The train grinds to a halt in Yingko station. Only a handful of passengers get off here. The air smells fresh and cool, and it is very quiet, except for a steady drone somewhere in the distance. Bulldozers demolishing old buildings, perhaps.
The walls of the pedestrian subway beneath the tracks are clad in the sort of white tiles normally associated with bathrooms. Coming out the back exit of the station, the traveler is faced with the relics of an old building that bears a sign saying “Chien Chi Trading Company,” and further down the railway line lies a heap of pitch-black coal—both reminders of this town’s history as a mining town. In the distance, a single new high-rise stands out like a sore thumb amid the sprawl of brick houses. It is lunchtime. The hands of the nearby clock tower, however, seem permanently stuck at four. This is Yingko, Taiwan’s famous “china town.”
Yingko is twenty-five kilometers southwest of Taipei. The name derives from a huge rock that rises from a hill to the north of the station and is thus clearly visible to travelers as they arrive. People call it Yingko Rock because from a distance it looks like an eagle, and the Mandarin word for “eagle” is “ying.”
According to legend, Yingko Rock was originally a real eagle. This bird was malevolent and was able to emit a foul fog that affected the whole area. Wayfarers often got lost or fell sick when caught in this fog. On one famous occasion, Koxinga, the famous Ming dynasty loyalist who drove the Dutch from Taiwan in the mid-seventeenth century, was trapped with his troops in the fog. Koxinga ordered his soldiers to fire their cannons at the bird. The eagle fell to the ground and turned into a rock. The fog dissipated and the troops marched on. This anecdote was considered worth a brief mention in the Tamsui Chronicle, written by a Ching dynasty historian. But geologists more prosaically say that the rock was brought up from the sea bed millions of years ago by tectonic movement.
Yingko township is small—it covers an area of slightly more than twenty-one square kilometers, of which less than 30 percent is arable. When the island was still primarily an agrarian society, this place remained poor. Hardware store owner Cheng Chi-wei (鄭其維) is a volunteer for the Haishan Cultural and Educational Workshop, which focuses on researching and preserving the culture and history of the immediate region, and also provides free guided tours of the town. “You can tell whether a town or village is rich or poor from the number of temples it has,” he says. “When Taiwanese people make a fortune, they like to build a temple to show gratitude to whatever gods they think have blessed them. Before 1945, Yingko had only two small temples, both dedicated to the Earth God, so you can see how poor it was.”
Yingko Rock, familiar to travelers arriving at the railway station, gave the town its name.
But Yingko is no longer poor. The town now has nine temples, either Buddhist or Taoist. Because, small though it is, Yingko has become a lively center boasting some 800 factories that manufacture all kinds of ceramics, from toilet bowls to imitation antiques. There are hundreds of ceramic shops, and many of the inhabitants have become rich in consequence.
Lu Fang-ping (呂芳評), 45 , is a native of Yingko. Some twenty years ago he quit his job in a casting factory and became a potter, specializing in tea services. “A friend told me the local saying, ‘Just mix earth and water, and you’re nine-tenths of the way to earning your first dollar.’ And I thought to myself, if ceramics are so lucrative, then I’d better go in for pottery, rather than casting. So I started making teapots.”
In present-day Yingko, more than half of the population earns a living from ceramics. But the industry was not always regarded as a good line to be in. Edward Hsu (許元國), owner of the ceramics store Excellence Collection, recalls, “When I was young, our teacher used to warn us that if we didn’t study hard, we’d end up as potters. The job is dirty, hot, and physically demanding. No one wanted to do it.”
The skill of pottery-making was brought to Yingko about 200 years ago by a potter surnamed Wu, who came from Fujian province. But according to Cheng Chi-wei, the town’s ceramics industry did not really take off until World War II. “Before that,” he says, “most daily ware such as bowls and plates was imported from either Mainland China or Japan. When war broke out, imports became impossible, so the locals began making pottery.”
Yingko is only about half an hour from Taipei by train, and proximity to such a big market paid off. At first the town mostly turned out mundane objects such as cisterns, jars, basins, bowls and plates. But then about thirty years ago, plastic products were introduced to Taiwan, and the ceramics industry in Yingko suffered its first crisis. Plastic cisterns and basins quickly replaced ceramic ones, because they were lighter, cheaper and more durable. People began to explore other possibilities, simply in order to survive.
"You'll succeed when the horse arrives"—the saying reflects the popularity of tricolor horses as gifts that bring good luck in one's career.
Town mayor Tony Hsu (許元和), who is Edward Hsu’s brother, notes that at that time Taiwan’s economy was starting to do well. Exports were increasing, along with incomes. “The government was encouraging people to devote themselves to the production of all sorts of things,” he says. “The then provincial governor, Hsieh Tung-min (謝東閔), thought up a slogan: ‘Make the living room your own factory.’ Everybody here, young and old, did just that, and joined the production line.”
Then the island’s construction industry began to flourish. Yingko people are quick to respond to trends, and some of them started to manufacture all kinds of tiles: roof, floor, wall, and of course, decorative. That brought another wave of prosperity to the town. “You could see children working alongside adults, all making ceramics, making toys and mugs for export,” Tony Hsu recalls. “The kids often used to help sort mosaic tiles into their patterns.”
The introduction of new technology, such as automation and gas kilns, and new fuel—natural gas from neighboring Miaoli county—enabled manufacturers to mass produce products, and also made it easier for families to set up mini-factories in their own homes. A joke about making patterned tiles soon began to go the rounds: “It’s just like printing money, only faster.”
The demand for these tiles was so great that some of the bigger employers were forced to seek refuge on the golf course, because supply simply could not keep pace with demand, and they wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having to say so. Lu Chao-hsin (呂兆炘) is general manager of Taihua Ceramics. “In its prime, Yingko had more than 300 continuous kilns,” he says. “Each of them generated a net profit of NT$5 million [US$181,800] a month. In the whole of Mainland China, there are only about 200 such kilns. It’s awesome, this small town.”
Europe and America were taken with Yingko ceramics almost from the beginning, because of their fine quality and low price. “In the late seventies and early eighties, European and American ceramics cost about ten times what ours did,” Tony Hsu says. But those were not Yingko’s only markets. It also exported huge amounts of plain, unglazed vases and cisterns, mainly to Hong Kong. Why did Hong Kong businessmen want them in such quantities? According to Lu, the answer is very simple. They were all bought up by factories, which hand-painted and glazed them and generally made them look like antiques, so that shrewd businessmen could sell them at exorbitant prices.
Camel in tricolor glaze, by Lee Chien-jung.
As the ceramics business flourished, so more and more job opportunities opened up, attracting people from other areas to move to the small town. “These ‘immigrants’ came from Changhua, Yunlin, and Chiayi counties,” Mayor Tony Hsu says, “and altogether about 10,000 of them moved to Yingko in search of work.”
Chen Kuen-cheng (陳坤城) is a case in point. Chen comes from Nantou and is a skilled potter who specializes in making large cisterns. He moved from his hometown to Yingko some fifteen years ago in search of better job opportunities. Now he has his own workshop, and his eldest son helps him run the business. The family is part of an immigration wave that has boosted Yingko’s population considerably. As of April 1995 it consists of rather more than 70,000 people and, according to Mayor Hsu, about 60 percent of them are in ceramics.
Lan Hsueh-wei (藍學位), who moved to Yingko to set up his own factory about ten years ago, explains why ceramics entrepreneurs like to settle here. “It’s easy to find skilled workers,” he says. “Any elderly man or woman you meet by chance on the street might turn out to be capable of molding, or throwing clay, or polishing. The place attracts suppliers of raw materials, and the exchange of information and new technology is quicker than elsewhere.”
But in the view of Lu Chao-hsin, what really enables this small town to generate large amounts of wealth is its wide spread of expertise. “Let’s say you’re a tile manufacturer and a supplier tries to sell you some clay,” he says. “Tile-making equipment is expensive and if you use the wrong material it may get damaged. But you don’t have to take such risks. You can just say to the supplier, ‘Very well then, please test the clay for me to see if it’s suitable for my machine.’ And they can do it. That way, you save a lot of money and effort, and—most important—you get good results.”
So what is Yingko really like? “You won’t find another city like this anywhere in the world,” says Edward Hsu. “The workers here know pretty much everything about making ceramics: slip casting, throwing, molding. Yingko is unique.” It is home to people with academic training, like Lan Hsueh-wei, and craftsmen like Chien Chih-cheng (簡志成), who learned clay-molding purely from artistic instinct and experience. Taihua’s Lu Chao-hsin calls it “a hodgepodge of ceramics.” “It makes everything,” he says. “Even catalytic converters for cars are made in Yingko.” Everywhere the visitor walks he encounters ceramics in superabundance: the underglaze blues and reds characteristic of the Ching dynasty, the tricolor glaze of the Tang, and the Tienmu black glaze (which is best for tea services and a favorite of the Japanese).
About 60 percent of Yingko's inhabitants work in the ceramics industry, making everything from toilet bowls to splendid hand-painted platters like this one.
But about eight or ten years ago, Yingko experienced another crisis—the fast-growing ceramics market in mainland China posed a growing threat. According to Tony Hsu, China appropriated about 70 percent of Yingko's share of the world market, and quite a few factories folded.
But Yingko's nimble inhabitants are good at reinventing themselves. Starting around 1986, they turned to making artistic ceramics, including a creative variety of tea pot designs, and experimenting with different types of crystalline glaze. But this time, the target is definitely the domestic market. The manufacture of delicate tea services has helped breathe new life into Taiwan's tea culture. The townspeople have started organizing large-scale ceramics fairs that attract buyers from around the island. All this activity has brought yet another era of prosperity to Yingko, which has a unique knack for retooling itself when need arises—something that, as Cheng Chi-wei points out, is typical of Taiwan's entire economy.
To secure its special niche, the town has launched a plan to set up a vocational high school focusing on ceramics, mainly for training mid-level management staff. The school, currently under construction, is expected to begin enrolling students next year. Some people, however, have reservations about the plan’s feasibility. “It’s a good idea,” says Wu Ko-shun (吳可舜), owner of the Yieh Yun Tang ceramics workshop, where artifacts made by some twenty of Yingko’s finest craftsmen are on display. (Wu himself is an artist who specializes in Chinese calligraphy and ink painting.) “The problem is, where can you find qualified teachers who know how to make ceramics, not just in theory but in practice.” Even though Wu has had his work selected for exhibition at the National Palace Museum, he has only a high-school diploma and so would not be qualified to teach at the new school, which is obliged to recruit teachers who have at least a university degree. Wu thinks this requirement is thoroughly unreasonable.“Degrees have no place in art,” he says.
Apart from the school, the town is also building a ceramics museum—a project that had been under discussion for many years, but only finally got off the ground when the Taipei county government managed to have it included in the 1990 Six-Year National Development Plan. The museum, budgeted at NT$400 million [US$14.5 million] and with a total area of nearly 22,000 square feet, is projected to house a number of modern ceramic works and materials that will tell the story of the town. Meanwhile, the Tourism Bureau has launched a long-term project to help transform Yingko into a haven for domestic and international tourists. The bureau calls for improved transportation links to the town, tourist-friendly facilities that demonstrate how ceramics are made, and a center for promoting Yingko ceramics worldwide.
Deep in his heart, however, Tony Hsu harbors a bigger ambition for Yingko. “My job as mayor is to lead the industry in the direction of producing industrial-use ceramics,” he says. “There’s more added value to them than to the artistic kinds.” Some factories are already manufacturing bulletproof vests, and catalytic converters for cars that run on unleaded gas. Fuyuan Ceramics makes yarn guides that have been exported to Europe, the Americas, and other parts of Asia for more than a decade.
Just how far this promising line of work has been or can be developed is an open question. Ceramics now find their way into a wide variety of on-the-face-of-it unusual places—including computers. Manufacturers and customers are understandably secretive about such high value, confidential projects. But Tony Hsu remains optimistic and, on past performance, Yingko is unlikely to be left behind. For this little town, where all you need to do is mix earth and water to be ninety cents toward your first dollar, the future looks bright.