Tugou, after ten years of rural community building, has spurred natives to return to their hometowns.
Tugou community revitalization has been underway for ten years, becoming a Taiwanese version of the "Setouchi Art Festival," bringing crowds into Tugou and also bringing wandering locals back home. Last April, local young woman Wu Shurong was the first to return home, taking a job as an accountant at a local design company. In March of this year, her younger brother followed in their father's footsteps and came home to work as a woodwork designer. A month later, even her older brother came home, and their father became an instructor for the local woodworking class. The whole family of five threw themselves into Tugou community revitalization, becoming a much-told tale in the village.
Early last month, the Tugou Art Museum, now in its second year, held a grand opening. Dozens of small stalls lined the road, mostly selling local lotus root and agricultural products, but at the intersection there was a small handmade stall displaying wooden cat pen holders and phone stands. "Hello, my older brother carved this by hand, it's made of Vietnamese cypress, this one can hold a tablet, and there are phone stands here too." Wearing glasses, the 27-year-old Wu Chengze carefully explained the products on the stall to passing tourists. Although more people asked questions than made purchases, his eyes were still full of sincerity and confidence.
The 27-year-old Wu Chengze is one of Tugou's returning young people. In 2002, a group of students from Tainan National University of the Arts, unwilling to see Tugou's water buffalo culture fade away, cooperated with the local cultural association to renovate public spaces in the village and hold a scarecrow design competition. Last year they even opened Taiwan's first rural art museum. Ten years later, those former students have become fathers, and four of them happened to stay in Tugou, founding the Water Buffalo Design Tribe and an architecture firm. It was under these circumstances that the three Wu siblings returned to their hometown.
The first to come back was the second daughter of the Wu family, Wu Shurong. Last April, she gave up her job in Pingtung and returned to Tugou. Wu Shurong said that she had left home since starting university, leaving only her parents at home. Last year she felt it was time to go home and keep them company. After returning, it happened that the local design company had an accounting vacancy, and she was lucky enough to stay in her hometown to work. "My hometown still has that human warmth." Seeing her hometown go from a traditional farming village to one now full of all kinds of colors, she felt both moved and grateful.
Brothers Follow in Their Father's Footsteps, Traditional Woodworking Finds a New Way Forward
