Agro-Urban Symbiosis Studies: Paving a Path of Love for Rural Areas and Local Places
Text / Chen Lai-hong Homepage image / munch
As a female farmer, I diligently cultivate my field, but my field is not in the soil, it is in people's hearts. I have been cultivating for over 30 years. As for writing, I have gone from one community newsletter to 11 newspapers. Now that I have returned home, I have started a small newspaper, the "Love Town Monthly." Looking back and thinking carefully, I realize that I am like a road-paving worker wandering the agro-urban landscape, trying to pave a "path of love for rural areas & local places." For those who want to set out on the road, just walk it well and walk it right. Such a simple intention, why does it have to take so long to walk? I often ask myself this and try hard to find the answer. I will sort it out slowly later!
Asking myself: what can I do on the "NewsMarket" website?
Actually, it is about returning to what "NewsMarket" has always been advocating: sharing local life & action! After returning to Daxi, I began a life & way of action different from that in greater Taipei, whether for individuals, families or community organizations. Although the focus is Daxi and the scope is set at Taoyuan, that is the ideal, but inevitably there are still quite a few queue-jumping matters! Fortunately, social movements have also become networked, lowering the cost of participation, allowing me to learn from young people and act in the snap of a finger.
Written from the viewpoint of a "cooperative economy" activist, <<Agro-Urban Symbiosis Studies>> focuses mainly on life in Daxi.
"Daxi Township, originally a place where Pingpu people of the Siaoli community and indigenous peoples such as the Atayal lived scattered, began to develop after Han Chinese immigrants entered and cultivated the land during the Qing administration period. In 1863, because of the revision of the Qing-British Treaty of Tientsin, Takao Port (Kaohsiung Port) and Tamsui Port were additionally opened as treaty ports, and Daxi, formerly called Dakekan, was the uppermost river port of the Tamsui River system and also the most inland port in Taiwan at that time, making it one of the important transshipment ports for international trade. At that time, agricultural products, daily necessities, tea, camphor oil, and more from Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli were also transshipped through Daxi. During the heyday of river transport from 1892 to 1897, sails never ceased all day long and merchants gathered from everywhere. The number of businesses on Heping Road, Zhongshan Road and Zhongyang Road reached as many as three to four hundred! At present, the shophouses on the old streets of Heping Road and Zhongshan Road still bear witness with classical elegance to the prosperity Daxi once had." ~~So says the township gazetteer.
From such a discussion, the "urban" aspect of Daxi is seen, while the "agricultural" aspect is hidden in "Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli"; "Han Chinese" are seen, while the Pingpu people of the Siaoli community and the Atayal and other indigenous peoples disappear into "indigenous peoples." When people in Daxi's old urban area talk about Daxi, it is very much like Taipei residents talking about Taiwan. In fact, only by leaving Taipei City can one experience the whole of Taiwan; likewise, only by stepping out of the old urban area can one truly see the whole of Daxi.
Taiwan's rural areas also contain urban-like zones, the concentrated places where the economy is most active~~such as Daxi's old urban area, or merely a prosperous old street in a township. Those living there are the people with the most resources and influence locally, very much like Taipei City in relation to Taiwan, or the five special municipalities in relation to other counties. In areas with convenient transportation and abundant resources, there exists a class unaware of the hardships of the world. Together with them, they raise a next generation unaware of other people's hardships. This group of people holds decision-making power and makes decisions on behalf of everyone, does it not?
Returning home and running <<Love Town Monthly>> is intended to let the people with the most resources and influence in Daxi understand that Daxi is not only the old urban area! Like <<Agro-Urban Symbiosis Studies>>, what it wants to explore and share is how to build a platform? What it strives to do is pave a "path of love for rural areas & local places," attempting to cross gender, ethnicity, wealth and poverty, age, class, and the agro-urban divide, and to practice through life the possibility of agro-urban symbiosis and mutual benefit!
Having lived more than a sixty-year cycle, and having cultivated Taiwan for over 30 years, I choose to write <<Agro-Urban Symbiosis Studies>> from the viewpoint of a "cooperative economy" activist; I hope even more that those who want to create a better life in their hometown can, in the cloud-based "NewsMarket," discuss together, share together, and cooperatively think out possible ways forward! Cloud-based thinking is often ridiculed as being too fanciful, but since the emergence of Apple computer tools and the Facebook online platform, the speed of human social improvement has risen like wind and surged like clouds, and infinite possibilities have appeared one after another, changing the multi-faceted ecology of societies worldwide, has it not?
<<Love Town Monthly>> contains 3 years and 7 months of cultivation. What about you, who have returned home or are in your hometown? As we share and discuss in the cloud-based "NewsMarket," when it rises like wind and surges like clouds, will infinite possibilities appear one after another? And further change the multi-faceted ecology of Taiwan's society, will it? I firmly believe that when all people are willing to loosen, cultivate, plant hope, and quietly await results in the land beneath their feet, infinite possibilities will appear one after another! Come share~~through sharing, Taiwan's various places move together toward one step of the common good! Everyone's one step contains infinite good!
What are you doing now that you have returned home?
"Love Town Monthly" wants to let the people with the most resources and influence in Daxi understand that Daxi is not only the old urban area! "Agro-Urban Symbiosis Studies" wants to explore and share how to build a platform and pave a "path of love for rural areas & local places," and to practice through life the possibility of agro-urban symbiosis and mutual benefit!