不過，一時辭窮，不知該用怎樣的英文表達心中想法。
想起2006年10月，新聞局Taiwan Review英文雜誌，
曾刊登一篇關於我的眷村影像採訪報導，
覺得應該善加利用學習報導文章的用字遣詞。
整理分享。
Images of Fading History
Byline:JIM HWANG
Felix Lee（李俊賢） has spent 17 years capturing images of people and life in the rapidly disappearing military dependents' villages.
While modern high-rises in the cities evidence Taiwan's economic development, they also conceal a fading chapter of the island's history. Somewhere in every major city there are a few communities that go by the name of military dependents' villages. While most of them have either been rebuilt into apartment buildings or become neighborhood garbage disposal sites and convenient spots for junkies to shoot up, there are a few remaining where the lifestyle of a traditional military dependents' village can still be found. So long a feature of the Taiwan cityscape, the military villages are now an endangered species, and photographer Felix Lee is trying to capture images of their way of life before they disappear forever.
According to the Ministry of National Defense (MND), there used to be a total of 888 military dependents' villages, many of which were located in urban areas. More than 200, for example, were in Taipei City and County, and the Kaohsiung area had more than 100. The origins of these villages can be traced back to the late 1940s, when nearly 600,000 Nationalist troops and their dependents withdrew from China to Taiwan. When the troops arrived, they moved into military bases and their families had to try to find somewhere to live nearby. The Japanese had built some dormitories for their own troops, but there was only enough accommodation to house the dependents of the most senior officers. Others had to make do with whatever they could find: tents, quiet corners of temple courtyards or abandoned warehouses. This was obviously unsatisfactory, and before long the army started to build family quarters.
Each unit was responsible for constructing its own housing according to its needs, so the size of the resulting villages could vary from a dozen housing units to several hundred. The name of a village can also reveal something of its history. Air Force 1st Village, for example, indicates an absence of naval and army personnel, and Matsu 3rd Village is for dependents whose menfolk were stationed in Matsu.
Chiang Kai-shek told his men that they would spend their first year in Taiwan in preparation, the second year striking back, the third sweeping up the enemy, and recover China within five years. As such, the first-generation houses were seen as temporary shelters, using bamboo and straw as convenient and inexpensive construction materials. Few of the residents of the villages could have foreseen that the "first year" would last way longer than their flimsy dwellings. Meanwhile, more soldiers married and started families, creating a need for more and larger accommodation units. In the early 1960s, bricks and tiles started to replace bamboo and straw as construction materials. Residents of first-generation villages were quick to expand their houses by building into their front and back yards, and the lanes between the units became narrower and narrower.
These villages were like satellite camps attached to military bases and were largely independent from the outside world. Most daily necessities--rice, salt, cooking oil--were sent to the villages regularly, children attended a nearby school where most of the other students were from their village and they played in the same village square after school. When evening came and the military buses drove in, they rushed to see if their fathers were on them and vie with one another to be the first to give dad a hug. Today, although these villages are not as isolated as before, a stranger with a camera still raises the alarm. "I need to explain where I'm from and why I'm taking their pictures," Lee says. "After knowing my background, I'm considered one of their own, and they start talking."
Born in a military dependents' village in Taoyuan, Lee has been interested in art since he was a boy, though his later education had little to do with photography. After completing his education at a vocational high school studying mechanical engineering, Lee worked in a factory for a short period of time, but found no interest in this kind of work. He hit the books again to take the university entrance examinations, eventually entering Chinese Culture University's Department of French. Photography at this time was an enjoyable hobby. "The most amazing thing about photography is that it's like a window on time," he says. "You're brought back to when you were two looking at this picture, and eight when looking at that one."
Although not a professional photographer, Lee's skills proved good enough to land him a job at a local travel magazine. He was taking pictures all over the island, but military dependents' villages did not loom large in his viewfinder. It was not until 1989, when the village where he was born was slated for reconstruction, that Lee began to recognize the urgency of compiling a visual record of life in such communities. Although Lee had moved to Shulin in Taipei County at the age of 12 when his father retired from the army and landed a job in Taipei, they still had title to property in Taoyuan. They return to visit old neighbors from time to time and are still emotionally bonded to the village. For Lee, therefore, photographing these villages is recording his roots in a unique chapter of Taiwanese history rather than just shooting images of people and buildings.
The armed forces continued to build new villages until the late 1980s, when people began to question whether using taxpayers' money to provide free accommodations for military personnel was fair. The MND also started to look into the issue and draw up plans to rebuild villages--many of which were extremely decrepit--and an act sanctioning this was passed by the Legislature in 1996. All existing military dependents' villages that were built before 1980 were to be torn down and the land used for other purposes. Residents would be given an apartment that they could choose from other sites where construction had already been completed. The time needed for a reconstruction project can be lengthy. It was 14 years, for example, for Lee's village from the first meeting to discuss reconstruction in 1989 to its completion in 2003.
The entire village rebuilding project is scheduled for completion in 2009. Lee estimates that there are only about 100 villages that have not been torn down. From an urban planner's point of view, these old communities were an inefficient use of land. Some houses are so worn out that they are dangerous to live in, so many of the inhabitants are in favor of rebuilding, but this changes the communities in a radical way as the low-level horizontal sprawl of the old villages is replaced with high-rise apartment blocks. "You used to be just a shout away from chatting to or borrowing some salt from your neighbor. They are now 10 floors away," Lee says. "The original interaction between villagers becomes like that you find in most apartment buildings, where people stay in their own units and never get to know one another."
In those villages yet to be reconstructed, residents gather at the open space of the village during the day where they play checkers or just chat. The language is Mandarin, but it is spoken in a wide variety of accents, marking out the speaker as being from Sichuan, Shandong, or Hunan. Likely topics include politics, trips to hometowns in China, village reconstruction plans, or children and grandchildren. The residents, just like the old houses, do not seem to fit into the nearby urban world, and the world does not pay them much attention either, unless an election is approaching. "People didn't give them a second look while there were still many of them," Lee says. "But all of a sudden, it seems that they are all gone, and people begin to see that it's already too late to do anything about it."
Demolition of the villages means the destruction of an interesting subculture. Wang Chi-hsin（王繼新）, chairman of the Air Force 1st Village's management committee, explains that whereas the previous Fujianese and Hakka immigrants to Taiwan were often related to one another or shared a common hometown, residents of military dependents' villages were from all of China's provinces and cultures. "Having all these different dialects, cuisines and lifestyles in one village is unique and exactly why they should be preserved," he says. "But there's no way you can preserve such culture in a public housing project that may have 1,000 apartments."
Wang's village in Sanchung, Taipei County, was built by the Air Defense Artillery Command. Its 59 households are about to move to their new apartments in Banciao, but they are trying to preserve the entire village as a theme museum. The MND has agreed to preserve it as long as the village is a government-designated historical site. After an initial review by the Taipei County Government, prospects seem good, though nothing has yet been finalized.
Several other local governments have also noticed that a chapter of history is in danger of disappearing and have started to do something about it. Taoyuan County has set up a Military Dependents' Villages Story House to showcase old utensils, photos, and other things related to life in such communities. Taipei City preserved part of the 44 South Village--Taipei's first military dependents' village--by designating four of the houses as historical sites. But while a small part of the culture is preserved by this handful of museums and old houses, the lifestyle and human relations that are the core of this history will eventually fade away--just like the generation of old soldiers and the walls that used to isolate them from the rest of Taiwan.
