A Walk into Erchongpu: A Rural Feast amid Kitchen Smoke
On October 10, the rain in Hsinchu came and went. The "Taiwan Community Collaborative Workshop" was held at the Hakka College of National Chiao Tung University in Zhubei. After lunch, Professor Tsai Yen-lin of National Chiao Tung University led a group that included Daycha Siripatra of the Rice God Foundation, Elizabeth Henderson, author of "Sharing the Harvest," and Dojie, a scientist from Bhutan's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, on a visit to the Zhubei Xinwawu Hakka Park and the Hakka College, which was designed in imitation of the ancient architectural form of the Hakka tulou.
Afterward, accompanied by Wu Tung-chieh, chief executive of the Green Party Taiwan, they drove to the Erchongpu farming village in Zhudong for a visit, passing the Fan Family Yang Building along the way. Originally they had only hoped for some cool water and a chance to rest their legs, but unexpectedly they were treated to a lavish dinner.
The original itinerary also included a visit to the farm of Chuang Cheng-teng, a farmer from Sanchongpu who had just been named one of the Republic of China's Ten Classic Rice varieties for the centennial year, but because of the rain and the fact that nightfall came quickly, everyone decided to spend more time at the Fan Family Western-style Building's three-sided courtyard and arrange no further stops.
We brought over long benches and sat in the three-sided courtyard drinking plum tea that Mrs. Fan had made herself. With our feet on the land of Taiwan's most notorious expropriation zone, it was inevitable that the history of resistance in this expropriation zone would come up. In the conversation, what interested the foreign friends most was how this farming village, together with other villages facing expropriation, had twice marched to the square in front of the Presidential Office Building to camp overnight.
Perhaps everyone does not know that in 2010, it was right here in Erchongpu that six self-rescue associations decided to raise the level of their resistance from "the Constitution protects private property" to the level of farmland as a "strategic resource for food security." On a cool summer night, they decided on that "717 overnight camp on Ketagalan Boulevard" that awakened the people of Taiwan to the importance of farmland, as well as planting "Ketagalan rice" on Ketagalan Boulevard.
"What happened to those seedlings later?" These foreign friends asked anxiously, as if asking whether a human child had been properly cared for and had grown up healthy. The companion traveling with them replied: "They are already in their third generation." Only then did they breathe a sigh of relief.
Sitting in the three-sided courtyard of the Fan Family Western-style Building, Mrs. Fan, her mother-in-law, and her daughter quietly lit the kitchen fire. I told Elizabeth that compared with this old Hakka communal house, Zhubei's Xinwawu was like a corpse lying on the ground. Years ago it had already lost its kitchen smoke and its farmland, and calling the preservation of a corpse a cultural inheritance could really be described as a great "creative" idea! Hearing this, Elizabeth gave a very warm smile, which eased the agitation in my voice as I told the story.
The reason for arranging for them to come to this expropriation zone, which had been restricted from rebuilding or relocation for 30 years, was mainly to let these foreign friends personally experience the stark contrast between Taiwan's traditional farming villages and rural areas after development. More than ten years ago, Zhubei was even more rustic than Erchongpu is now, and it often caused many university students who loved to ride bicycles in search of secluded scenery to lose their way. Today, Erchongpu's century-old spring still flows murmuringly, but Zhubei's winding green paths and paddy fields were long ago buried beneath high-rise buildings and asphalt roads amid the rumbling of machinery.
Standing with these foreign friends on the high ground of the trench behind the Western-style Building, smelling the aroma of the kitchen smoke from the communal house, and gazing at this frozen space surrounded by a vast community, the Industrial Technology Research Institute campus, and the highway, I wondered what Dachy of the Rice God was thinking as he looked at the waves of rice. Had Elizabeth already sketched out in her mind a CSA farm with Hakka character? And what was the witty Bhutanese Dojie thinking?
The phone rang. A fine meal was waiting. We wished the people here well, and the creatures and plants in the fields, rivers, and woods well. Friends from four countries gathered here. Erchongpu farming village, until we meet again.
