Anti-reservoir pioneer Qiu Xiuyou hopes for a natural butterfly park
Pioneer Against the Reservoir: Mr. Chiu Hsiu-yu
In recent years, I have visited Mr. Chiu Hsiu-yu one after another, and my mind floated back to my university days, when the then secretary-general Cheng-yang invited several of us younger members of the Housheng Association to interview and write the life stories of the elders who opposed the reservoir. Back then, only a few were recorded in fragments, such as Mr. Geng-de and Mr. Fan Fang, and published in Moonlight Mountain Magazine
Mr. Chiu Hsiu-yu, now nearly eighty years old, was once jokingly called the "Mountain King" by friends because he owned twenty-seven jia of hillside land within the Meinong Reservoir inundation zone. Yet at that time, he was not swayed in the slightest from his conviction against the reservoir by the nearly ten million in land compensation he stood to receive. Together with Teacher Tseng Wen-chung, Chung Yung-feng, Chung Hsiu-mei, Liu Hsiao-shen, Li Yun-fei, Sung Ting-tung and others, he was among the first to ferment opposition, which also made the idea of "good men and good women oppose the reservoir, good mountains and good waters remain for the descendants" a clear consensus among the people of Meinong.
