A visit to Clear Water Village

When I visited my wife here in Taichung three years ago she took me to her hometown, at least the place she spent her early years. At that time I wasn't really familiar with the environment and geography of the area, so I only remembered the town centre (although vaguely) and the art museum, although I hadn't realised that was actually in her hometown. All lost in the mists of time, I'm afraid, or maybe just another sign of old age!

During her time in the UK, she has described many of her early memories to me and one in particular related to her grandfather's house. You know the Taiwanese have a problem, and that is they spent the last half of the 20th century in catch-up mode and lost sight of how to appreciate some of the more natural things in life, and so consequently urban Taiwan is generally a sprawl of randomly designed, randomly planned high rise and low rise, with the odd park thrown in as a gesture towards a real desire to appreciate things more natural. Even then the park must be manicured to perfection, forgetting that in general little bugs and birds don't like things so perfect.

Anyway, after living in the UK for three years, my wife has learnt to appreciate the peace and tranquility of more natural parks and gardens, and now often reminisces about her grandfather's big walled back garden that she loved to play in as a kid, with its tall bamboo, guava and mango trees, water pump and flowers and butterflies everywhere. Sounds idyllic, right? Sounds like something to preserve and enjoy, right? Wrong! Although my wife enjoyed the garden she was also deeply embarrassed by it, because it was not "smart and modern" like the city.

So, my wife decided, with her new vigour for appreciating things natural, to visit the place where her grandfather lived to see if the garden had survived the ravages of Taiwanese mindless urban development. We walked from the town square, with its large traditional temple, out towards the railway line (as she can remember the sounds of the trains going by whilst playing in the garden). We walked through small lanes lined with now largely decrepit traditional bungalow style houses and the odd secret temple, down the hill towards the main road. She remembered the old factory building, which we found. She said that she can remember looking up at the factory through the trees in the garden, so suddenly we knew we were in the right place.

But, she said that she couldn't exactly recognise anything. We found an old house on the edge of what is a new road heading back up the hill towards the town centre, a kind of tumble down wooden build with a remnant of garden left to go wild. Was that her old grandfather's house? She thought that maybe it was, but not convinced about it. We wandered around for a while looking at the row of ugly concrete buildings that lined the road and searching around for clues. We found ourselves down a small alley, where we came across a very old guy standing out in his small garden. My wife, reluctantly at first, asked him in her now dodgy Taiwanese, if he knew of her old grandfather's house. The old guy was kind and friendly and proceeded to try and help us find it. We walked together back through the network of small lanes and alleyways to the place opposite the factory, where now stood the blocks of concrete with windows. He was sure that was the spot where the romantic garden was, but now all was gone! We thanked him for helping us, and felt saddened that the garden was no longer there, but at least some her relatives have some old photos that we can take a look at.

The old factory opposite has been out of action for more than 30 years, but is still standing today , empty and unused, which to me is kind of symbolic of the randomness of the "town planning" in Taiwan! The Taiwanese developers are more than happy to build a road and concrete blocks over what we would perceive as a lovely garden, and yet leave an old factory standing and rotting for so long, just a few metres away! There are many, many similar examples of this type of development all over Taichung and it makes me wonder how many decades it will take to tidy the place up again and go some way to revert it back to the beautiful place it must have once been.