Ji-xin says. The association is also working to preserve the village’s unique underground air-raid shelter network, which has several entrances in the neighborhood. Built during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), the shelter system was sealed off in the 1960s and is now being opened up again as a tourism draw.

Wang Ji-xin believes that having a facility like the proposed cultural park is essential for preserving mainlander traditions, which are as diverse as the regions of mainland China. The association’s overall plan for Sanchong First Village goes a step further, however, aiming to create a venue for many kinds of activities, including those unrelated to mainlander culture. “Along with our [mainlander] focus, the mixture of different elements would yield a greater cultural richness,” Wang Ji-xin says. As quite a few of Taiwan’s literary and arts celebrities were born and raised in military dependents’ villages, the association hopes to obtain their help in publicizing future events, he says.

The Kaohsiung workshop’s Lin Fung-ching believes that social progress will only come by embracing all of Taiwan’s past. In fact, Lin thinks that preserving the history of military communities like those in Kaohsiung and New Taipei City can act as a unifying force. “We can find a way to express the common histories of the army, the military dependents’ villages and of Taiwan in general,” she says.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com