Found this village by chance in January 2004, on my way back from the airport.
Seeing a small road nearby, I decided to find out where it led to, and so the story began. The brick houses, the narrow lanes, and the people there show a strong character of traditional (Mainlander) veterans community, which is vanishing in Taiwan. I was told that this particular one, perhaps the biggest of its kind in my city, is to be demolished by this year, due to government's policy. Villagers must move, and everything I saw there would be gone.
Flashing back into the past, some fifty years ago, young soldiers battled through the civil war against Mao's communism, leaving their homes & family in Mainland, and ended up ocean apart in the island of Taiwan. Five decades passed, they are old and still here, most married with natives and have family here, but also torn between home-missing and the ideology of enemy. Compared with the situation of this island, the village is a miniature society against irony of history & life in itself. Whether their patriotism was misled is disputable, but younger generation should know it is these old soldiers contribution & sacrifice that leads the island to its prosperity. There are things to live and die for, things not to be taken for granted. Behind the images are whispers of a generation telling how mankind have found & lost on the road to liberty, equality, and fraternity— values the three colours of the national flag stand for.
