'Happy life' at Losheng rolls along in spite of gloomy future

Literary seminars bring people together. (Courtesy of Ping Lieh-hao)

By June Tsai
On Dec. 4, 2008, the residents of Losheng Sanatorium squared off against dozens of construction workers, backed by more than 500 police, attempting to demolish part of their home in preparation for construction of a Taipei Rapid Transit System Corp. line extension. But the elderly men and women, many disfigured and partially paralyzed by leprosy, were not alone. A group of students and concerned citizens had been on site all night guarding against any attempt to remove the patients by force.

Demanding Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan visit the site and talk with them, the protesters claimed construction work would leave sections of the buildings, which the government promised to preserve, in ruins and deprive patients of their rights to use the facility in that area. Officials from Taipei City Government's Department of Rapid Transit System and Taipei County Government countered that those patients who refused to leave their homes were delaying the mass rapid transit system extension and would be removed by force if necessary.

After a one-hour face-off, police moved in and began dragging away protesters so workers could get on with their jobs. They also removed the personal property of patients who refused to be forced out of the only home many of them had ever known. This action sparked a public outcry and charges that police lacked compassion. While the local media has taken great delight in spotlighting these confrontations, the rights of the patients who have inhabited Taiwan's only leprosarium for over half a century continue to be trampled on, with their forced eviction justified in the name of the public good.

Although the Losheng controversy only surfaced in the public forum around five years ago, the decision to proceed with work on the MRT extension that would threaten the facility was greenlighted in the late 1980s. Patients continue to argue to this day that they were deliberately kept in the dark about the future of their home. In 2004, a group of medical students started working with residents to try and find a community solution to their problem. By suggesting the facility's listing as a historic site with the aim of preserving it to the benefit of the residents and Taiwan, they were labeled as troublemakers and their efforts dismissed out of hand.

Criticism of the government's handling of the issue soon grew, and in the run up to the 2008 presidential election, a slogan was circulating on the Internet: "Let Losheng decide how we vote for our president." In an early 2008 attempt at compromise, the Executive Yuan's Public Construction Commission announced a decision to preserve Losheng's 49 remaining buildings.

Meanwhile, the sanatorium and its residents have attracted the attentions of students, academics, human-rights activists, artists, writers, documentary filmmakers and independent journalists. These include cultural celebrities such as Cloud Gate Dance Theatre founder Lin Hwai-min and renowned film director Hou Hsiao-hsien, who are throwing their weight behind a movement that has gone far beyond the mere cause of preservation. Indeed, as in the words of Kuang Chung-shiang, an assistant professor at National Chung Cheng University, "The crux of the Losheng issue does not lie in the clash between preservation and development, or between culture and economy. Instead, it involves important societal facets in Taiwan, such as human rights, public health, history, collective memory and media development."

Since Losheng, which means "happy life" in Chinese, began capturing headlines, the local media has rarely addressed the complexity of the situation. The real issues seemed to be missed, with a greater focus placed on broadcasting or reporting images or stories of street demonstrations and rallies in front of government buildings. To make matters worse, the subject is usually handled by pitting preservation against development, or more cruelly, lepers versus Taipei County residents. What continues to be missed about Losheng is a lively sense of community and resident solidarity. This is thanks to the ongoing efforts of students and concerned citizens to allow the remaining residents--many who are septuagenarians--to live the rest of their days with dignity.

On Dec. 28, 2008 Chang Hsin-wen, a longtime member of Losheng Youth Alliance and Save Losheng Association, spoke of the attempt late last year to hive off some of the facility's structures, which according to the PCC, are listed for preservation but declared "unfit for habitation."

Among the 49 buildings the government planned to preserve, nine were to be rebuilt elsewhere, while 40 would be maintained. However, of these 40 buildings, 18 were declared "fit for habitation" while 22 were "unfit for habitation." Students argued that preparation for the MRT extension should not bar people from having access to the 22 buildings. In addition, the government has not yet released a detailed plan outlining how it intends to resituate the nine buildings.

"It was claimed the area was cleared for the safety and preservation of Losheng's historic buildings," Chang said. "Yet in fact, this action would threaten the existence of the site because people would be forbidden from using this space." She explained that the students are trying to open up the site and maintain access not only for the patients, but for nearby communities and any member of the public.

As part of ongoing efforts to draw attention to the plight of Losheng's residents, the "Happy Life Literary House" was opened Dec. 20, 2008. The community library, park and structure located opposite serves as a form of collective memory for the facility's patients, while strengthening their ties with the local community.

On the inaugural weekend, visitors flocked to take in a poetry recital given by 76-year-old Tang Ming-shiang, a Losheng activist and organizer of the literary event. Tang recited poems he wrote as an ambitious young poet, and later, after moving into the facility. Outside, Chen Chai-tien--a Losheng patient--regaled visitors with stories of how people like Chang and others, who spend an enormous amount of time visiting the facility to gain a better understanding of the residents' struggles, have helped bring new life to this forgotten place. "Their involvement has been invaluable," he said. "These efforts have led to a better understanding of our plight and what steps can be taken to correct it."

Over the past few years, students have organized a variety of activities to highlight the Losheng issue. Guided tours, lectures on the history of the leprosarium, concerts, dramas, art exhibitions, social movement seminars, documentary screenings and art exhibitions have taken place every month. Couples who support the Losheng cause have chosen to hold their wedding ceremonies there.

Moreover, activists have made use of various mass communication mediums to get their message across. Documentaries and music albums publicizing Losheng have been produced and distributed through file-sharing programs in order to reach a wider audience. Assistant Professor Kuang defines these events as "cultural activism," and believes they have grown from an attempt to communicate with the greater society and break through the confrontation-obsessed mainstream media.

While working to carry Losheng's agenda to the broader public, activists have deepened their engagement on a personal level, making friends with locals in the surrounding community. Students admitted that during this process of engagement, they found the Losheng area has high population density, a disproportionately high number of low-income families and limited access to green spaces, public space and educational and cultural resources. Thus, over the last two years, Losheng has become a venue for summer camps attended by local children, and a center for further education. Residents of the southern Xinzhuang City area attend dozens of courses covering a variety of subjects. Organizers state that over 200 families have taken part to date.

According to Chen Jay-hao, an artist and community school organizer, the goal of Losheng's preservation movement is to transform what was once an area feared by society into a space for the common person that addresses their needs. "The history of the leprosarium and the disease has contributed to making Losheng a community characterized by sharing, reciprocity and care," she stated. "For residents, care, sharing and mutual help have been their way for survival, yet in modern society, they are envied ideals. We hope to continue to impart these values through our community work."

This article is published in Taiwan Journal Jan. 16, 2009.

Activists oppose railway to Tibet

This article is published in Taiwan Journal July 14, 2006.


By June Tsai

Activists in Taiwan voiced their disapproval July 6 of China's opening of a rail link to Tibet, calling on every person in Taiwan to sign a letter of protest to the Chinese leadership to show the island's support for the Tibetan people.

"The railway is not built for the Tibetan people," said Jimmy Gyaltsen, a Tibetan living in Taiwan. "The rail line is built by the Chinese government for the Chinese people. We oppose the railway."

Gyaltsen made his appeal at a July 6 press conference called by an organization called Friends of Tibet in Taiwan, with support from the Taiwan Association for Human Rights and Green Party Taiwan. The date was also the 71st birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Khedroob Thondup, a member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, called the railway running from Golmud to Lhasa a "second invasion of Tibet," referring to China's first invasion of Tibet in 1959. He said at the press conference that Beijing never consulted the Tibetan people before building the railway and that the purpose of such a project is to further assimilate, and thus marginalize, the ethnic group. "Only Chinese people will come to Tibet by means of the railway, not the other way round."

Thondup, who divides his time between Taiwan and India, said the Chinese government spent over US$3 billion on the railway's construction. This far exceeds the amount that has been spent on Tibet's education and medical services for the past 47 years, he pointed out.

He remarked that almost none of the Tibetan farmers cared a bit about the opening of the railway, which Beijing has been trying to spin as a project that will benefit the Tibetan economy. This is a lie, according to political commentator Paul Lin.

Lin pointed out that half of the population of Lhasa today is Han Chinese, and the building of the railway is the continuation of China's attempt to destroy Tibet through its transmigration and Sinicization program. According to Lin, since China's occupation began, the euphemistically named "autonomous region" has never been under the rule of the Tibetans themselves. It is controlled directly by the secretary of Chinese Communist Party regional committee, a post held by China's current leader Hu Jintao from 1988 to 1992.

"They are going to make the Tibetans the minority on their own land," predicted Lin, a long-time critic of the CCP who recently moved from New York to Taipei.

Meili Chow, the director of Friends of Tibet in Taiwan, is an ardent advocate of human rights for Tibet. In her opinion, the new construction project will devastate Tibet's culture, religion, ecology, security, economy and identity.

Chow explained that Chinese people dominate Tibet's economy, and the highly touted economic benefits of the rail link will translate to more money for the Han Chinese. According to Chow, the "development" brought by this railway will sap Tibet's culture and religion even further, which is tantamount to the cultural extinction of the Tibetan people.

Chow added that the Tibetan Plateau is the origin of several major rivers that provide water for an estimated 47 percent of the world's population. The railway poses a threat to these water sources, as well as other aspects of the environment such as the natural habitat of animal species.

She claimed in addition that China has nuclear weapons in the Tibet area, and that the railway will only make it easier for the Chinese government to transport them, and thus threaten the security of countries in South Asia.

Chow is Han Chinese herself, although her husband is Tibetan. She complained that the Taiwanese media has been covering the railway story inappropriately, parroting Beijing's line about the strategic significance of the project and how it will boost tourism to the Tibet region.

She called on Taiwanese people who travel to Tibet, including quite a number of Buddhists, to show sympathy and respect for the Tibetan people, and not to bring in things that would do harm to the environment of the snow-covered plateau. Rather, they should carry with them the Dalai Lama's message of peace and freedom and the support from the people of Taiwan.

She pointed out that Beijing has decreed that it is illegal for Tibetan people to even own a photograph of the Dalai Lama, and that the government continues to run "patriotic re-education" sessions in temples in which monks are forced to criticize the leader of their religion.

Crackdown in Tibet evokes condemnation

This article is published in Taiwan Journal March 20, 2008.

By June Tsai

The ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs blasted China for its heavy-handed response to demonstrations that took place in Tibet starting March 10, with the Tibetan community in Taiwan and local pro-democracy supporters calling for international condemnation of Beijing's suppression of the Tibetan people.

The MOFA denounced China's crackdown that reportedly left as many as 103 people dead, saying that Beijing's actions contradict the image of a peaceful and harmonious country that China has been trying hard to foster ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. "Though the PRC authorities have ordered a media blackout to attempt to conceal the truth of events, the fact that it is an anti-democratic regime is all too clear," the MOFA said in a March 15 statement, adding that China's deployment of missiles pointing at Taiwan is another example of PRC aggression.

The protests that were started by Buddhist monks in Tibet's capital Lhasa were to commemorate the anniversary of the March 10, 1959 failed uprising against China's rule in Tibet, which ultimately led to the Dalai Lama's exile in Dharamsala, India. The protest turned violent March 14 when PRC security forces tried to disperse the people.

The Mainland Affairs Council stated that Beijing had obviously not made any progress in respecting human rights since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Calling China's actions in Tibet "barbaric," the MAC said that the recent human-rights abuses showed that China was not being a responsible stakeholder in the international community, but was a threat to regional peace instead.

China's promise to the world that it would respect freedom of speech ahead of the Olympics was a hoax, the council stated. The PRC's continuous use of military tactics to achieve its goals and consolidate its power should be enough to show people the world over that authorities in Beijing were unlikely to handle cross-strait issues in a peaceful manner, the MAC added.

In a show of solidarity, a number of Tibetans and Taiwanese people gathered to light candles that formed the words "Free Tibet" in a praying event at the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall March 17. In a joint statement, groups supporting the cause of a free Tibet said, "China claims Tibet is an integral part of China and Tibetan people are its subjects. Yet in reality, the PRC authorities crush defenseless people with tanks and soldiers, threatening the lives and safety of residents in Tibet."

Khedroob Thondup, a member of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile who divides his time between Taiwan and India, disputed the claim made by China that the Dalai Lama was behind the demonstrations in various regions of Tibet. "The protests have spilled beyond Lhasa and Tibet. Confrontations between monks and the security forces are also happening in China's Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan provinces where there are Tibetan people and monasteries," he said March 17. The official pointed out that the escalation of the events clearly represented the Tibetan people's dissatisfaction with China's rule in Tibet, and that the protests could not have been orchestrated by the Dalai Lama.

As well as marking the anniversary of the 1959 uprising, a group of roughly 300 monks from Drepung Monastery on Lhasa's outskirts launched the initial demonstration to also seek for the release of fellow monks. They had reportedly been detained by the PRC government for celebrating the Dalai Lama's receipt of the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal in October 2007. "It was a glaring mistake on the part of the PRC authorities that they resorted to force again," Khedroob said.

In 1989, when PRC President Hu Jintao was secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet, he quelled a movement for Tibetan independence with force and declared martial law in Lhasa, Khedroob recounted. According to the parliamentarian, that decision nearly 20 years ago heralded the crackdown on students in Beijing's Tiananmen Square three months later. "There is martial law again in Lhasa," he said.

As part of a team that entered into dialogue with China in 1980, Khedroob said that Hu should have known the situation in Tibet was gradually deteriorating. "Why would the monks want to rebel?" he asked. "They have been forced to receive 'patriotic education,' and they have been banned from possessing any images of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Nearly half a century has passed and the Tibetans still want to rise up against China's rule. Decades of resentment have reached boiling point because the Tibetan people have had enough of being treated like animals rather than humans."

Khedroob added that incentives offered by the PRC government to the Han Chinese to immigrate westward, exacerbated by the completion of the direct Beijing to Lhasa rail link, was making Tibetans a minority in their own land. He was also pessimistic about China heeding any international calls for restraint because the CCP was only concerned about stamping out dissent in what it considered an internal matter.

"The protests in Tibet are a 'slap in the face' for China ahead of the Olympics, and the authorities will not let things go easily," he said.

Kaohsiung laurels its poets

Statue of writer Yeh Shih-tao stands beside the Kaohsiung Literature Museum. (Photo by June Tsai)



By June Tsai
Ten years ago, Kaohsiung City was known as an industrial wasteland, with a heavy concentration of gas storage tanks, chimneys and factory buildings filling the skyline, and the stinking Love River and piles of industrial waste befouling the metropolis.

Today, this southern Taiwanese community boasts a fresh scene—several interesting museums and a warehouse-turned art zone, efforts from both the public and private sectors to nurture culture over blind progress, and most importantly, a sense of cultural pride among its citizens.

“This sense of pride is new, and it has much to do with the latest development in spiritual life,” Cheng Chiung-ming, president of the Literary Taiwan Foundation, said Jan. 23. One important example is the weight the municipal government has begun to put on literature and on its own writers in recent years.

Kaohsiung now boasts Taiwan’s first city literature museum. Founded in 2006, the institute is somewhat belated for this major port, which has been home to many famous writers over a long period of time. Still, given that in Taiwan institutions dedicated to writers and literature can be counted on one’s fingers, for it to have been established at all was something of an accomplishment.

The museum turned the heads of Kaohsiung’s citizens when it opened. Located in a quiet corner of Central Park (near the Central Park metro station), with its elegant facade shaded gracefully by large trees, the Kaohsiung Literature Museum supplies spiritual nourishment in a city once seen as a cultural desert.

The museum has been a library since 1954. A 2003 renovation project turned the building into a multifunctional space. Reading salons began to take place in 2006, with different Kaohsiung-based writers invited each week to share their work with readers.

The museum’s permanent exhibition offers citizens a glimpse into the lives, work and manuscripts of a constellation of Kaohsiung authors, from members of the prewar Chinese-language poets’ society to a series of socially active postwar writers. This genealogy of writers is characteristic of Kaohsiung as a city of migrants, according to “Rambling through the Woods of Literature,” a city government publication.

During the Ching dynasty (1611-1912), Kaohsiung’s literary activities were based in the northern Zuoying area, where Ming dynasty (1368-1644) royalists stationed their troops, and the southwestern Cijin peninsula, one of the earliest developed areas in Kaohsiung, where Han Chinese fishermen settled.

Under the yoke of Japan’s colonial rule (1895-1945), publication of literary works continued, mainly in Japanese. Yet, while many at the time wrote and read in Japanese, use of the language was banned after Taiwan was taken over by the Kuomintang administration at the end of World War II following Japan’s surrender. Local writers became virtually silent, with new voices emerging only in the literary scene of the 1960s.

Filling up the lacuna were, notably, soldiers-poets who moved with the Nationalist government’s armed forces to Taiwan and were stationed in Zuoying—reviving the area’s military-based literature. In 1954, “Epoch Poetry Quarterly” was founded there by three of these poets, Chang Muo, Luo Fu and Ya Xian, who later styled themselves the “Parnassus” of Taiwan’s poetry. In 1964 the publication moved its editorial base north to Taipei, where it entered the mainstream postwar literary world.

In the same year, another poets’ group emerged in Kaohsiung surrounding “Li Poetry,” a bimonthly publication. Members included Chen Chien-wu, Chan Ping and other poets who had just began to compose in Mandarin, which for them was a new language.

The Li poets stressed the importance of literature articulating social and historic reality. They challenged the Epoch poets for what they said was their misuse of modernist techniques to produce abstruse lines that evaded the reality of their exiled land. The two groups engaged in debates that foreshadowed the “nativist literature debate” involving virtually every contemporary writer in 1977 and 1978.

Another poets’ society, known as “Amoeba,” was formed among verse-loving students of today’s Kaohsiung Medical University. The name, referring to the protozoa known for its changing shape, stressed a demand for literary responsiveness to social realities, as well as open discussions on all aspects of culture and art.

The young doctor-poets vowed to take care of people’s souls along with their bodies. The society is still active today, and many of its older members have become influential writers, including human rights activist Tseng Kuei-hai, psychiatrist Wang Hao-wei and aboriginal novelist Tuobasi Tamapima.

“Looking at it as a whole, the literary scene in Kaohsiung has been different from that in Taipei in that writers from the south tended to be socially engaged, both in word and in action,” said the LTF’s Cheng, a Li poet.

According to Cheng, local poets often took part in the opposition movement demanding democracy and in social movements championing environmental protection and human rights during the 1980s and 1990s. Tseng, for example, rallied members of cultural circles to push for the cleaning up of the Love River, the preservation of the city’s natural reserve of Mount Chai and the greening of the Ministry of Defense-owned compound of Wei Wu Ying.

“During the long period of martial law in Taiwan, mainstream writers tended to collaborate with the power center in Taipei, wittingly or not, while the efforts of southern grassroots writers were practically ignored,” Tseng said. This prevented the world from really getting to know the minds of Taiwanese people, he said.

“Thus when German Sinologist Helmut Martin read works by writers such as those involved with ‘Li Poetry’ in the 1980s, he was surprised to find a whole different world of representations of Taiwan,” Cheng said.

The diversity of Taiwan’s literary output as a whole proved “much more interesting” for Martin than literature written in other Chinese-speaking regions during the same period, according to Cheng. Martin later helped found the Research Unit on Taiwanese Culture and Literature at Germany’s Ruhr University Bochum in 2002.

A statue of writer Yeh Shih-tao is visible from the museum’s back door, facing Central Park. Yeh, who first wrote in Japanese, experienced the ban on that language and served a prison term for his political affiliation early in his career. He authored “An Outline History of Taiwan Literature,” published in 1987, which compiles an independent genealogy of literary development in the island’s 400 years of history—the first of its kind. Yeh’s death in 2008 was regarded as a great loss for the country’s literature.

Public art such as this statue of Yeh highlights Kaohsiung’s efforts to increase awareness of its literary heritage, with the administrative support of the city’s former cultural department chief, Wang Chih-cheng, a poet and writer. In addition, the city government published “A Literary History of Kaohsiung City” in two volumes in 2008.

Literature is also becoming part of the city’s tourism resources. In May 2009, a 517 meter-long literary walking path along the bank of Zuoying’s Lotus Lake, a favorite with sightseers, opened to the public. Art works along the path are inscribed with lines by important local writers and poets.

“This public art project is just a beginning. We look forward to more of such paths, corners and publications that honor our writers and their work and increase their visibility,” Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu said at the lakeside path’s opening ceremony.
“The responsibility of Taiwanese writers is to open our minds to the world, to which Taiwan belongs”—Yeh’s words seem to resonate with the lake view sparkling under a tropical sunny sky typical of this southern port city.





This article is published in Taiwan Today Feb. 12, 2010.

Rule of law endangered in development dispute

This article is published in Taiwan Today March 5, 2010

By June Tsai

The Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling Jan. 22 invalidating the environmental impact assessment which had allowed for the expansion of the Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung County’s Houli Township.

The ruling put the developer, the National Science Council, in an awkward position, as construction had already begun after the initial conditional EIA approval. But after the court’s ruling was announced, work at the CTSP Houli branch was not stopped.

The failure to halt construction following the court’s decision angered environmental activists and legal experts alike. They called on the Environmental Protection Administration to order suspension of work in accordance with the Environmental Impact Assessment Act. The nation’s top environmental authority, however, said the project did not have to be stopped.

Outraged, activists and residents demonstrated outside the EPA office March 1. “We decided to take to the streets, since the government itself is not able to uphold social justice,” one protester said.

The controversy is snowballing amid concerns for environmental protection, health risks, access to technology and the democratic rule of law.
“The Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling is the most important event since Taiwan adopted the environmental impact assessment review system in 1994,” lawyer Lin San-chia said in a seminar Feb. 10.

The court decided that the EIA review procedure was defective in that citizens’ right to participation was largely ignored or prevented due to administrative misconduct, according to Lin.

“The ruling testified that the farmers were right,” said Lin, referring to the six farmers he represented, who in 2006 first raised the case that the environmental impact assessment procedure had not been properly done.

The Houli project was given a conditional pass in the phase-one assessment review in 2006. This allowed construction to begin, while sparing the developer the job of providing a report for phase-two impact assessment review, explained Liu Ru-huei, an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Department of Public Administration.

According to Article 8 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, phase two is required for development projects when there is “concern of a significant impact on the environment.”

Environmental issues relating to the science-based industrial park have been the focus of disputes in the past few years. The CTSP currently has four sites in Taichung, Yunlin and Changhua counties, providing land and resources to major manufacturers, most notably AU Optronics Corp., one of the world’s leading thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal-display manufacturers.

The 246-hectare Houli park was expected to create 18,000 jobs. The government hoped the CTSP’s completion would help upgrade central Taiwan’s industry and, once integrated with the Hsinchu Science Park and Southern Taiwan Science Park, help reinforce Taiwan’s position as a major player in the world’s high-tech industry.

Residents, however, are worried about potential threats to health, both during the construction process and later operations, because of possible contamination of soil and underground water. They are also concerned about the distribution of water supplies and the project’s impact on agriculture in one of the country’s major food baskets.

Serious misgivings have arisen over how the opinions of people in the affected area have not been taken into consideration. The March 1 protest was not an isolated incident.

In October 2009 farmers and fishermen made headlines when they threw oyster shells in front of the EPA headquarters in protest against the conditional passing of the CTSP fourth-stage project in Erlin Township, Changhua County. Ground was broken at the Erlin site in December, despite months of futile attempts by residents to have their voices heard.

“The gist of phase-two impact assessment is public participation, allowing citizens to submit their opinions pertaining to a development plan,” Liu said. “The truth is that 70 percent of the country’s development plans never entered the second phase,” she added.

According to the ruling that annulled the Houli case, the EPA was “misusing its discretionary power” when it determined that there was “no concern of significant impact on citizen’s health” involved, and thus kept the project from entering the phase-two environmental impact assessment process.

In response to the court’s decree, the EPA declared that the phase-one review conclusion was based on the democratic principle of majority rule, with committee members voting 11 to 8 in favor of the project. “For the administrative court to overrule the conclusion threatens the independence of the EIA scrutiny system,” the agency stated Feb. 7.

To Thomas Chan, a lawyer who was on the EIA panel when the project was approved, this argument is flawed. “There is no such thing as ‘majority rule’ when the information required for the review of an environmental impact assessment is incomplete,” he said.

According to Chan, the NSC routinely rejected requests for information on chemicals the park companies use and assessment reports on their health risks and environmental impact, on the grounds that such information amounted to “business secrets.”

Chan pointed out that the only health risk expert on the panel, a National Taiwan University public health professor, had insisted on the necessity of going on to phase two. “His opinion was overruled by the majority and was even referred to by the EPA as ‘one panel member’s irrational insistence,’” he said.

“The public participation mechanism in the impact assessment act has been made a formality because in the end, a few members make the decisions that forestall public involvement,” Chan said.

He revealed that the makeup of the EIA committee results in a foregone conclusion, because if the seven government representatives are not counted, those who voted for further risk appraisal far outnumbered those who supported passing the EIA in phase one.

“The EPA gave in to the pressure of the investors’ development schedule,” he said.

For environmentalists, the court’s decision addresses the important issue of insufficient risk appraisal in science park development reports.

“High-tech corporations have access to information on the chemical components in their production processes that might have an impact on land and life, but they are reluctant to disclose such data,” said Echo Lin, secretary-general of the Taiwan Environmental Action Network.

“Instead, it becomes the burden of environmental groups and residents, who do not have such information, to provide evidence of the dangers of a development project,” she said. “But then their observations are considered unscientific and are ignored.”

“Public policies are supposed to promote public interest, but exactly who is to determine where public interest lies?” Hsu Shih-jung of National Chengchi University’s Department of Land Economics posed this radical question.

In Taiwan, Hsu said Feb. 12, that it has been the practice for a few experts and bureaucrats to make the final decision on development projects.

“Technocrats have behaved as if they possess objective, scientific knowledge and know what is good for the public, yet the unexpected but disastrous flooding during Typhoon Morakot, and other catastrophes, show that science is not always reliable.”

“Lay people also have knowledge based on their own experience,” Hsu said. “Their knowledge has to be taken into serious consideration if controversies are to be avoided, and more importantly, if decision-making is to really solve social problems and promote public interest in the long run.”

“When it comes to controversies over development,” he continued, “some claim their right to employment, others to life, and still others to land and property. Therefore, multiple channels for soliciting opinion should be built into the administrative process and strictly implemented, so as not to exclude anyone.”

Regarding the CTSP development plans, “Residents from affect areas were deprived of all opportunities for their opinions to be taken into consideration, and have to be called ‘violent’ and ‘irrational’ when they resort to protests, this is really pathetic,” the professor said.

The CTSP dispute in Houli remains unresolved, although the NSC said it would soon submit a health risk report as required by the EPA. Yet how the judicial ruling will be interpreted in the end concerns not only the country’s rule of law but also future protection of the environment.

“We won the law suit. But so what, since the executive branch paid it no heed?” asked Lin San-chia.

Gangster film opens Pandora's box of history

By June Tsai

“City marketing” through cooperation with TV and film productions has become an idea dear to the hearts of municipal administrators in Taiwan since the success of the 2008 movie “Cape No. 7” in attracting crowds of visitors to the film’s locations in Hengchun Township, Pingtung County. This year, a new film may be teaching a different lesson to officials eager to promote their city cinematically.

With a stellar cast and a well-calculated marketing strategy, “Monga” swept movie theaters islandwide during the Lunar New Year holidays and brought in a record NT$100 million (US$3.14 million) in its first week in cinemas. Reports abound in the media on movie tour routes in Taipei City’s Wanhua District, an older name of which the film uses for its title.

While it enjoys popularity among young viewers and is bringing in tourism dollars for shops in the area, “Monga” has drawn criticism for its violence as well as its selective depiction of the locale. Critics argued that this might result in a misunderstanding of the city, which may not help with city marketing.

In the 19th century Wanhua was one of Taiwan’s three major ports and the commercial and military center of northern Taiwan. In 1987, when the action in the film takes place, Wanhua still retained its old-time glamour with historic temples and stores, and had also become famous for its nightlife, crime and sex trade. In that year, the ruling Kuomintang government ended martial law on the island amid drastic social changes and concerted grassroots efforts for democratization.

Just three years earlier, the KMT government had conducted its largest crackdown on crime in history. In the film, a minor gangster is released after three years in prison. As the story unfolds, he initiates the collapse of the local gang world, capsizing the “little boat”—the meaning of “monga” in the language of the indigenous people who long ago inhabited Wanhua.

Director Niu Chen-zer is not unaware of the implications of the name; in the film he intertwines personal experience with a period of time that for him was full of energy and possibilities.

“The old name Monga reminds me of those vibrant years of the 1980s when I was becoming an adult and feeling lonely as a little boat on the sea,” Niu said in an interview, recollecting his youthful days squandered in curious exploration of the gang world.

“Those were also years when Taiwan’s democratization movement was at its height, and everything seemed possible. I wanted to revisit that age,” he said.

Advertised as the first Taiwanese gangster flick, the movie has all the elements the name implies—blood and violence, macho vigor, street justice and preaching on the survival of the fittest.

The tale begins with the development of friendship and personal loyalty among five youths. The protagonist, Mosquito, is new to the neighborhood. Monk, the brains of the group, introduces the social network of the area to Mosquito—how the place is run by several criminal rings, each with its own boss and turf, and how they manage their businesses in a symbiotic relationship with residents, all the while maintaining the upper hand.

The five innocent youths become sworn brothers and engage in foolhardy daily activities such as teen gang fights. They are gradually initiated into the adult world of experience when a gang from outside Monga attempts to take a share of the pie in the prosperous district from two established local gangs led by Geta and Masa.

Tension builds up when Monk falls under the sway of Masa’s underling, Wen Qian, just out of prison. Wen Qian persuades the junior gangster to set himself off from local and local-minded gangs by thinking big and cooperating with the “outsiders,” who look more progressive in terms of organization and weaponry.

Through this plot, the director tries to present his interpretation of Taiwan’s history of immigration. “Taiwan is a small place packed with generations of immigrants. In trying to edge out a survival space, they fought with one another—people from different parts of China’s Fujian province, or Fujian people against Hakka people,” Niu said.

“Local history is characterized by the vigor and bravery of these people, which impressed me a lot and is also why I wanted to make this movie,” he explains.

Indeed, the film captures this vitality in its visual presentation of the characters, unconventional editing and epic-like action scenes, according to renowned film commentator Lan Zu-wei. The manner of filming and its use of music, in Lan’s words, are “unrestrained yet precise, dashing yet refined.”

However, for members of community organizations based in Wanhua, the representation is selective. “The humanity and cultural heritage of the area are overshadowed by the film’s focus on negative elements,” a community guide for the district said.

This partiality in representation makes the film more a coming-of-age romance than a Taiwanese gang film, critics said.

This result is in part due to the production team’s limited understanding of Taiwan’s convoluted social and political history, according to Yang Meng-che, assistant professor of Taiwan studies at National Taipei University of Education.

For example, the collaboration of “inside men” with outsiders to bring down local influence is a strong reflection of how the KMT ruled the country during the martial law era. “The film touches upon this in an allegorical way but fails to really dig into it,” he said.

“Colonial powers ruling over Taiwan found it convenient to nurture gangs, using them to check one another, so as to help maintain law and order and suppress democracy,” he said. As a consequence, “Gangs are used to profiting through attachment to the ruling power, and there is really nothing to glorify, as is done in the film.”

The film raises doubts about people's awareness of their own history. After all, a more historically sophisticated film would have demonstrated cultural ambition more fitting for a municipal official to market the city with. (THN)

This article is published in Taiwan Today March 19, 2010.

From earth to the home, soup showcases cultural diversity

By June Tsai

The 63-year-old former fisherman deftly chopped patchouli leaves with a kitchen knife outside a simple single-story building. The fresh scent of the leaves assailed the nostrils of any visitor approaching what turned out to be a small factory, located in a green corner of Taiwan's northeastern Jinshan Township. Cai Rong-da was preparing the fragrant leaves for processing, after which they would be mixed with other ingredients to make soap.

Cai's daughter Siou-man, who got him involved, was busy inside the orderly workplace, filling an order of Yuan Soap for the Eslite bookstore chain. The soaps are made by hand using a wide range of ingredients, including mugwort, lemon, mung bean, tangerine, cypress, purple gromwell and eucalyptus. All of the ingredients are organically grown and combined with quality vegetable oils and fresh spring water from Yangmingshan National Park, according to Chiang Jung-yuan, founder of the Yuan Studio Co. Ltd. "Some people suspect that artificial fragrances are added to our soaps. They don't know many herbs have such a strong scent," Chiang said Jan. 21, explaining that every product was made according to his own recipe.

After procuring the plants and herbs from a number of organic farms, the soap master said, the ingredients are then separately dried, boiled or simmered into liquids, thick pastes or cubes of raw soap to "ensure that the effects of different plants do not offset one another if mixed improperly." He added that the complete process of saponification takes about 30 days.
Originally, Yuan Soap's reputation spread by word of mouth, seemingly a reflection of society's fear of pollution and post-modern nostalgia of handmade items. But since its quiet emergence two years ago, more than 300 organic stores now stock the company's soaps. They can also be purchased in select high-end department stores and through the company website.

The soaps, colored naturally by the ingredients, use minimum packaging and labeling. Yet Chiang said he did not want to emphasize the organic, handmade nature of the products that bear his name. "For me, that is how it should be. Making something by hand is only a procedure to create the things we want," Chiang explained, while stirring a liquid in a glass pot.
Life was not always so natural or philosophical though. Before taking on his soap-making venture, Chiang was the advertising force behind many election campaigns that advanced people's political careers. Since 1994, he had been engaged in public-relations work, designing and implementing campaign strategies. "Candidates were my merchandise," he said, pointing out that some of the politicians he "packaged" even went on to win.

However, "It was a business in which right and wrong played no role," Chiang said, elaborating that a campaign's creativity played second fiddle to the ability to win votes for the candidate. "Sometimes quality is not under your control," he said, "Yet you are forced to believe in what you promote." After 10 years in the business, conflicts within himself led him to reconsider his career and his passion for life, and he ultimately gave up the highly lucrative public-relations world in his early forties.

Chiang had actually started making soap for his own use 10 years ago, while still engineering political campaigns. "I have sensitive skin. That's why I tried to make soap for myself," he said. People who tried out Chiang's soaps encouraged him to try and sell them to the public. In the end, his homemade soaps sold like hot cakes at a friend's organic store in Taipei. The company grew rapidly and now has 40 employees, including 10 at the factory in Jinshan. "It all began quite accidentally," he stated.

Chiang went on to confess that there was actually a certain sense of continuity between what he is doing now and his previous career. "My emotional attachment to the beautiful and the ideal has always helped me do the job at hand," he said, adding he was good at creating identities for candidates in terms of their ideas. "I am the same idealist, only there is no conflict in my mind now. I feel very happy making soap. We are doing a down-to-earth thing. I think that's where the power of our product comes from," he explained. "This city is used to being tagged with prices. More than half of all logos are actually meaningless. When a man begins to live a simple life, his values need not be defined by price anymore," he stated in one of the promotional lines he wrote for his company's products.

Chiang's enterprise is more than about branding the simplest daily necessity, however. For the entrepreneur, what lies behind his humble products is a distinctly social vision. Chiang said his goal was to help empower and develop the community where his factory is located. He insists on employing residents in the Jinshan area, with most of the 10 staff being related to one another. "I hope to give them more than just a salary. They are the hands that give the products something extra. That is worth more than money. So, the profits should be returned to them," Chiang said, believing that was the best way an idea could be materialized and a community sustained.

According to Chiang's secretary, Christopher Chen, Chiang refused to lay off workers for the sake of profits. "He leads a very simple life. He doesn't even lock his door after leaving his apartment," Chen added, implying profit margins were the last thing on Chiang's mind. For his part, Chiang said that he could never get rid of workers because the company is always keen to tweak a recipe whenever a modification is found. "Reflecting on price, it [might cost] me a few more dollars, yet that represents an insistence on values," he said, referring to the labor-intensive process of making Yuan soaps.

The next focus for the company is running its own farm. Yuan Studio has acquired a three-hectare plot--a terraced field that lay fallow for over 20 years. The rent-free land was offered by a friend who believed in what Chiang was trying to do, and the farm already supplies five kinds of herb for use in manufacturing Yuan Soap.

"What you get from nature should be returned to nature," said the self-professed Buddhist. Chiang said he hopes the farm can eventually grow all the herbs the company needs. "Eventually, I hope it could become a sanctuary for Taiwan's herbs."

In today's world of globalization, Chiang believed Yuan Soap could offer inspiration to the many generic products on the market. "Globalization seems to imply that whether you travel to the United States or to Thailand, what you get in terms of handmade soaps is invariably something made of European herbs such as lavender, rosemary or lemon grass. Even in Taiwan, you can buy Lush," he stated.

For Chiang, the idea of globalization is that local ingredients can prevent the world from becoming identical, while helping to create cultural diversity. "Have Americans never thought about making their own maize soap or traditional Indian herbal soap? Have the Japanese never come up with the idea of making use of their wasabi root?" he said, admitting that he has already started making laundry soap containing the green root.

"Since I am making soaps, of course I insist on using locally grown materials," he said, inviting foreign visitors to try everything that Taiwan's soil has to offer. "In five years, Yuan Soap will become a Taiwanese specialty," Chiang predicted, relishing the many opportunities offered by the unbeaten track he chose to follow two years ago.

Visit Yuan Soap at http://www.taiwansoap.com.tw.

This article first appeared in Taiwan Journal Feb. 1, 2008.

Film highlights Atayal tradition of migration

Builders and actors--the Atayal play both these roles in the film about their cultural legacy. (Courtesy of My Homeland Studio)

By June Tsai

Making a movie can be a form of community empowerment and that is just what the new "Once Upon A Time" has accomplished. Shot in a remote Atayal village in the wilds of northern Taiwan, the community of the indigenous people became both the subject of, and actors in, the film that won a Platinum Remi Award in the ethnic/culture category at the 41st WorldFest Houston International Film Festival in April.

Famous for their face tattooing and weaving, the Atayal --one of Taiwan's 14 indigenous peoples--are spread across the mountain regions in northern, central and eastern Taiwan, a result of the tribe's migrations since the mid-18th century.

Today, the spread of Atayal villages overlaps the borders of modern day Shei-pa National Park and to showcase the indigenous group's life and traditions, the park's administration commissioned the making of a film.

"It all started with making an informational production on the Atayal," said producer Lu Szu-yueh, director of My Homeland Studio--a community empowerment group. "But it ended up larger than anything we expected."

Under sponsorship of the national park headquarters and later backed by a Ford Motor Company Conservation & Environmental Grant, a project team was formed comprising of writer Walis Nokan, filmmakers Chen Wen-pin and Pilin Yapu, members of the Research Centre for Austronesian Peoples under Providence University, Taichung County, as well as Lu's company.

"We decided the Atayal should be engaged in the film about them," Lu explained. "Once Upon A Time" thus became an Atayal-language film by Atayal people on the migration of their tribe.

A traditional settlement was re-created for the film's setting in Cinsbu Village of Jianshih Township, Hsinchu County. Under tribal elders' instruction, more than 400 Atayal residents from Cinsbu and neighboring Hsin-kwan Village participated in constructing traditional Atayal buildings including the chief's house, granary and watchtower.

"Old Atayal housing could not have been created by set designers or an outside construction team, it had to be built by the Atayal," Chen insisted. "The building process is significant for our aboriginal friends, representing the revitalization of their traditional crafts and workmanship."

After finishing construction, the builders became actors in the film that was to tell the story of their ancestors, traditionally believed to have come from Mount Dabajian, one of the highest peaks in Shei-pa National Park.

"Originally, I planned to make a documentary on the Atayal," Chen said. "But following months of field studies in various villages throughout Taiwan, I realized that centuries of migration and mixing with other societies had expanded the tribe's make-up. This meant that the subject matter was now too broad for my original idea, so I switched to a feature film that focuses on one thing that all the Atayal share--the Gaga," Chen said. The Gaga refers to an ancient tale of three brothers setting out to find suitable land for cultivating and hunting. "So we thought we should tell a story about the Gaga, about the tribe's migration, as an essential way of life and a relationship with the nature," he explained.

"Tradition has been broken over the course of history, yet by participating in this film, the Atayal people are rediscovering their past," said Yurow Yukan, an Atayal aborigine who played village chief in the movie and is the only professional actor in the film. "We envisioned and experienced how our ancestors had lived and migrated, and where lies the spirit of the Gaga," he added.

For Chen and his team, the filmmaking process also amounted to an opportunity for improving mutual understanding between aborigines and non-aborigines.

"I found myself rewriting the script and storyline on each day of filming," the director said. "The feelings of the actors on the day of shooting, dreams they had the night before--these could all dictate the storyline of that day. And actually, soliciting their views on many details and incorporating them in the film is the best way of communication and getting things done."

It took the team a lengthy period of two years to complete the 24-minute movie, but more is to come from the project's organizers. Based on the prize-winning film, Chen is now working on a standard feature picking up on the themes of that ancient story of migration. Chen's new offering looks at the Atayal's modern day travels as they seek work away from home, but return to their villages longing to reconnect with their heritage. Pilin Yapu, an independent Atayal filmmaker, is editing another film that documents the whole process of making "Once Upon A Time."

More significantly, on completion of the movie, the recreated traditional settlement became an Atayal-owned property. Cinsbu and Hsin-kwan villagers have formed a committee to manage it while promoting tourism and traditional industries. Some film companies have already expressed interest in renting the site.

"Once Upon A Time" was also selected as Best Film at the New Beijing International Movie Week in June and will be screened at the Moscow International Visual Anthropology Festival in October.

This article first appeared in Taiwan Journal Sep. 4, 2008.

Atayal musician embraces, carries on tradition

Inka Mbing. (Courtesy of Trees Music and Arts)

By June Tsai

When hearing Inka Mbing sing in her native Atayal language for the first time, one is struck by the profound resonance of her voice and wonders where that power comes from. The answer is complex.

Inka is a member of the Atayal people, one of Taiwan's major aboriginal groups, and represents one of the most powerful indigenous voices today. She is presumably the only female aboriginal singer on the island to perform in her native tongue. Her first full-length album "Gaga," released in 2008, features ancient chants as well as the singer-songwriter's own tunes based on the Atayal's traditional beliefs. The album stands as one of the most fruitful musical endeavors of recent years that aim at the preservation of indigenous languages and cultures.

Raised by her grandmother in Jianshih Township, Hsinchu County, Inka grew up listening to the songs of her elders. She left her hometown at the age of 10 to join her parents in Taoyuan, south of Taipei, where the little girl was told she could receive a better education. As a teenager, Inka formed a girls' bands with some friends where she played the bass and sang Western and Chinese pop songs in pubs and restaurants around Taoyuan and Taipei.

Though moving to the city, Inka remained close to her Atayal roots. "I speak the language and remember the old chants passed down by the elders," she said. "I believe it is the "Gaga" that led me away from home and had me go through what I have experienced," the singer mused. "Gaga" is an Atayal word that roughly translates as the "natural order of things in the universe" and represents ancient teachings the Atayal pass on from one generation to the next.

Marriage and raising children kept Inka from developing her musical talent, but her commitment to the indigenous culture brought her back on track, this time with her own music.

The singer became active in Taiwan's aboriginal rights movement in the mid-1980s, when it started to gain momentum along with the democratic development of the nation. But it was the earthquake, which struck the island Sept. 21, 1999, that reawakened Inka's Atayal soul.

As several Atayal communities in the mountains were hit, Inka formed a music group called "Feiyu Yunbao"--meaning "flying fish and clouded leopard"--with other activist-musicians to raise money for their reconstruction. "We helped villagers rebuild their homes and provided comfort by singing and playing music," Inka recalled.

Among the group was Hu De-fu, or Kimbo, the iconic Puyuma singer-activist. "Kimbo sang songs from dawn to dusk. He was singing melodies from his own culture, and I was so touched," Inka noted. Though they were staying at an Atayal village, there was no one to perform in that language, so Inka asked to sing. "People's first reaction was to ask me if I could sing and whether the Atayal had songs," she said.

The Atayal have many tunes, but they are seldom heard. That day, Inka, who people saw only as a housewife, sang out the Gaga, whose tune had been considered almost totally lost. "I had learned it over the years from different tribal elders who helped me piece it together. When I sang the Gaga that day, I saw tears falling from the elders' aged faces," Inka said. They were surprised and moved. That was the first time she sang the holy chant in public.

A few weeks later, Inka and the others arrived at Fasiang Village, Nantou County, which, according to legend, is the Atayal people's place of origin. Near the village stand two huge rocks, which mark the place where village elders normally hold meetings. "A sense of mission ran through me, and I said to the ancestors as though they were present, 'You brought me here, so whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. I am your instrument.' I climbed onto one of the rocks and began to sing the Gaga. I sang to the grass below me, to the surrounding nature. I experienced such a surge of energy that I almost felt I was the reincarnation of my ancestors," Inka said.

The spiritual experience enlightened her and led her back to her cultural roots. The singer started collecting traditional melodies and lyrics from old people in various Atayal villages. The effort sometimes involved breaking the community's taboos. "Traditionally, women are not allowed to chant the Gaga. But I felt compelled to sing, and the result is that the Atayal have come to recognize my singing," Inka explained. "The old language was as appealing to me as diamonds to some women, and I wanted to learn and sing more. Fortunately, my voice allows me to sing the way male elders do," she pointed out.

Gender awareness is implicit in her music. "Thinking of Home," for example, depicts the daily life of a young woman who just got married to a poor man from another village. It describes the young wife thinking of her mother and her words of encouragement when feeling down. "Women may look submissive, but are actually stronger than men. They are the source of life's strength," said Inka, the mother of two adult daughters.

Another song from the album titled "The Tribe in Heaven" tells about a handicapped aboriginal woman from the perspective of her daughter. According to the singer, the song, whose lyrics are set to a traditional Atayal melody, reflects her thoughts about life. "I endlessly roam about this world, feeling hurt and frustrated. I want to reach the tribe in heaven, where there is no pain and sorrow. I won't return from there but try to purify my mind and soul, to reach that origin of all beings, the creator of the world."

Inka believes the Atayal are people with a strong spirituality. "As a woman, I always feel connected to that spirituality, which I try to work into music and convey to a larger audience, beyond tribes or even society." "Protecting the Creek" and "Friends of the Mountain People" are good examples of the singer's beliefs. Both songs are adapted from old folk tunes with lyrics written by Inka, and are imbued with the songwriter's observation of today's problems. They urge people, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, to try to keep an ecological balance between men and nature, in accordance with the Atayal's philosophy. The songs are messages to the contemporary world, which Inka described as being "emptied" by greed and excessive consumption.

The 54-year-old musician argued that materialism and consumerism are leading young Atayal away from the Gaga. "We were more connected to the spirit of our ancestors in ancient times, but not anymore because the world has become far too complicated, and we have only limited, if any, access to the Gaga today," she said. "But if you look inward long enough, discovering yourself, you will know what to do and how to do it right. I gave myself entirely to that spirit, the Atayal Creator. It helps me sing and play music the way I do. I am just a vessel for those old melodies and the messages they convey."

In addition to making music and collecting traditional tunes, Inka also teaches the Atayal language to the next generation. She argues that the best way is through music. ¡§I guide children to incorporate what they see and feel into songs, so that they develop a love for their hometown and an intimacy with the language. I hope children will say one day with pride, 'This is a song my forefathers wrote.'"

"The Creator has given me this task, and the wisdom, to pass on our traditions to the posterity, knowing I'm willing to do so," the musician said, noting that tradition is the source of her work. "It is always renewing and teaching something timely to the world. So I am not afraid of running out of inspiration," she said, adding laughingly, "My next albums will probably also be titled 'Gaga,' for everything is Gaga."

This article is published in Taiwan Journal April 3, 2009.