Seeing Shezidao 01"Taipei's last countryside! Growing vegetables, burning incense, taking in wandering gods, the people guarding the "diamond in the heart"

A day on Shezidao begins at three in the morning, as headlamp after headlamp lights up, flickering like fireflies in the vegetable plots. Professional vegetable farmers race every day to harvest tender fresh vegetables for the market before the sunlight dries the dew. The island has 170 hectares of farmland, and by rough estimate there are still over a hundred smallholder farming households, whose harvested vegetables supply Greater Taipei daily. Sweet potato leaves alone account for one quarter of Taipei City's supply, specially providing restaurants with the freshest, finest vegetables.

"The elderly here still live according to the farming calendar, and they'll talk about sowing at White Dew and the spring equinox," said Li Hua-ping, spokesperson for the Shezidao Residents' Self-Rescue Association. The residents here hold many memories of the land; their ancestors came to Taiwan more than two hundred years ago, and many still remember which generation of their family arrived on Shezidao.

"Which year frost and snow fell, where to catch loaches - these beautiful memories give many Shezidao people a sense of belonging, so they don't get lost in bustling Greater Taipei." These ordinary details of daily life, now that development and expropriation loom, have instead come to feel extraordinarily precious to her. "The moment you cross the Zhoumei Expressway and set foot on Shezidao, you feel relaxed."

A naturally formed long-term care community, unwilling to move into high-rises and lose the warmth of human connection

Facing development through zone expropriation, Shezidao residents once went to the nearby Zhoumei neighborhood - which was subjected to zone expropriation for the "Beitou-Shilin Technology Park" development project - to learn about living conditions in the resettlement housing. Xie Wenjia, the neighborhood head of Shezidao, said, "One third of the people moved away because they didn't get resettlement housing, another third sold their resettlement housing because they couldn't afford the loans, and the last third continued living in the high-rises."

"But after the Zhoumei people moved into the high-rises, they couldn't find their way home. Every door looked exactly the same, and once the front door closed, nobody cared about anybody else. Just seeing Zhoumei like that was terrifying." Li Hua-ping described how, because the surrounding land was leveled, there were no living functions to speak of, and the former pastoral life and the warmth of neighbors looking after one another were lost.

"If that's the ending, we'd be better off keeping our original life." She thought to herself: there are no parks, but vegetable plots and green spaces are everywhere; neighbors swap vegetables with each other; a daughter on her way to the bus is greeted along the route by elder neighbors. Shezidao's close neighborly ties, though the transportation is a little inconvenient, are full of warmth and a sense of safety.

For many Shezidao people, this land is like that song praising Shezidao's innocence and beauty: "the diamond in the heart," extraordinarily precious, yet something outsiders cannot fathom.

A hen fights an eagle, summoning all its primal strength to guard its home

"Shezidao is just countryside, this is my home. On Shezidao, you actually don't need to worry about becoming an elderly person with dementia - the strong neighborly ties naturally turn it into a long-term care community." Li Hua-ping said that after several years of struggle, the island's residents increasingly understand Shezidao's distinctive character and identify more and more with their local culture, and no longer envy Taipei City's bustling high-rises.

But the struggle comes at a cost. Li Hua-ping was sued for blocking the mayor's car and for online exchanges of words, and is now entangled in two lawsuits.

Asked whether she worries, she laughed and said, "Of course I do," and used the game of eagle catches chick as a metaphor: "When I think of all those fellow villagers behind me, supporting the old and carrying the young, I feel I must summon all my primal strength and stand in front to block the eagle, and together protect our home." A moment later she changed her tune: "The real mother hen is the strength of the villagers' unity. When I'm feeling very discouraged, these big brothers and big sisters give me encouragement and comfort."

Li Hua-ping's optimism and cheerfulness cannot hide the strands of white hair, yet she still throws herself unreservedly into rallying the mood at every protest and leading the Self-Rescue Association's struggle cries. The "big brothers and big sisters" she speaks of are in fact the grandpa-and-grandma-aged members of the Shezidao Self-Rescue Association.

Self-Rescue Association grandma member: protests by day, burns incense at midnight, praying for the gods to protect Shezidao

In April, when the Taipei City Urban Planning Commission reviewed the main plan for the Shezidao development project, as soon as word of approval came from the venue, some elderly people could not hold back their tears. One white-haired grandma pulled out a whistle she had prepared and blew piercing blasts with all her might, expressing her deepest anger.

The grandma's name is Yang Chen Azhu, 82 years old this year. Whenever the Self-Rescue Association issues a mobilization order, she is almost never absent, quickly finishing her household chores and hurrying to assemble.

Surrounded by others, Grandma Yang, who at first was unwilling to share, told the secret in her heart. It turned out that, afraid people would see and laugh at her, Grandma Yang Chen always got up in the middle of the night to burn incense, kneeling before the Buddhist altar to confess to the gods and pour out her unease.

"If there were no other way, I wouldn't go make trouble with the authorities. After all, this shabby old house is all I have to shelter in. I don't want to move, and I don't want to leave my descendants with debt. I beg the gods to bless us, to have the development plan withdrawn, so that children and grandchildren can keep living on Shezidao." This devout and widespread religious culture is a major feature of Shezidao.

Although Shezidao is not large, there are eighty or ninety temples and shrines of various kinds scattered across the island, and the "corner" (jiaotou) culture is especially prevalent. In Fu'an Village alone, the Xizhoudi settlement can be divided into four corners: Wenliao, Xitaikou, Zhongku, and Xiazhuwei. Each settlement has its own Earth God, and at the annual Lantern Festival "Night Earth God" procession, the corners do not hire paid performance troupes but still mainly mobilize young men from within the settlement, fully preserving the settlement culture.

Pooling funds to maintain the small shrine of "wandering gods," dedicated to taking in statues that drift ashore

Shezidao's rich religious life is reflected in daily life. Wang Mulin, a regular member of the Self-Rescue Association, jokes that "next year I can get a senior citizen card." Having survived cancer three times, he still never puts down his cigarettes, carrying himself like an immortal, with a broad-minded air of finding joy amid hardship.

He gets up at three or four every morning and habitually makes a round of the small corner shrines of Shezidao's nine major settlements first. His thinking is that the big temples and settlement public temples don't lack for incense offerings; it is the small shrines scattered in the corners that, because of sparse population, have no one to make offerings. He treats lighting incense at the small shrines as the start of his day, and within his faith there is a philosophy all its own.

On one side of the Keelung River, right next to the bicycle path, is Dongshan Temple, a small shrine that Wang Mulin and fellow villagers jointly donated to maintain. What makes the shrine special is that it is dedicated to taking in "wandering gods," making it a kind of resettlement housing for deities. "Shezidao sits at the confluence of the Tamsui River and the Keelung River, so wandering statues that drift ashore are often found here," he explained.

"Shezidao people are very devout. When they find a wandering god by the river, they invite it into the temple to be worshipped, and if it is broken or damaged, they send it to a professional craftsman to be restored." Over the years, everyone has pooled funds to maintain this resettlement housing for wandering gods, never tiring of it.

"But strangely enough, we all feel that these gods, thrown away by humans with nowhere to shelter, are pitiful too. So why is it that when someone wants to tear Shezidao down completely, drive everyone away, and leave them homeless, that isn't pitiful at all?" Wang Mulin muttered to himself. The fate of the wandering gods is like a reflection of the Shezidao people, and the entanglement of the development project makes the islanders feel their future is uncertain.

Joining the struggle, Shezidao's youth rediscover and redefine their hometown

In the past, because living functions on Shezidao stagnated, it was quite common for children to cross districts to attend school in Shilin, and they were looked at with prejudice by city kids, and would even hide that they were from Shezidao