Qijin Peninsula: Ethnic Resonances and the Secret Base of the Naval Shipyard Dormitories, Rescuing Silence 03
Text / Li Yizhi (Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Sociology, National Sun Yat-sen University) Photos / Tu Jianfeng
The "Qijin Social Innovation Base" (hereafter the Base) was originally the technician dormitory of the Navy's Fourth Shipyard. Once surrounded by the naval shipyard and military dependents' villages, it seemed like a secret base cut off from the world. National Sun Yat-sen University, invited by the "Taiwan Soundscape Association," had the USR-B "A City Is a Story House" team plan "Listening to Qijin Peninsula - Listen! The City Tells Stories," using "listening" to read the rich stories woven by different ethnic groups in Qijin.
Prelude
We got off the ferry at Qijin Ferry Station, crossed the bustling, crowded vegetable market, and walked along what locals call the "old road," Zhongzhou 3rd Road, for 15 minutes before turning into a small alley. Then, following the wall painted with community stories, we found the Base hidden in the alley, obscured by the houses and small park along the street. Even Qijin locals rarely know of this mysterious place.
The Base preserves the original appearance of the former technician dormitory of the Navy's Fourth Shipyard. At the entrance, on the left and right, stand two old banyan trees with lush foliage. The low building on the right has three old chimneys, as if wisps of cooking smoke still rise. Inside the grounds, four long buildings form a courtyard compound, along with an herb garden and a beefwood grove, covering no small area, about one to two thousand ping. Outside the Base, it is surrounded by a small park built after the military dependents' village was demolished. Looking down the alley to one side, you see "Shijian New Village," commonly known as "Dachen Village." This "heterotopia" is about a 15 to 20 minute walk from the ferry station and the seawater pool, yet tourists rarely come.
The Base was formerly the single technicians' dormitory of the Qijin Navy Fourth Shipyard. Before World War II, it was originally a shipbuilding warehouse of the Japanese Navy. After the war, single shipbuilding workers who came to Taiwan with the Nationalist government built it up by their own efforts, converting it into a place to settle down. Although the technicians are gone today, the sound of metal clanging from the shipyard still drifts over from time to time. Close your eyes and listen, and occasionally there is also the sound of sawing wood and broadcasts issuing orders.
Community residents sit on benches under the banyan trees in front of their doors, chatting in the Taizhou dialect of the Dachen people. They look up and greet us, as if playing a prelude for the event, leading everyone into a real field of historical space to listen to a melody of displacement and layering.
Ethnic Memories Existing Apart from the World
I asked the partners joining the event whether they had ever heard of the Base. The answer was obvious. Even Qijin locals seldom know about this place. After all, before 2013, after the single technicians and veterans who had lived in the dormitories for a long time moved out, it quickly became a ruins-like scene of overgrown weeds and desolation. Even the small park outside was still broken walls and remnants behind sheets of iron fencing. Compared with the coastal park just a few meters away, it seemed to exist alone, as if abandoned by the world.
In fact, in the early 1950s, the Nationalist government re-established the "Navy First Factory," which had retreated from China to Taiwan, under the name "Navy Fourth Shipyard" at Qijin's "Shazidi," and successively planned single technicians' dormitories. It then built four military dependents' villages outside the dormitories to house employees and officers and soldiers of different ranks. This brought in considerable population. In addition, the community also included Xiaqieliao people who had moved in since the Japanese colonial period, the "Dachen people" who retreated with the Nationalist government in 1955, and a growing number of urban-rural migrants and new residents moving into the community. Together they formed a field of contact among different cultures, where various languages, foods, customs and habits existed.
The Shipyard by the Harbor, a Steady Metallic Sound
The technician dormitory of the Navy Fourth Shipyard was like a complete community. The kitchen, dining hall, Zhongshan Room, shower room, boiler room, and three long dormitory buildings were completed one by one. The whole area accommodated more than a hundred people. Later, bungalows where technicians could stay overnight when working overtime were also built, along with a clothes-drying yard, parking shed and storage room. In the open spaces, crops such as banyan trees, beefwood, mango and longan trees were planted, and three water towers and two wells were installed.
The central well where we stood became the place where technicians showered outdoors in summer. We knocked on the iron cover over the well, and a solid sound and echo came back, like the shipyard by the harbor, which from time to time gives out a steady metallic sound.
What is the taste of Qijin?
I invited the partners joining the guided tour to slowly move to the dormitory kitchen nearby. This
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