We headed to Taichung City’s Chun An Military Dependents’ Village [春安眷村] this morning before the heavy rains came. The village has become popular from the paintings by Huang Yung-fu [黃永阜], a veteran in his mid-80s who has transformed this once nondescript village into a vibrant tourist destination for young couples and families.
The whole area is painted brightly with pictures of animals, people, and a few familiar cartoon characters.
Military dependents’ villages [眷村] are communities throughout Taiwan built in the late 1940s through 1950s for the original purpose of housing Nationalist soldiers and their dependents after the KMT retreated to Taiwan. Most of these communities have already been demolished and replaced with high-rise buildings. A few have been preserved as historic sites and there are efforts to preserve others.
Cathy looking fabulous at four and a half months
Getting There:
If you are interested in visiting I suggest you do it soon. The Ministry of National Defense has commissioned the city government to redevelop the area. UPDATE: Mayor Hu has promised to preserve the Rainbow Village. Here’s a link to its location on Google Maps.
Further Reading:
- Military Dependents’ Village [Wikipedia]
- Saving the Military Dependents’ Villages [Taiwan Panorama]
- Veteran’s Paintings Put Dependents’ Village on the Map [Taipei Times]
A handful of other photos can be found on my Rainbow Military Dependents’ Flickr set.
Cool place! And congrats on the bun in the oven!!
congrats on the upcoming arrival, todd! great photos as usual.
I did not know it has paintings on the ground too! Congrats! Mom and Dad to be! :):)
Thanks everyone!
Nice shots! I passed one old soldier village that has replaced the red, white and blue color scheme of the ROC flag with red, white and green. It looked Italian.
One correction: the villages were not built to house military dependents. Soldiers have salaries and benefits, and there’s no reason why dependents couldn’t have lived in civilian housing or the military couldn’t have leased. It’s not like the US with a huge number of bases in far flung places and where military personnel and their family are rotated every couple of years.
To this very day, the military dependent housing is built by and controlled by the _Political Warfare_ arm of the military. Military dependent villages were built to socialize and isolate poor waisheng families from the majority Taiwanese. It used to be common for waisheng children to grow up in military villages and not realize they were a small minority in Taiwan. The military villages were also the basis for the majority of gangs in Taiwan (purposeful or not, they had a very close working relationship with the KMT including carrying out assassinations) and in today’s democracy, they continue to deliver a reliable deep-Blue vote for the KMT. Last, the military housing was built to also funnel public money into the hands of well-connected waisheng and generals. The firms that are always awarded contracts are owned by military connected scumbags and generals.
Many officers who lived in “Government Housing” were later GIVEN houses that could be turned over for liquid or capital far exceeding the value of their free government house.
Fascinating! Thanks for the additional information John and Andrew!
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