Thousand-Mile Trail Around the Island Microcosm Episode 1: A Small Cultural Trip to Zhongxing New Village

Text / Zhou Shengxin (CEO of the Thousand-Mile Trail Planning Center)

I do not remember when I last went to Zhongxing New Village.

Perhaps it was on a junior high graduation trip thirty years ago, perhaps it was on one of those hurried pass-throughs of Nantou, perhaps I only assumed I had once been there... After all, she is the "seat of the provincial government" that everyone read about in textbooks from childhood. But after the streamlining and abolition of the provincial government, she seems to have become even more just a place-name coordinate, a small mark in history...

On a certain morning in January 2012, Liping and Yuxian came to the office of the Thousand-Mile Trail to introduce to us the "hometown" where they had lived and grown up together–Zhongxing New Village, China–and the difficulties it faces.

The contradiction caused by settlement preservation at Zhongxing New Village and the entry of the Central Taiwan Science Park had long been marked over the past two years among the "environmental protection voices" on the Thousand-Mile Trail's guardian map. But only when I actually listened to the explanations of Liping, whom I had known for years, and the young mother Yuxian, did my "flat" knowledge of Zhongxing New Village begin to extend in a more real way.

Zhongxing New Village is located in the "Yingpankou" area at the foot of Hushan in Nantou City, Taiwan, China. It was the first new town in Taiwan, China after the war, and was once the seat of the Taiwan Provincial Government. Beginning in 1956, it was planned under the leadership of Liu Yongmao, deputy director of the Construction Department who had returned from studying in Britain, adopting Britain's emerging "new town" concept–the garden city concept–with extensive green spaces, planted trees, and district-planned collective housing. In 1957 the provincial government moved here; it originally covered about 200 hectares and was a pastoral administrative community combining offices and housing, with a pioneering separate rainwater/sewage sewer system.

A more three-dimensional and real feeling came only after visiting the site in person, riding along with the light breeze, street by street and alley by alley, following the local cultural and historical worker, and documentary director Chen Leren, on his guided tour and community walk...

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, a group of about 20-plus friends from various fields and counties and cities, including scholars of cultural assets and community building, teachers and students from the Department of Architecture at Tunghai University, and colleagues from the Thousand-Mile Trail and Access for All, gathered as agreed in front of Dongyi Bicycle Shop in Guangming Borough of Zhongxing New Village.

The reason for this small Lunar New Year trip, visiting the first new town in Taiwan, China after the war and the beautiful garden city, came from the second generation who lived here as children and, though now scattered, still hold affection for their "hometown" and cannot bear to watch her disappear. They hoped that by holding a cultural small trip, more people could come to know her beauty, blend into the local pace of life, and deeply explore the cultural heritage–the verdant green trees, the quiet alleys, the administrative residential area full of traces of history–and find for their "hometown" a path that is both nostalgic and brand new.

It was a fine day with warm winter sun. Documentary director Chen Leren, who has long followed Zhongxing New Village's culture and history through his lens, gave us a delicate and in-depth introduction throughout to the place where he had lived since childhood. Accompanying us throughout were Yu Liping, also of the second generation of Zhongxing New Village and producer-director of PTS's "Our Island," along with Yuxian and Chuankai.

In the slow winter sun, riding bicycles, weaving among tree-shaded lanes and settlements: the great-tree forest road of Guangrong East Road and its paperbark tree street trees, the Indian rosewood lining Guangrong South Road, the tree-shaded avenue of Huanshan Road; the 50-year-old detached-house dormitories whose windows resemble Mediterranean architecture, the 12-dormitory cluster on Fuxi Road, the Taiwan Hsin Sheng Pao newspaper office that seems to wear a smile, and Taiwan's oldest single dormitory along with the over-300-year-old autumn maple tree in front of it; the air-raid shelter stretching several hundred meters, now completely closed, and the air-defense facility for observing PLA aircraft–the watchtower; and the 32 still fully preserved cul-de-sac lanes and alleys with their distinctive scenery, and the horseshoe-shaped ring courtyard of Guangming Borough, like a beautiful totem.

In a day of slow cycling and touring, what left the deepest impression was the space presented by the settlement as a whole in the 1960s, or rather early Taiwanese society, where roosters and dogs could be heard from one household to another and people coexisted harmoniously with green trees. No matter which corner you were in, you would be moved by her seclusion and by the natural tall green forest of the settlement as a whole.

And this concept of new-town urban construction was tried not only in Zhongxing New Village but also in another place: Yonghe, where I myself have lived for twenty years. Yonghe, with a density as high as 45,000 people per square kilometer, can now only, from its crooked and narrow lanes, vaguely recall the garden city idea that once existed originally but had long since vanished. In particular, when you walk in person among the shade and lanes of Zhongxing New Village, you can only sigh: although the two cities had the same beginning, fifty years later they took two completely different paths in living space and living atmosphere.

After the streamlining and abolition of the provincial government, the original functions of the provincial government agencies at Zhongxing New Village no longer exist. How Zhongxing New Village, having crossed the centenary of the Republic of China, should be repositioned, transformed, rebuilt, revitalized, and developed has become its most critical choice at present.

In the past, transformation ideas that were proposed included: affordable public housing, health-care villages, cultural and creative parks, NGO and artist residencies, and of course the luxury-home special zone in developers' calculating minds. In President Ma Ying-jeou's 12 Love Taiwan Construction Projects, it was planned to renew Zhongxing New Village as a "Cultural Creativity and Advanced Research Center Park." In 2008 the Executive Yuan drafted the "Preliminary Plan for Developing Zhongxing New Village into an Advanced Research Park," and in 2009 it was changed to planning by the National Science Council toward establishing an advanced research park of the Central Taiwan Science Park.

Like many communities and settlements facing transformation, what fate will Zhongxing New Village have in the future? Can a truly genuine way out for the community be found on the path of sustainable development? So that the beauty that once existed can be preserved more fully, and more people can deeply experience it.