Taiwan Today

Rich in Hakka traditions and natural beauty, Meinong District in Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan is attracting local and international recognition alike. In 2012, Meinong was selected by the Tourism Bureau as one of the country’s top 10 tourism towns, while the district also won a bronze medal in the Whole City Award category of the International Awards for Liveable Communities, or LivCom awards, last year. The LivCom Awards were launched internationally in 1997 and are endorsed by the United Nations Environment Programme. The awards recognize international best practices for community sustainability, environmental sensitivity, healthy lifestyles, managing the local environment through initiatives such as heritage management and planning for the future.

“Inclusion in the government’s list of the top 10 tourism towns in Taiwan and winning an international award for livable communities are great recognition of various aspects of our town,” says Hsieh Ho-lin (謝鶴琳), director of the Meinong District Office. “The publicity raises our profile and lets people know that Meinong, with its expanses of green fields and enchanting mountains, is a bucolic rural retreat for travelers seeking to escape from the hustle and bustle of city life. At the same time, visitors can get a taste of authentic Hakka cultural practices here.”

Hsieh says that 95 percent of Meinong’s 40,000 residents are Hakka, an immigrant group that originally hailed from Guangdong province in mainland China and began settling in the Meinong area in the early 18th century. The high concentration of members of the ethnic group and the district’s somewhat isolated location in a protected mountain valley have preserved Hakka traditions to a greater extent than any other area in Taiwan, he says. For example, there are a number of traditional homes built with a symmetrical layout around a central courtyard, an architectural style that makes them easy to defend. Other historic sites include the East Gate Tower and Word-worshipping Paper Incinerator. The town also boasts cultural establishments such as the Meinong Hakka Cultural Museum; a memorial museum dedicated to Chung Li-ho (鍾理和, 1915–1960), a leading Hakka novelist who wrote about rural life and its hardships; and shops selling traditional handmade oil-paper umbrellas and Hakka clothing.

Bicycling is the best way to see Meinong’s tourist spots, Hsieh suggests, as it is possible to ride to many of the attractions and cycling encourages a slower pace than driving. The district office has devised cycling tours according to the themes of culture, food, history, nature and religion. Meinong also has a dedicated website, www.meinong.org, which offers information on the district’s accommodations, dining, history and tourist destinations.

Meinong’s economy has long focused on agriculture. In the mid-1970s, the area was dubbed the “tobacco kingdom” because it grew a quarter of all tobacco produced in Taiwan. In those days, more than 1,800 tobacco curing barns, which feature small drying attics and narrow chimneys, operated in the area. The local tobacco industry went into a decline between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, however, due to importation of foreign cigarettes and tobacco leaves into Taiwan. Still, around 300 tobacco curing barns remain scattered among the district’s fields, although most are no longer functional.

Preserving Heritage

As with other ethnic communities, Meinong faces the challenge of preserving its heritage. “The Hakka dialect is dying out among younger generations, especially those who have left town to live in the big cities,” Hsieh says. “Traditional crafts like making paper umbrellas, for example, are in danger of being lost because so many youngsters are reluctant to take on jobs involving manual labor these days.”

The outflow of young adults, Hsieh notes, is largely a result of the scarcity of jobs in Meinong. To create more jobs and improve the local economy, the district is endeavoring to promote agricultural tourism, beautify the rural environment and help farmers market their products. Hsieh says he is glad to see that many local individuals and organizations have joined those efforts, which run throughout the year. Meinong farmers specialize in growing the slim “white jade” radish, for example, and the district organizes opportunities for visitors to pull radishes from the ground during the vegetable’s November harvest season. The town also holds a festival celebrating the blooming of coreopsis, or tickseed, flowers during the Lunar New Year holiday.

Civic groups including the Meinong Ph.D. Scholar’s Association (MPSA) and Meinong People’s Association (MPA) are doing their part to preserve and enhance Meinong’s pleasant living environment, Hsieh says. Their work not only benefits locals, but also helps make the town known to tourists, many of whom come to experience the rustic landscape and vibrant Hakka culture, he says.

While the creation of an association for those holding doctorates might seem an odd thing for a somewhat isolated rural community, Meinong has the highest percentage of residents holding Ph.D. degrees of any town in Taiwan, the MPSA claims. The association was established in 2001 and currently has 165 members, most of whom are scholars and teachers. “The Hakka have traditionally put a major emphasis on education. The purpose of our association is to provide local children with diverse learning opportunities,” says Ku Jin-son (古錦松), secretary-general of the MPSA and an assistant professor at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung. “We want to encourage them to learn different skills and courageously pursue their dreams.”

In addition to offering scholarships and interest-free student loans, the MPSA has thus far launched more than 100 programs to help students, particularly those who are disadvantaged. The programs are aimed at improving students’ performance in academic subjects, the arts, sports and vocational skills. The association’s activities include baseball and science camps, field trips and reading and writing contests, Ku says. The group hopes to equip youngsters with valuable skills they can use for the rest of their lives and to keep them busy enough that they do not have time to fall into bad habits.

In one high-visibility program, in 2012 the MPSA began a 10-year effort to select young baseball players between the ages of 9 and 11 and provide them with training in baseball skills, concentration and sportsmanship, all of which is done solely in Hakka. A group of some 30 players began training in the first year of the program. Most of those youngsters will continue with the team in subsequent years, although new players will be added to replace those who drop out. Ku says baseball was a very popular sport in Meinong in the 1970s and the 1980s, as almost every elementary school fielded its own baseball team in those days. A number of Meinong natives have gone on to become members of Taiwan’s national baseball team or famous coaches, including Hsu Sheng-ming (徐生明), who served as head coach of the national team, and Song Huan-hsun (宋宦勳, 1930–2008), who coached in the country’s professional league.

The MPSA launched the baseball program because less attention was being paid to sports in Meinong as more locals left for big cities and children grappled with increasingly heavy academic pressure. Through the program, the MPSA hopes to revive Meinong’s former baseball glory and provide the community’s youngsters with a healthy recreational activity.

Thrilling Response

Ku says that he has been thrilled by the great response of Meinong natives, including some who no longer live in the town, to the MPSA’s fundraising drive for the baseball team. The association’s initial goal was to raise NT$500,000 (US$16,700) for purchasing baseball uniforms and equipment in the program’s first year, but received donations amounting to more than NT$5 million (US$172,413) in just four months, while six residents, including Hsu, have volunteered to serve as coaches.

The MPA, another prominent civic group, was founded in 1994 to protest the central government’s plan to construct a dam in the Twin Creeks catchment area of Meinong due to ecological and safety concerns, says the organization’s secretary-general, Chiu Jing-hui (邱靜慧). The MPA successfully mobilized locals and organized petitions against the dam, leading to the project’s suspension in 2000. Chiu notes that construction of the proposed dam would have destroyed a tropical forest as well as Yellow Butterfly Valley, which is home to more than 110 butterfly species and 90 kinds of birds. The association also viewed the dam as a threat because it would have been built just 1,900 meters from the nearest village and 4,000 meters from downtown Meinong. Moreover, construction of a dam at Twin Creeks was first considered by engineers from Japan during the period of that country’s colonial rule over Taiwan (1895–1945). The Japanese, however, found that the proposed location for the dam lay in a fault zone and noted that the bedrock in the area was composed of sandstone and shale, two rocks that are highly affected by erosion and weathering, Chiu says.

Instead of opting to build a massive dam, Chiu’s association proposed adopting a low-impact, sustainable approach to managing water resources. Measures such as repairing and maintaining water pipes and recycling and reusing waste water should always be investigated before the decision to build a dam is made, she says.

After authorities resolved not to build the dam, Chiu says the MPA shifted its attention to other issues such as promoting conservation, providing environmental education and pushing for the restoration of damaged areas. The association, for example, holds a ceremony and summer camps in Yellow Butterfly Valley each year to promote local conservation efforts and awareness of the need for coexistence between man and nature.

In recent years, Chiu has seen an increasing number of young people returning to Meinong to live, work and participate in community activities. “Dynamic grassroots movements have built up community consciousness and enabled Meinong to maintain its cultural and environmental values while avoiding large-scale development projects,” Chiu says. “Only through preservation of our heritage can our town see sustainable development and create a strong tourist appeal.”

Keeping Old Crafts Alive

Local crafts have long played a major role in efforts to preserve Meinong’s unique Hakka culture. Handmade oil-paper umbrellas are the district’s most representative craft and were introduced to the area by master craftsmen from mainland China in the early 1920s, when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule. In the heyday of the area’s paper umbrella production in the 1960s and the 1970s, there were more than 20 factories producing 20,000 umbrellas for export to Japan each year.

For the Hakka, umbrellas are auspicious objects that play an important role in everyday life. For instance, parents give a pair of umbrellas to sons on their 16th birthday in a coming-of-age ceremony, while daughters are given a pair on their wedding day as a blessing for fertility, good luck and happiness. On the practical level, paper umbrellas were formerly used for protection from the elements, but today they are used as decorations or collectibles.

Over the years, mass-produced umbrellas made of synthetic materials have largely replaced labor-intensive handmade paper umbrellas, while a flood of cheap imports from mainland China has dealt a further blow to the prevalence of the traditional craft in Taiwan.

Lee Family Umbrellas, an outfit run by 44-year-old Lee Ming-hsiang (李明祥) and his wife, is one of only six shops that still produce handmade umbrellas in Meinong. Lee learned his craft from his parents. His mother, 76-year-old Lin Xiu-di (林秀娣), still helps paint designs on the umbrellas. Lee says that while birds, flowers and calligraphy in the style of Chinese paintings have always been popular patterns painted on the umbrellas, today’s customers also request landscapes displaying Meinong’s rural beauty and custom illustrations.

By emphasizing a variety of custom-made designs, fine materials, sophisticated workmanship and quality certified by the Made-in-Taiwan (MIT) Smile Logo granted by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Lee says he is able to maintain stable sales and a competitive advantage over rivals in mainland China.

In addition to tourists, Lee says one of his main customer groups is Taiwanese businesspeople operating in mainland China, many of whom purchase paper umbrellas as gifts. Lee’s products range in price from NT$400 to $1,000 (US$14 to $35) and can be found in airports around Taiwan as well as at his shop.

“My wife and I constantly look for ways to improve our product design and quality and address customer needs and preferences. That’s why we’ve been able to survive and grow our business,” Lee says. “In a few years, when we hope to have attained financial security, we’d like to focus on passing the old craft on to future generations.”

Making blue-dyed shirts is another traditional Hakka craft still practiced in Meinong, albeit by only one remaining enterprise—the Jin Xing Shop, which has been in business for nearly eight decades and sells the shirts for about NT$4,200 (US$145) apiece. The shop is operated by 61-year-old Shie Guo-yao (謝國耀) and his wife Jung Feng-jieu (鍾鳳嬌), who took over management of the business from Shie’s father nine years ago.

Blue shirts are an important part of traditional Hakka attire. In the past, Hakka women needed to handle all the household chores as well as work on the farm. As white clothes would easily look dirty and black was viewed as an inauspicious color, Hakka women dyed cotton fabric blue to turn out simple dresses and shirts.

There were once around 30 blue shirt makers in Meinong. Shie recalls that when he was a child, his home was always filled with young women who were engaged to be married and came to learn tailoring from his father so that they could make clothing for their future family members and also generate some income.

As with paper umbrellas and many other handicrafts, handmade blue shirts, each of which takes at least 10 hours to make, have largely been replaced by mass-produced products. Shie admits that blue shirts are less commonly seen these days, as Hakkas now mostly wear them only for special occasions such as dance and music performances, festivals and religious rituals, although tourists enjoy purchasing them as souvenirs.

Still, Shie and his wife have endeavored to preserve and promote the traditional garments by designing the shirts in accordance with modern fashion aesthetics and producing lively matching accessories including bags and purses. Shie also receives frequent invitations from universities to give lectures on traditional Hakka dress.

“Clothes are a major symbol of a culture. They reveal the living conditions and thoughts of the people residing in an area. As Hakkas, my wife and I feel the responsibility to pass on our culture,” Shie says. “Of course, we know that our efforts alone won’t be enough, so we want to explore the possibilities of collaborating with fashion design teachers, students and academic institutes to make sure the tradition continues.”

—Kelly Her

Write to Kelly Her at kher@mofa.gov.tw