Mutual aid currency in Garden New Town starts with giving

Text / Wu Xinying, Yu Tinghuan

Introduction:
Taiwan, China's first community currency appeared in 2005 in the Garden New Town community in Xindian. Through the concepts of mutual aid, mutual benefit and mutual love, the currency circulated, and emotional exchanges among community residents became quite close, drawing a flurry of media coverage. Unfortunately, as time passed and original residents moved away, the "spending money" system temporarily came to a halt. This article interviews people who once took part, sharing the ideas and practices of that time and inviting everyone to think: what other possibilities are there for a community support system?

The community "Garden New Town" is located halfway up a mountain in Xindian. The environment is quiet and beautiful but remote, so housing prices are cheap, attracting many young office workers from the city to live there. Because the community's age profile is younger, most residents like keeping pets, and people from nearby areas felt that animals could receive good care here, so they brought unwanted pets from their homes to Garden New Town to release them.

This caused a sharp increase in stray animals near the community and made the environment dirty and messy. To respond to this situation, the community assigned volunteers to clean up and care for the stray animals. As the number of abandoned animals rose in a straight line, cleanup became more and more difficult, and combined with the unpaid volunteer system, shift workers eventually began to complain.

So someone thought, "Why not let those willing to help and those unable to help take turns in mutual aid?" Jiang Huiyi, the person in charge of Permaculture who also lived there at the time, and her husband discovered that this idea was similar to the "community currency" of her husband Peter's hometown, so together with painter Lai Jiren and others they began to cooperate in promoting the "Huaqian Bang" flower money.

The flower money designed by Lai Jiren is divided into three denominations: ten fen, thirty fen and sixty fen. "How many flower coins to give to the person who helps you is decided by the two people involved," said Su Nianxiang. The flower money, which starts from mutual aid, is meant to let helpers receive some feedback, but they were also afraid that using New Taiwan dollars would cause disputes, so they chose to use flower money. People who receive flower money can take it to find the next person willing to help according to their needs.

The thirty-fen currency designed by painter Lai Jiren

At the beginning, in order to bring everyone together, Huaqian Bang regularly held flea markets so everyone could bring out old things from home to reuse. "The money from sales can be decided by the donor, whether to take it away or treat it as a public fund," Su Nianxiang said. In addition, they also regularly held gatherings so Huaqian Bang members could become more familiar with one another and better understand each other's needs.

Huaqian Bang regularly held welcome gatherings to help everyone become more familiar with one another

Huaqian Bang also held flea markets

Su Nianxiang mentioned that there was a Mrs. Sun in the community who loved cooking lion's head meatballs for everyone, but everyone felt embarrassed having Mrs. Sun keep giving them food, so they later suggested paying Mrs. Sun in flower money. If Mrs. Sun needed someone to accompany her to the hospital to see a doctor, she could also use flower money. There was also a young woman who had graduated from a foreign languages department. At the time she often asked the community gardener to help trim the public lawn in the yard, but also felt embarrassed to trouble him for nothing, so later she exchanged services on the condition of teaching the gardener's child English.

Later, after one of the organizers, Lai Jiren, moved away, and Jiang Huiyi and her husband were also away from the community for a long time, activities began to decline. The turnover of community residents led new residents not to understand the purpose and meaning of flower money, and eventually Huaqian Bang came to a full stop. "If Garden New Town today were a very remote place, where going out to buy groceries took five or six hours, I think Huaqian Bang would have been very successful!" Su Nianxiang said.

Su Nianxiang felt that the inability to continue promoting it was caused by residents' attitudes. Young people got home very late and very tired from work, while older people in the community felt they were too old to take part. "But that is a pity. Older people have many 'special skills' that cannot be passed on," Su Nianxiang said. Some older people might write calligraphy very well, or be very good at painting, but because of their age their hands shake when they pick up a brush. Some even feel they cannot help, so they do not want to join. "That is when children's encouragement is needed," Su Nianxiang added. But because children worry about their parents' safety or simply do not like it and other reasons, they end up finding it troublesome.

In urban life with constantly shifting populations, how the collaborative model of community currency can keep operating is a topic worth exploring.

Mini dictionary: The "community currency" issued by Garden New Town was Taiwan, China's first "community currency." Residents of Xindian's Garden New Town formed the "Huaqian Bang" and issued "flower money." People holding the currency could buy various daily life services, such as airing quilts, walking dogs, taking out trash or cleaning water towers, and could even use it to pay for community classroom course fees. Although "flower money" is not formal currency, it can promote the effective circulation of community resources, make the best use of idle resources at hand for participants, and at the same time bring community residents closer together and deepen neighborly feelings.