An all-round talent
(Wu Chin-jung:) "When I was nine, we moved from the market to Old Street, and when I was 28, Father bought this shop. My brother and sister and I all took photographs. Customers would choose between us, and some would choose me. Later my brother looked after the shop and sent me to do the outside work. Whenever a family's son or daughter was getting married, they'd tell me the time well in advance, and when the day came I'd ride over on my bicycle with the 6-inch camera and tripod. On a good day I'd go to three different places. It was very hard work. In June after the rice was harvested, Mother would plant sweet potatoes, and in winter, in the farming slack season, she'd grow vegetables.
I wasn't so clever, but my brother and sister could both play the violin, the dulcimer, the samisen, the erhu, even the guitar. My brother was second to none when it came to worshipping the Yimin [Hakka ancestors] too. At Yimin festival every neighborhood would put up tables of offerings. Everyone else put on a big show and offered huge carp, big lobsters, and enormous red dough turtles. But what did my brother make? He put eyes on guavas and carved them into the shape of frogs sitting on a lotus leaf; and he used goose and duck eggs and white radish to make red-crowned cranes and ducks on the water. He even made a pair of colorful parrots with red mangoes for their bodies, and pumpkins, cucumbers, tangerines and eggplants for wings and tails. Or he'd stick lotus leaves onto a winter melon, and carve lotus flowers out of white radish, with raw ginger for tree roots and stones, and in the lotus pond he'd even have little fish and live shrimps swimming about.
"It was the same every year at Lantern Festival too. My brother would make Sou Wu [of the Western Han dynasty] herding sheep [by Lake Baikal as a prisoner of the Huns], or the angel scattering flowers [a story from a Buddhist sutra]. On the backdrop of the platform she stood on, there was a 12-pointed sun, on the second level, which turned, there were a pair of dragons, and the top level also turned. The platform in the middle which the angel stood on revolved too, and she was dressed and made up by my brother and sister.
"My brother loved going to Taipei to buy books and see Japanese art exhibitions. He'd set off bright and early by train and come back late at night. He'd bring back Western color magazines and cut out all the foreign paintings in them. He filled up a lot of scrapbooks.
"My brother had a lot of worries, because the whole family depended on him. Later he got very fat and smoked a lot, and sometimes when he was developing pictures the was so wrapped up in it he wouldn't even notice if the cigarette burned a hole in his clothes. In 1984 at the Yimin festival, he was ill, but he still insisted on carving fruit. I still have a picture which my brother and I took with the automatic timer, with the camera pointing out through the studio door. That's the last picture of him. When I saw the picture I could see his face was full of worry. He died that December."
Unfulfilled dreams of being a painter
The more Liang Kuo-lung learns about Chin-miao's life, the more compassion he feels for him. "I always have the feeling that Chin-miao died of worry." Liang Kuo-lung has a strong sense of regret that he was too late to meet this older photographer, and has deep sorrow and sympathy towards him.
There's no doubt that for the little town of Yangmei, Wu Chin-miao was a rare talent, but he was born before his time and had no-one who could really understand him. In fact, photography was not the pinnacle of artistic creation as far as he was concerned: he left behind many oil paintings and sketches. He long dreamed of going to Japan to study fine art, but because his mother doted on her eldest son, he was never able to go. Furthermore the good friend with whom he had planned to go died suddenly. Chin-miao left behind a picture of himself in front of his friend's grave; the half-round burial mound seems symbolic of his unfulfilled dreams.
Basically, Wu Chin-miao relied completely on his own innate artistic talent and enthusiasm to find his own way. He knew of all the older painters, but had no contacts with them. He had no teachers and was never involved in any artistic group. Having grown up in a conservative, thrifty Hakka household where his studio stood in front of his mother's pigsty, buying paints by mail order from Japan or going to Taipei to buy books and visit exhibitions was in fact quite extravagant. He once thought of marrying, but later nothing came of it.
Looking at Yangmei with love
Liang Kuo-lung says that Wu Chin-miao never particularly intended to stay at home, but circumstances beyond his control made him unable to leave the small town. But his artistic talent and desire to study painting helped him to transcend the limitations of a small-town photographer, and leave behind precious images of life in Yangmei.
"We have the opportunity to go up mountains and down to the sea, and travel abroad, but we weren't able to look carefully at Yangmei, so we couldn't photograph it with Chin-miao's empathy." Liang Kuo-lung regrets that he destroyed his pictures of Yangmei in the 1980s, for today Old Street has been torn down and rebuilt, and nothing remains of its former aspect.
Looking at Chin-miao's photographs, Liang is constantly learning new things. "In fact we needn't try to be too ambitious; just photograph what you want to and do your best, even if you're just making a record. If a Chin-miao emerges once in 50 years, then Yangmei can live on in images."
What Liang Kuo-lung regrets most is having missed the opportunity to get to know Chin-miao. Even as a child, he knew that "the Lantern Festival lanterns on Old Street were the best," but he didn't know that this was due to Chin-miao's ingenuity. It was only a decade after Chin-miao's death that Liang finally had such an intimate dialogue with him in images, in the darkroom.
In the photographs we occasionally see the youthful Chin-miao, a spirited, handsome young man. Especially in a few pictures of him larking around with friends at the seaside, it is obvious that he was a lively, enthusiastic person--how could it be that he never married, and died beset with worries?
Marriage depends on fate
"Father had a brain hemorrhage, and he died three days later. So my brother became head of the family. My brother and sister and I never made any distinction between what money was whose, and we never had our own separate savings. Mother did the accounts of the shop every day. She lived to be 98, but she never used a walking stick a single day of her life.
"My brother never went in for riotous living, he was always very thrifty and earnest. Ask anyone on the Street. The three of us did as Mother told us; we never thought of opposing her. Sometimes matchmakers came, but marriage depends on fate and so does finding a partner. If you want to choose someone, you have to find someone to choose you, and if you're picky, they can be picky too. Somehow time goes by, and once you're on the way down the hill you can't stop however hard you put the brakes on.
"The year after Mother died my brother went too. Next it was my sister. I'm the last one, that's worst of all. Two years ago I cleaned up their bones on my own. The auspicious time was in the evening. I cooked a chicken in sesame oil to take. When I was nearly there my bicycle tire burst, and I couldn't stop myself from crying.
I still have dreams
"I'm no match for my brother in anything, I'm not as clever, not as gifted. I'm pretty stupid. We'll see if maybe I can live a bit longer, but now on my own I'm like a twisted old bit of bamboo--it might snap any minute. If I hadn't met these young people I don't know if I'd have lasted this long. They think these old photographs are something really special, so every day I go sorting out old pictures. Last night I weighed myself. I've lost three kilos, but I also feel a good few years younger.
"I'm old, what's going to become of these old pictures and scrapbooks and old equipment? It's all just junk. The young people look up to us, they say they want to open a memorial hall, but I don't think we deserve it.
"I've still got business to look after at the shop, I still have to earn a living! I'd still like to get married and have children too. How can they talk about a 'memorial' already? I wonder if heaven will be good to me? Will I get my wish? I'd like it that way, but will I get to see it?"
[Picture Caption]
Old Street is no longer old, and among the sparking new doors and floor-tiles of Chin-miao photo studio, only Wu Chin-jung's antique camera and his collection of old photographs bear witness to its history.
(left) How could I forget a picture I took myself? Ah-lung's grand dad and my father are both in it.
One evening, hearing that an old tree on Pokung Hill has fallen down, Wu Chin- jung and the "out-of-towner"-- Tseng Nien-you, instigator of the campaign to protect the temple and save the hill--hurry off to investigate.
With this 6-inch "portable" camera which they used for outdoor shots during the Japanese era, Wu Chin-jung and his brother photographed countless Yangmei characters.
Chin-jung's treasures: his sister Ming-chu's sketchbook; his brother Chi n-miao's old lens, photographic plate holder and scrapbooks; and a sketch of Chin-jung drawn by Chin-miao when he was in his teens. All are very well preserved.
Chin-miao himself painted these three backdrops for customers to choose between: Japanese style, Western style and Taiwanese scenery.
"I only made a new print from this just recently." Above is the glass plate taken by Chin-miao. To this day, Wu Chin-jung still refers to photographs as "plates."
Fruit carved by Chin-miao's skillful hands. (courtesy of Wu Chin-jung)
My mother, father, brother and sister are now all in this little square tomb. Sanjieye [a protecting spirit of the Hakkas] has sent these young people to recognize our achievements. It's surely the will of heaven.